Fuze Novice

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

As I eagerly await the arrival of my first mp3 player, - A Fuze with an 8 g micro-card, I am busily making remote preparations. As I understand it, on arrival of package, (1) I simply insert the card into the player (2) fully charge it (3) download the latest software (4) and as I am using it only for a classical music collection and audiobooks, make sure that it is in the MSC mode and then using Windows Explorer simply drag and drop files into the respective folders.

A confirmation of this procedure would be much appreciated by this 70 year old.

Many thanks for your patience and time.

2

That should do it, though you can also take one additional step. If you are used to navigating by folders on your computer, the latest Fuze firmware lets you do that, so upgrade and choose Folders under Music if you want to continue to do that. 

But if you want to use the database that lets you sort by Album, Artist, etc., which is very convenient, then you need to have ID3 tags the unit can read. Unfortunately, there is no widespread convention for the way things are tagged–different labels do it differently, and so do different eras at each label. Since classical music is so multinational nowadays, you may be dealing with a lot of systems. 

Get   mp3tagand install it to make your tags consistent. Open it, and in Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg set the default to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. 

That’s the format the Fuze likes best. 

Then go to your albums. Right-click on a folder/album and you should see a new option in the menu: mp3tag. Click on that and mp3tag will open the album. Highlight all the files, and with luck it will have the same Artist and Album information for all of them. It should say <keep> for track names, since they will all be different. If it says <keep> for Album or Artist,  that means some of the tracks are named differently, and the Fuze’s listing of Album or Artist will mindlessly follow the way they are named.

For instance, New York Philarmonic cond. Bernstein and New York Philharmonic cond. Maazel will show up as different Artists, even if they are on the same album.  A spelling with an umlaut will list separately from  a spelling without an umlaut. Etc. 

With everything highlighted, you can type in the album and artist name you want and Save it to make sure the album/artist show up consistently. 

Also, under Tools is an Auto-Numbering Wizard. With the files in order from top to bottom (as they should be) and all highlighted, check Leading Zeros and Save. The Fuze is a little mindless about tracks, too, so if you have tracks labeled 1, 2, 3, …11, 12, 13 it will play 1, 11, 12, 13, 2, 21, 22, 23 etc. without the leading zeroes. 

 It sounds complicated, but it works in seconds. Do an album at a time, and your collection will be ready for the Fuze. 

3

Oh, audiobooks. How you use those will depend on what format they are, and they may have the many annoyances of Digital Rights Madness.

You may need to transfer them in MTP mode with Windows Media Player, or with special software for the varieties of audiobook. The best thing to do is check with your audiobooks source and see what instructions they offer.

4

@black_rectangle wrote:

 

That should do it, though you can also take one additional step. If you are used to navigating by folders on your computer, the latest Fuze firmware lets you do that, so upgrade and choose Folders under Music if you want to continue to do that. 

 

But if you want to use the database that lets you sort by Album, Artist, etc., which is very convenient, then you need to have ID3 tags the unit can read. Unfortunately, there is no widespread convention for the way things are tagged–different labels do it differently, and so do different eras at each label. Since classical music is so multinational nowadays, you may be dealing with a lot of systems. 

 

Get   mp3tagand install it to make your tags consistent. Open it, and in Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg set the default to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. 

 

That’s the format the Fuze likes best. 

 

Then go to your albums. Right-click on a folder/album and you should see a new option in the menu: mp3tag. Click on that and mp3tag will open the album. Highlight all the files, and with luck it will have the same Artist and Album information for all of them. It should say <keep> for track names, since they will all be different. If it says <keep> for Album or Artist,  that means some of the tracks are named differently, and the Fuze’s listing of Album or Artist will mindlessly follow the way they are named.

 

For instance, New York Philarmonic cond. Bernstein and New York Philharmonic cond. Maazel will show up as different Artists, even if they are on the same album.  A spelling with an umlaut will list separately from  a spelling without an umlaut. Etc. 

 

With everything highlighted, you can type in the album and artist name you want and Save it to make sure the album/artist show up consistently. 

 

Also, under Tools is an Auto-Numbering Wizard. With the files in order from top to bottom (as they should be) and all highlighted, check Leading Zeros and Save. The Fuze is a little mindless about tracks, too, so if you have tracks labeled 1, 2, 3, …11, 12, 13 it will play 1, 11, 12, 13, 2, 21, 22, 23 etc. without the leading zeroes. 

 

 It sounds complicated, but it works in seconds. Do an album at a time, and your collection will be ready for the Fuze. 

After trying to read all of that with virgin eyes; I can see why my wife is not in love with Sansas…:smileyvery-happy:

Don’t get me wrong, they are fine players, but some people just want to listen to music and not be bothered with all the geek-ness…:wink:

5

Black-Rectangle has offered many good suggestions to get your music collection into the best shape for the fuze.  I have found MP3Tag to be a very good free program and user-friendly.

When you get your player, I suggest that you do not insert the card at first.  Save that for later. 

1 - charge your fuze. 

2 - put it into MSC mode. 

3 - manually update it.  Using the sansa updater can sometimes cause issues.  In your sansa, go into settings - system settings - scroll down to info - look for the version number.  See if it’s a version 1 or 2.  You can download the lastest firmware here.  It’ll be the All Regions download for your version.  It’ll have instructions to do it manually.

4 - Place the mode back into MSC.  Updating the firmware will put it back to AutoDetect mode.

5 - format the fuze, first through your computer, a full format, FAT32.  It’ll optimize your memory.

6 - internally format the fuze.  The lastest firmware needs this so that the 8000 song limit can be reached.  It’ll rebuild the song info database.

7 - insert your card.  It may not need it, but you can format that too.

Now, it’s ready to be loaded with your music.  The fuze is a terrific little player and can give you many hours of enjoyment.

6

Thanks for your help. Great to know that there are people like you out there.

7

Many thanks for your swift response.

8

Thank you for the advice. Did not realise that I had to format the drive. Really looking forward to the new arrival.

9

Well I totally disagree with Mags. If you have to do all that it’s no wonder some folks are so completely turned off by some MP3 players.

This is what I did.

Bought my Fuze + card. Installed software on my PC. Inserted card. Attach Fuze to PC. While it was charging I ran the updater. It said I needed an update. Ran it. Fuze rebooted and still had the free music on it from Sansa (which you will lose following Mags advice).

Used my Fuze for a few months. Ripped CD’s with Windows Media Player. Added music to Fuze frequently.

New update came out. Fuze updated. Rebooted. Works fine.

This is how easy it should be and it was for me.

I certainly wouldn’t screw around with formatting everything you possibly can…

10

Thanks very much for your imput.

11

@peregrine wrote:

Well I totally disagree with Mags. If you have to do all that it’s no wonder some folks are so completely turned off by some MP3 players.

 

This is what I did.

 

Bought my Fuze + card. Installed software on my PC. Inserted card. Attach Fuze to PC. While it was charging I ran the updater. It said I needed an update. Ran it. Fuze rebooted and still had the free music on it from Sansa (which you will lose following Mags advice).

Used my Fuze for a few months. Ripped CD’s with Windows Media Player. Added music to Fuze frequently.

New update came out. Fuze updated. Rebooted. Works fine.

This is how easy it should be and it was for me.

 

I certainly wouldn’t screw around with formatting everything you possibly can…

 

 

 What I have suggested to the OP is only a few steps more than what you have done.  Instead of downloading and installing the sansa updater, the OP can just download the firmware, which is quick.  My computer automatically unzips it, so all that needs to be done is to place the single file into the root directory.  The sansa updater does not always work properly.  In your case, it did.

Yes, it is true that formattting isn’t absolutely necessary, but there are benefits to it as I have posted.  The sample music that comes with the fuze can be backed-up.  Since the OP’s fuze will be brand-new, out-of-the-box, the OP will lose nothing since the OP’s own audio files have not yet been loaded.

12

I use MTP mode, and yes its required for audio books from the likes of audible, Its no harder to use and is no slower to move files then MSC mode and has the great benefit of allowing you to make play lists very easily.

drag and drop your music to the player, slect the files or folders you want in a play list, then rclick and hit “Create playlist” it will make a “new playlist” that you can rename, once renamed you can open the playlist(dbl click it) and move tracks around if you want/need to.

for your microsd card you should follow these steps to get play lists IF YOU WANT THEM, use a USB or flashcard reader to put the music on the card AFTER you plug the card into the fuze once first(this creates a folder structure thats usefull) put audio books in the audio books folder, and music in the music folder.

find a program you can use to create .m3u playlists, the easiest i have found is winamp, just drop the files you want in a playlist into the winamp playlist and save the playlist to the ROOT of the sdcard, its not hard and works far better then folder browsing mode.

13

Thanks indeed for your interest and response.

14

Dear Mags

Could you spell out precisely the meaning of the following  “ drag the file to the root directory of your Sansa Fuze”

Many thanks

15

The root directory is the driveletter. The root directory of your computer itself  is C:/.

The root directory of the Fuze (in MSC mode) will be the first of the two drives that appear in Windows Explorer; the next one is the card slot. Can’t tell you exactly what letter it is because you may have a CD or DVD drive, a backup drive, flash drives or other hard drives attached.

16

Thanks for swift response. Much appreciated.

17

Dear Mags

Final question (I hope) Could you possibly flesh out  your statement   " format the fuze, first through your computer, a full format, FAT32.  It’ll optimize your memory". Is it as straight forward as it sounds? I use Windows XP

Many thanks

18

@vinaigre wrote:

Dear Mags

 

Final question (I hope) Could you possibly flesh out  your statement   " format the fuze, first through your computer, a full format, FAT32.  It’ll optimize your memory". Is it as straight forward as it sounds? I use Windows XP

 

Many thanks

This step really isn’t necessary. Just use the Format function in the Fuze’s Settings menu. It will optimize the proper size bit allocations as well as update the database limitations.