New Fuze Owner with a Mac

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

Someone on over form the Anything but iPod Sansa forums recommended I come here for some help. First some background info.

For the last few years, I have owned a very old iPod(the one without color) and recently, a friend of mine gave me his 4GB Fuze. I’d figured I will keep this player since I like the easy navigation, features, extra memory slot and the fact that it was free. 

The problem is that my PC crapped out on me and I only have my MacBook. My buddy told me that the player is a DnD and that it should work on my Mac. All I would have to do is put it on MSC mode. I did that but when I hook up the player to the Mac, the folders are empty. I know for a fact there are 155 songs in the thing. I would like to get rid of some of the songs though and possibly keep some of them.

But anyway, I have a v1 firmware Fuze and would like to get some feedback on it. The same user told me I should stick with v1 and not update nothing yet unless someone suggests I put in the Rockbox firmware. I have no clue about Rockbox but he did say it is a great update.

Another problem I have is that all of the songs I have are under iTunes. Is there a way I can grab these songs and just stick them in the Fuze? Or will I have to do everything again from scratch?

What about playlists? What would be a good program to use for creating them and also adding all the necessary info and album arts to each song?

If there is anything else you guys woul dlike to suggest I’m all for everything. But please keep in mind that I am working on a Mac.

Thank you for reading. Cheers! 

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Cibernetico wrote:

The problem is that my PC crapped out on me and I only have my MacBook. My buddy told me that the player is a DnD and that it should work on my Mac. All I would have to do is put it on MSC mode. I did that but when I hook up the player to the Mac, the folders are empty. I know for a fact there are 155 songs in the thing. I would like to get rid of some of the songs though and possibly keep some of them.

 

It’s likely those 155 songs were transferred to the Fuze in MTP mode. That’s why you cannot see them when connected in MSC mode. I’d go back to the friend that gave it to you, ask to hook up to his Windows machine, set the unit to MTP mode, move all the songs to the computer, un-plug, switch modes back to MSC and then re-transfer them to the Fuze.

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And actually, I would like to add something to my post. When I think about it, I really don’t use the playlist feature. At most, I always only had 2 or 3 and never found myself going to them. I just actually liked scrolling through the list of music and just picking out whatever it is I wanted to listen to. 

I do however would like to know what would be a great way to update the background info on songs. Some of the music that is currently in the Fuze has Unknown info on Artist, Album and it has no album art. What would be the best way to edit this info? 

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Cibernetico wrote:

I do however would like to know what would be a great way to update the background info on songs. Some of the music that is currently in the Fuze has Unknown info on Artist, Album and it has no album art. What would be the best way to edit this info? 

This info is contained within the ID3 tag embedded in the song file. MP3Tag is the overwelmingly recommended free software for editing the tags. Set the writing option in the Tools menu to the format ID3v2.3-ISO-8859-1 for best results.

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Thank you for the info and replies. I would like to ask you about the current firmware and updates I should do. The Fuze has the factory firmware. I have noticed there is an update available. Would it be smart to update the firmware and then put in the Rockbox? I don’t know how Rockbox works and what features it has, but if it brings all of the new updates from the newest available firmware, should I go ahead with it?

Thank you. Cheers! 

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Re: Rockbox - Installing 3rd-party firmware on any device requires due diligence, as if it goes wrong, you may have one less toy to play. Suggest you start by going to the Rockbox site and read all you can about it. Surprisingly enough, it has a very good manual for an open-source affair–which is a good thing, as you’ll hear refrains of RTFM rather often.

As Tapeworm said, the songs current on the Fuze is probably transferred via MTP mode, which cannot be seen by your Mac as the player is set to MSC mode. You need a PC to access them.

I answered somebody about iTunes-to-Fuze playlist… As always, Google search is your friend.

http://www.cometdocs.com/iTunesxml2m3u.htm

Re: Info tags - MP3s use tags called ID3, which is a quasi-standard. There are various versions, and the version Tapeworm mentioned is favored by the Fuze. Again, Google for ‘ID3 tagging for Mac’ and see what you get, although I’d keep it simple and try iTunes tagging first to see how it fares.

The Fuze doesn’t play AAC, so if your songs use that codec, you’ll need to convert them to MP3.

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Installing a 3rd-party firmware onto a device shouldn’t be treated as trivial, unless you don’t care about bricking your toy. Go to the Rockbox site and read up on it.

Can’t you edit music tags with iTunes? Since you’re on a Mac, try Googling “mp3 tag editor for mac” and explore the links. The MP3Tag app mentioned is for Windows only.

Yes, you should update the firmware to the latest available. The firmware post is stickied at the top of this forum.

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Cibernetico wrote:

Thank you for the info and replies. I would like to ask you about the current firmware and updates I should do. The Fuze has the factory firmware. I have noticed there is an update available. Would it be smart to update the firmware and then put in the Rockbox? I don’t know how Rockbox works and what features it has, but if it brings all of the new updates from the newest available firmware, should I go ahead with it?

 

Thank you. Cheers! 

Yes, definitely and  . . . maybe. Rockbox is 3rd-party, alternative, open-source firmware. It doesn’t replace the OF (original firmware), but sits alongside it. You can boot into either one at will. It does not enhnace or change the OF or it’s features in the least; it simply adds an alternative way to control the device. Many like it; some don’t. Be advised though, it is still more or less in the ‘beta’ stage and officially unsupported by the developers at this stage. So if you decide to install it, you do it at your own risk.

You can check it out at rockbox.org.

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Tapeworm wrote:

 

Be advised though, it is still more or less in the ‘beta’ stage and officially unsupported by the developers at this stage.

 

For the version-one Fuze, it is stable.

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So I have a question about upgrading the firmware. I started to follow the upgrade instructions and came up against a problem. It said that I need the firmware updater but when I went to download it, it said that Mac is not a supported OS. What do I do now to update my Fuze’s firmware since the Updater does not support Mac?

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Read further down the update instructions and you don’t need the updater. Get the All Regions link for your version of the Fuze. Unzip it, put fuzea.bin into the root directory (the driveletter for internal memory), unplug and it will update.

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Another new Fuze owner with a mac. My Mac has no problem seeing the fuze as a peripheral device and I can drag and drop folders easily. I dont care a bit about cover photos, but I would like to be able to have that file folder show up as something other than “unknown”. It matters not what the folder seems to be called when one looks at all the files from the computer, when the device plays the name is “unknown”. I assume this is easy toi do on a PC, but, I really prefer my Mac. I could I suppose use my wife’s computer, but, she doesn’t like me on her PC any more than I would like her messing with my Mac.

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You’ll have to find a good ID3 tag editor program that works on Macs. Make sure the one you choose will write and save ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 format tags. That’s the format the tags need to be in for your Fuze to decypher and display the track info and not lump them under “Unknown”.

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To explain a little further: The lists on the Fuze (Album, Artist, etc.) are made from information in the ID3 tags, electronic labels that are part of the mp3. If there is no information in the tag, or if the format of the tag is one the Fuze can’t read, you get Unknown. 

Your Mac may be making tags that have the information but in a format the Fuze can’t read, like ID3 v2.4 (not ID3 v.2.3). 

So you need to get a tag editor to look at the tags and see what’s going on. The best one, Mp3tag, works great in Windows…but it’s not a Mac program.  All you need to do in mp3tag  is go to Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg and set the Write default to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. Then open any album folder, highlight all the tracks. If the correct information is in there, but the format is wrong, then  Save and you’ll have tags the Fuze can read. Takes seconds per album. 

Sometimes tracks come through without complete tags–but all the information is in the filename. Mp3tag has Convert/ Filename to Tag. So if the tags are 01–Artist–Album–Song Title you can tell Convert  it’s %track%–%artist%–%album%–%title%  (note that I am putting the separators, the --, between the %, and you may have different separators like . or _) and convert a whole lot of tags at once. 

If you have the WINE Windows emulator in your Mac, it can run mp3tag. 

There should also be a Mac tagging program. Just make sure it saves in ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. ISO-8859-1 is the way Windows shows characters, and the Apple defaults are different.  You don’t want anything UTF (which is Unix, the foundation of Mac.) 

I don’t have a Mac, but I see recommendations for Tagr. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30610/tagr  Just make sure it can save ID3v2.3. 

Other tagging software: http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/mp3%20tag

You can also edit tag information one by one–endless–with the Get Info function in iTunes.  But I’ve never found a way to change the ID3 version in iTunes. My iTunes, probably not the latest ,only saves ID3v2.2, which will also work in the Fuze. But if the one in your Mac saves ID3v2.4, then it’s no go. 

Speaking of Apple weirdness, albums converted on Mac OSX come with an extra subfolder called MACOSX that has tiny, 1kb files something like ._01 Title.mp3.  (Note: they start with period underscore.) Those are finder files that tell your Mac where the files are, not the mp3s themselves. The Fuze can’t play them because they are not songs. After you send the album over, delete  the MACOSX subfolder from the Fuze.

It’s all part of Apple’s determination to make iTunes seem easy and everything else a PITA.