If SanDisk reps are reading this, please consider the following firmware updates:

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

Unfortunately, I compare every DAP I purchase to my old iRiver iHP 120 (which is running ROCKbox firmware), and that is a pretty tough act to follow in terms of features and sound quality. However, I also have the need for a very small DAP with which I can bring to work and trying out the Fuze, I’m really liking the sound quality and its fairly simple approach with things. The menu’s are good (intuitive, though the radio function could be a bit polished up a bit) and having a choice between MTP and MSC is great. I also appreciate that the wheel now is more functional with its dedicated play/pause feature rather than using that for scrolling like the View did (or still does ?)

I have a couple of small niggles though, with the Fuze, and think that a firmware update can very easily solve them, so I’d like to put in the request just in case someone at SanDisk is reading/listening:

  1. Please find a way to improve the way in which we can search for an artist/album etc. I saw that there has been a request to search alphabetically, and that’s a great idea and second it. I think it would also be an improvement to give us a choice as to whether or not we can use file tree browsing so that how ever we put our files and folders on the drive, is exactly how we’ll see them displayed. File tree browsing is much more convenient than using a database method because in some cases a tagging scheme may mess up how the same artists albums or songs are put together. 

  2. Looping menus and music list !  In the same fashion as the home screen, the way you’re able to scroll from music and all the way around back to music again, both forward and backwards, every menu screen as well as the music list should be able to loop like this ! It would make things utterly more convenient and a much better user experience. 

  3. Ogg support. Why not, it’s free ! You don’t have to pay any loyalties or ownership fees in order to run this codec. I’m not the only person (I’m sure) who has many of his files in the Ogg Vorbis format and I much prefer its performance to that of Mp3. I think it drains less battery life, and uses less disk space on the whole. I can also encode to a lower bitrate and have it sound as good as a higher bit rate Mp3 file.

And while I’d love to see better playlist functionality (just look at ROCKbox to see how it is done ! ) for non Windows or Mac platforms (I use Linux) it’s not something I’d ever expect to see get done, so I won’t harp on it.  I guess that’s it for now. I’ve only had the Fuze for a couple of days, but owned the View before, and returned it. The Fuze seems to be a step up and really hope to see any of my requests fulfilled.

D. 

2

To follow up and add to my last post, I want to reiterate why I find the lack of file tree browsing annoying (to say the least). My listening habits are such, that I like to have my albums in a particular sequence. For example, I like having them in order of the time that they were released. So let’s take the band Interpol for instance. Their albums were released as such:

Turn On The Bright Lights

Antics

Our Love To admire

And that’s how I’d like to have the albums listed so that when I select “play all” they’ll go in order. Otherwise, I can just choose random shuffle if I wanted it otherwise. As it stands however, without file tree browsing, my albums are sorted alphabetically, (so it would be Antics first, then Our love to admire then Turn On the Bright lights. Totally backwards.) and that drives me a little nuts. I want total control over how my albums and songs are listed. So now, I’d have to physically tag the albums with numbers in order for everything to be the way I want it, and that’s an unnecessary step and a pain I’d like to avoid. 

Another scenario, and one which applies to what I’m listening to right now is, an album which I encoded from FLAC files whos origin is from a vinyl needledrop… My files are totally out of order, because the tags didn’t transfer over in the encoding process. So now OK Computer is on pseudo shuffle just because the songs are out of order. Annoying. This wouldn’t happen with file tree browsing.

Also, even if my tags ARE in order, I’d really like to be able to see the song numbers before the track name, which doesn’t appear to be an option with the current scheme.

D. 

3

well looping menu used to exist … but it was taken out for some reason, dunno why.  I’m sure their working on faster browsing method, but I’m guessing marketing and development are clashing heads.

as for ogg, we can only expect it to come out for fuze, but its a big unsure whether a new firmware for fuze will come out or the succeeder will come out with ogg.  (this is assumption from clip providing ogg support, its only natural for future products / firmware to follow that trend). 

as for album order, I don’t really care since I listen to my music by filename and folder heirarchy (which sansa doesn’t support). I hate id3 tags, but your album order request is kind of a redundancy of features, since you have that control with playlists.  otherwise why not do with artists and genres in that manner too?  playlist already provides an insane amount of control. of course that’s just my opinion, no hard feelings meant.

4

I just like the freedom to do what I think comes naturally is all. That really shouldn’t be too much of an issue with the technology we’re afforded these days. You like things your way, and I mine. I wonder though sometimes, if people (such as yourself and no offense intended here but…) tend to “like” dealing with playlists in the manner you’re speaking of, simply because they’re forced to use it as an alternative to what otherwise would seem like a logical and more simple way of sorting things out.

So, ok… I got your hint about the playlist ability, and said ok… I’ll try it. But to be honest, it’s not as intuitive a system as you’d lead me to believe. I’m in playlists now, and see two artists sitting there. Out of the two artists, there are three lists, two separate ones for Cat Power, and one for Fiona Apple. The Two Cat Power lists have nothing in them, and the Fiona Apple one has Extraordinary Machine in it. But um… I NEVER put any of those things there, so how’d they get there in the first place ?

And now, I have to break out the manual in order to figure out how to get a playlist of all artists together for the time when I want to have one album go to the next right ? But here’s why I don’t like this. THIS seems a redundant task to me, not the other way around. You browse how you browse, and as for me, I at times like to listen to albums back to back, straight through. And with the system presented here, it seems a pain to get together, especially with what I’ve just been presented with. Here’s a quote from a thread I posted a reply in at the ABI forums:

[quote] I ripped several cd’s last night, and a few of them after transferring them onto the Fuze, had shown up with files out of order. I just tried tagging the files again whilst still on the Fuze, but that only seemed to make things different, but not right.

I just now ripped another cd, and made sure that the tags were on there (or so I thought) but not only are the tracks out of order again, there are no track numbers like the tagging scheme said there would be.

Is the Fuze known to be sketchy like this ? I’m using Linux Ubuntu fwiw.

Doug

![](http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/images/misc/progress.gif)edit: For the record, they're not even in alphabetical order, just totally random. This might put me off of the Fuze if it's not my system. Bah.. I just realized that this is the case with all the cd's I ripped last night. [/quote]

So I hope you can understand my quandry now. It just shouldn’t be and doesn’t have to be this complicated. File tree would solve all my ailes.

Edit: Please don’t forget that I’m using Linux Ubuntu. If that has any impact on how playlists are handled, then it’s not a shortcoming I’m responsible for…  

Message Edited by thespot on 06-03-2008 11:12 AM

5

I am a fan of the KDE GUI, so Kubuntu is my favorite.  For the hairball of CD transcodes to mp3, have a crack at all of those wee beasties with MP3Tag prior to porting everything over to the Sansa.

It sounds like your tags are the issue.  Everything seems to be going in favor of ID3 tags, as they stay with the individual files, no matter what folder they’re in.  The Sansa is trying to sort by those tags.

I don’t want to hold my breath waiting for folder view…

Bob  :wink: 

6

If you want redundant features that really matter only to a few people, you should look into editing the firmware and creating your own. That way you get what you want. Or maybe build your own MP3 player so you get all the features you want for a quarter of retail price. :slight_smile:

7

Aircraftkiller, just because you don’t find a feature useful does not make it redundant. In fact, nothing would be more useful than filetree browsing because it gives you total control vs not having to bow down to pain in the ass id3 tagging which may already exist in files, but may just not be good enough for the Sansa’s database. In fact, all of my files ARE tagged, and I’m still running into problems with having to find a better way to re tag them. Now you tell me… what is redundant in this case ? Thought so.

You should also consider not trying to speak for the masses. You do not solely encompass any number of people who do or do not want specific features. And as far as creating my own Mp3 player, there’s no need to be a smart alec about this, since what I asked is not out of the question or a humongous request. Most companies won’t honor the request, likely because then people won’t need to be tied down to specific operating systems or pieces of software in order to control their music, which means less money for them and their partners.

I’ll still keep the Fuze if I can figure out why songs won’t transfer in the proper order, but if not, I suppose Cowon may be in need of my business. 

8

Most older players use file browsing. If you like the feature as much as you do (and obviously being intelligent enough to realize it’s not going to be put in the fuze) why not get an E200 and put RB on it. Suddenly the problems are solved. And you’re right, I don’t speak for anyone but myself. Does that mean file browsing is a massively requested feature? No, it’s not. You don’t speak for anyone else, either. And I’m sorry to say but your point of view isn’t exactly as widespread as ID3 tags are.

9

OP, I think you’ve mis-read my implications of what features are “redundant”. Filetree / Browse by folder is not a redundant feature, in fact I would LOVE this feature opposed to id3 tags, because NONE of my mp3 collection has id3 tags. I kill them all, I hate id3 tags. Newer players are implementing both folder browsing AND sort by id3, and I wouldn’t be suprised if Sansa came out with one in the future. I would definately buy an old player that had this feature if they were still around NEW.

The redundancy was aimed at puting albums in order to play your way. Even if you had filetree / browse by folder, your albums would STILL play in alphabetical order and not the order you wanted, unless you wanted it in alpha order. ALSO the albums would not be in order, unless the track # was in your file name, since it does not rely on id3 tags to put them in order. future players would need to implement a combination of id3tag sorting and file browsing, which I think would give hectic issues with the DB.

But THIS is what I think is a redudant feature: what your essentially asking is a playlist byfolders, or a playlist by tags that will play folders or tags in a specific order. A regular playlists already points to music which you can order ANY way you want. you can order it with one album of songs playing first than the next album of song, etc etc. now. . . consider if a playlist points to a folder or points to a tag. . . well not only does the playlist points to a vague destination, there could be ANY number of songs at that destination. the player would have to build it’s playlist ON THE FLY, and that already sounds like it would create more problems. your playlist would have to be dynamic, because the playlist would have to look into a folder, search what songs are in there AND rebuild itself up to reflect the folder/folders. The player would require more juice and power to do this feat. Now it just gets complicating and inefficient when all this can be done at the power of the user. remember that once the auto build takes place, your songs inside the folders would probably be playing in alphabetical order. This scenario just seems like. . . a mp3 player in a mp3 player. the rebuild datase of the entire memory is the big mp3 player, and the playist self rebuilding based on folders is the little mp3 player inside the big one. THAT is redundant.

I respect that you have personal opinions (we all do) and the need for features may not be the same for others, but there are somethings that seem reasonable and some that seem out of place. I’m not saying its a bad idea, refined and worked out, it probably will be the feature of the future! but as of now, I believe what most of the previous posters were saying wasn’t on behalf of the general mass, but were out of reason.

Message Edited by thoma on 06-04-2008 11:02 AM

10

If I may add a few things I’d like to see as well:

  1. First, I know the player automatically bookmarks audiobooks, but when I’m listening I’d also like to be able to hold down the center button and create a custom bookmark, then have a bookmarks folder in the audiobook menu. I would also like to see this applied to music, but it’s not necessary. I used this feature all the time on my Rio ce2100. 

  2. Second, though I would never buy an iPod, I REALLY like the feature it has when you scroll fast, it begins to jump through the letters in alphabetical order. This would be very useful when you have over 1000 songs on your player like me. If you don’t implement that, then at least make the scrolling accelerate to 5 or so songs per “click” of the wheel when it’s going fast. It’s very tedious to sit there for 2 minutes spinning the wheel because it only scrolls one song per “click” of the scroll wheel. 

11

@cupooterluvr wrote:

If I may add a few things I’d like to see as well:

 

  1. First, I know the player automatically bookmarks audiobooks, but when I’m listening I’d also like to be able to hold down the center button and create a custom bookmark, then have a bookmarks folder in the audiobook menu. I would also like to see this applied to music, but it’s not necessary. I used this feature all the time on my Rio ce2100. 

 

  1. Second, though I would never buy an iPod, I REALLY like the feature it has when you scroll fast, it begins to jump through the letters in alphabetical order. This would be very useful when you have over 1000 songs on your player like me. If you don’t implement that, then at least make the scrolling accelerate to 5 or so songs per “click” of the wheel when it’s going fast. It’s very tedious to sit there for 2 minutes spinning the wheel because it only scrolls one song per “click” of the scroll wheel. 

I agree with your number two.  I really would like a faster way to browse through my songs.  I have 1850 songs on my Fuze right now, and scrolling through the Album list (or any list, song, artist) takes forever…  There should be an option to Browse All or to Browse by Letter…   That way, say I was looking for an Album starting with a T, I could select T and would only need to go through Album starting with a T.

Add the faster scrolling that you suggested and it would be great.

The current system is not efficient.

Message Edited by Corilof on 06-04-2008 01:23 PM

12

Well for now I just avoid it by hitting the first song on the playlist and then hitting the skip button so it randoms up the next song, however when I want to show my friends a song (for example I wanted to show my friend a new Disturbed song today but it was all the way at the bottom of the playlist) I have to scroll aaaaaaaall the way down.

13

The way Apple does it is OK, but you almost always scroll past what you want and have to go back. I like the way the Creative Zen Vision:M works - you hit the right button and it goes to a list of letters that you can scroll through very quickly. Hit the center button, and you’re on the first track that begins with that letter. Having used an iPod for three years and a Zen Vision:M for 10 minutes, I was able to get between songs twice as fast on the Zen.

14

@bdb wrote:
The way Apple does it is OK, but you almost always scroll past what you want and have to go back. I like the way the Creative Zen Vision:M works - you hit the right button and it goes to a list of letters that you can scroll through very quickly. Hit the center button, and you’re on the first track that begins with that letter. Having used an iPod for three years and a Zen Vision:M for 10 minutes, I was able to get between songs twice as fast on the Zen.

This is exactly what I’d like to see! 

15

Now that’s a nice idea, being able to scroll faster either by the “letter function”, or perhaps if the Sansa would recognize the user’s manual rotation rate and “kick up” the scroll for fast wheel rotation.

It would be nice to have, say for argument’s sake, a 2:1 scroll rate if the wheel is rotated fast. The actual increase could be determined by trying a few different ratios on a test device.

My ideal rate would be one that isn’t apparent. The average user will rapidly acclimate to the scroll wheel’s behavior, and rolling past the desired song shouldn’t be an issue, especially if the (user’s) manual rotation rate drops back below the chosen input threshold, when the desired letter range approaches.

The disadvantage I see with a “letter mode” is that it requires…how would we say it in German? More gefingerpoken?

And the silver lining in this cloud? Less wear on the scroll wheel, baby!

Bob :smileyvery-happy:

Message Edited by neutron_bob on 06-04-2008 05:33 PM

16

Another thing…  I realize that the Fuze uses ID3 Tags to identify and display the music…  But is uses ID3v1 tags instead of ID3v2?  Cause the size of the song titles it will display is really short…  I mean I have some songs with three singers and it can’t display all three names.  It just runs out and cuts off the name which to be honest bothers me.

Why can’t the Fuze support ID3v2 tags that can hold a lot more information? 

17

I have songs with titles too  long for ID3v1, and the Fuze shows the full title. Your problem is likely the software that is tagging it before you put it on the Fuze.

18

Now you’re talking. I was actually thinking about that. Though, if I could just sort out why the Fuze isn’t taking to my iD3 tags and putting my songs in screwy order, I might consider sticking with it for a bit. But then, I do have another problem with the Fuze, and it’s something which I’ll address in the next quoted answer:

@thoma wrote:

 

 

The redundancy was aimed at puting albums in order to play your way. Even if you had filetree / browse by folder, your albums would STILL play in alphabetical order and not the order you wanted, unless you wanted it in alpha order. ALSO the albums would not be in order, unless the track # was in your file name, since it does not rely on id3 tags to put them in order. future players would need to implement a combination of id3tag sorting and file browsing, which I think would give hectic issues with the DB

 

Message Edited by thoma on 06-04-2008 11:02 AM

Actually, it’s not redundant for me at all, and here’s why. I can’t create the playlists which you describe because I’m using Linux, and for one, just trying to get some piece of software to play nicely with the MTP protocol is a nightmare. At the moment, I’m limited to one song at a time on the go playlists, which is lame as hell, as you can imagine.

Secondly, you’re wrong about my albums playing in alphabetical order. You’re forgetting that you can control everything w/file tree browsing, and even though your files will inherently have tags attached to them (including song numbers if you so choose to add them, which I always do for convenience), you also have the option to physically add characters to the folder names. I always tag my consecutive album folders starting with numbers. (1-5 etc) That pretty much takes care of albums in order.

If you don’t believe me, I’ll post a picture of my iHP 120 and its contents. But, I’m sure you do (believe me). As for what you think is a redundant feature, you might have misread what I was asking for, because none of what you said comes close to what I want. Playlist abilities are great, and I’d take ROCKbox playlist functionality any day of the week, but all I was essentially asking for was as I just stated up above.

Here’s another really huge downside to the Fuze for me though, which is what might put it back on the BB shelves… Since I can’t put a normal playlist together, one which would allow me to join several albums together at once, I’m forced to either listen to one album at a time, or I have to choose “play all”. The former is annoying in that I have to dig the Fuze out of my pocket every time one album is over, because it won’t just automatically go to the next directory. That… is just plain STUPID.

The former, is equally annoying, because now in play all mode, I’m either stuck with the last song being the last of that artist’s last album’s songs, or if I just chose play all from the main list, then god knows where it’s going to start playing from and which song will be next (in my experience anyway).

At least if they included a feature akin to the one in ROCKbox, where the songs would go from one to the next, following the order in which the folders are listed, then there’d be a lot more freedom to move around in IMO. Anyway, that’s my rant for now, but I’d love to find out why my tags aren’t valid for the Fuze, and that’s my current main problem.

D.
Message Edited by thespot on 06-04-2008 08:53 PM

19

I’ll tell you guys this much lol, its **bleep** good that these issues can potentially be solved via firmware rather than a new player lol.

20

@bdb wrote:
I have songs with titles too  long for ID3v1, and the Fuze shows the full title. Your problem is likely the software that is tagging it before you put it on the Fuze.

Winamp is the software I use to tag my songs.  If I check the file info, the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags are bothing showing the correct information (well the ID3v1 tag is often cut off due to its limited size).  So how come it’s not showing up correctly on my Fuze?

I copy and paste my songs on my Fuze, I don’t use a program to transfer them.  Should I also try a third party ID3 tagging software?  I’d really like to avoid that if possible, I mean there has to be a simple fix to this…