Fuze still won't play FLAC that were made by FreeRip

Hi,

 I’ve searched the archives and find several instances of folks using FreeRip to make FLAC files and then the FUZE player even with newest firmware (I have v.1 firmware) sees the FLAC files fine but then rapidly scans through them ‘searching’ for something but won’t play them. 

The forums here suggest it is not an encoding setting problem as whether you use compression 1 or 5 or 8 it doesn’t matter.  The best I can learn is that it is ‘something’ about FreeRip settings, perhaps with the way the files are ‘tagged’.  No one seems to be able to come up with a consistent solution.

Some just re-ripped from CD using a different program.  I really can’t bear the thought of that as it was would be weeks of work again.

Has FreeRip ever researched this and suggested a ‘why is this happening and how to fix it’ reply?

Is there a way to in a batch format ‘fix’ the tag problem?  Is the problem that FreeRip puts ID3 tags on and they need Vorbis tags or something on that order?  Others suggested they don’t have tags?  I don’t understand as the majority of my FLAC collection had the info autopopulated by freedb database which I assume would have the correct info in the correct field!

Can someone from SanDisk look into this to see if maybe a easy firmware fix would allow these FLAC files produced by FreeRip to be read?  FreeRip is popular, easy to use, adds track info, and their FLAC files read everywhere else except on the FUZE.  I can send a sample file to the board or to a tech supporter if required.

Some have used FLAC frontend to ‘add tags’ (I thought mine have tags already?) and then have done something else to add info to the tags (MP3edit or something?)

Please help!

JDK

As the Fuze is discontinued, don’t look for any firmware update “fixes” for this problem from SanDisk. They’ve already abandoned it.

You can just transcode to them to regular flac using pretty much any flac encoder. That said if you want to post a link to one of the flac files on a site that doens’t have a ton of porn ads I’ll take a look at it.

Thanks for the help.  What do you mean by transcode to ‘regular FLAC’  I assume there exists a tool or program that allows me to in a batch format dump the files I have in and somehow a different kind of FLAC file comes out?  Didn’t know that there were different types outside of differences in levels of compression.  Thanks

@knibbeje wrote:

 somehow a different kind of FLAC file comes out?  Didn’t know that there were different types outside of differences in levels of compression.  Thanks

    Since you haven’t posted a file for me to look at, I have no idea :slight_smile:

Ok, can you suggest an easy way to share a 7mb file (one of the smaller ones I can find.)  I could email but not sure how you can get your email to me safely.  Is there a easy filesharing website that is safe.

OK, from home I can set up a public dropbox folder and if you care to add dropbox (open source) to your own computer you can download the small file from here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5551999/45-The%20Old%20Man.flac

It is a smaller file too.  Let me know what you find.  Thanks!

Trader’s Lilttle Helper, a free program, will re-encode FLAC files. Try running one of yours through it and see if it helps.

http://tlh.easytree.org/

You could also put the file up on www.mediafire.com, as a .zip file,  and post the link here. Give the file itself a gibberish name so that search engines cant find the artist.

Thats a pretty normal file. I don’t see anything special or wrong about it. Plays fine in rockbox on the fuze as well.