New User Intro and Newbie Question

 I am a retired EE doing volunteer work on Small EV’s, and helping with their support  forums.   We got our Fuze 4gb Dec20 and have been busy learning it, reading the manual, loading with our CD’s and a few e-music loads; Our first MP3, and our first music downloads and our first copying of CD’s.  We have about 200 songs on it now, and about 1/2 full.  

We bought the Fuze mainly for use on long trips in the car, having cars with only cassette decks…, the Fuze will play only pre-recorded music, no videos or pictures.  In the car It plays nicely thru a casette playback adapter.  We also have  a kit from Amazon with spare cable, car and home charger and playback at home thru our laptop extension speakers.

The home computer is a Vista monster with mucho power and storage and media player 12.  The road HP laptop (shhh so it wont hear) is on its last 6 months, is an xp sp2, a bit underpowered and slow, does not have the latest hispeed USB- but will do music loads slowly,  7 years old, just upgraded to player version 12, but is going on a road trip for a temp job for us.   We leave for a big job in just a few days.

I upgraded my Fuze to version 2.2.28   as soon as I got it.   The only issue we have had with the Fuze , Other than loosing it because its soo small, is inconsistent play back volume.  dont know if this ahs anything to do with  .28 .

The question is;

with my road computer and my new Fuze, I dont want any problems on the road.  I can deal with the volume problem, as everything has volume controls. And I realize this is just an entertainment device, its not a GPS- although I can read maps quiet well.  I was not looking to learn a new hobby, just give my wife an electronic playback deck.  She is not a great techie, better than most retireees tho. 

So, Can I stay at 2.2.28 fairly reliably with my useage and not have to use my old laptop to do troubleshooting, or should I go back to 2.2.26 which my Fuze came with before leaving? or is it 6 of 1, versus half dozen of the other?

Thaks for the advice

Great Forum

**bleep** in Colorado

The firmware ending in 26 is probably better.

I just checked, and it says .28A, not .28.

Does that make a difference?

thank you

d

The “A” is just a region code (for North America). Other than certain language and FM radio settings, it’s identical to other .28 firmwares.

The reason he said you might be better off with .26 is that there’s a major bug in the 02.xx.28 firmware related to Replay Gain. 

It’s easy enough to downgrade to the .26 version. Just go to this page:

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&message.id=23276&query.id=69476#M23276

and download the .26 version. Unzip the file and put fuzea.bin  in the root directory of the Fuze, and it will install automatically when you unplug. 

The .28 probably won’t create any problems unless you dive into the menus and use Replay Gain–which is supposed to limit fluctuations between volume of music from different albums–but you might as well downgrade anyway.

By the way, you’re going to have to crank up the Fuze pretty high to play it through the car stereo, and probably turn up the stereo too (don’t forget when you switch back to radio…).  That’s so that when you plug in headphones, the usual use for that jack, they won’t be painfully loud. 

Sorry, but I just got veto’ed by the other half.  “too much time invested in this, we need to finish packing.”

My choices were not good, as its her Fuze: 

  1. Backup fuze before downgrading micro code-  then change microcode, then test,  way too much time 

  2. Turn off the auto gain feature, and deal with the volume changes like we do on home made cassettes until we get where we are going. 

  3. Save all the music and get different model MP3 — even more time

  4. Delay departure.

option 2 won out. 

 Could you all please put a warning on the Firmware update to not load it or turn replay gain off, or what the pros/cons/risks of updating firmware are?  And if you load .28 you will have to update later anyway?

Its bad enough that there is no manual, No CD manual, or instructions where to go for getting started in the Fuze package. And the little CD is just a promo for Rhapsody, of no real use to most Fuse users.

 Most of us semi-techies assume an update with at least 60 days on it has the kinks worked out.  Guess that is what happens with “ASSUME”.

When I get where I am going, maybe someone will have a good super PC computer, and  I’ll save all my Fuze music, then go to Best Buy and swap this out for a different FuZE 4GB, staying at .26  .

There is a warning. Its in the firmware update sticky at the top of this board. There is also a link to the Firmware ending in .26 which could be loaded pretty quick onto the player. In this FW Replaygain works better.

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&thread.id=23276&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Against my better judgment, I just spent another hour making sure I knew everything about doing this return to 2 .26. 

read, clicked, downloaded, unzipped, and tried to xfer to Fuze “root” ? 

Like others, no luck.  Its still at 28a.

I am at 28a, and that’s where I will be staying with gain control turned off.

Back for another try when I have another couple hours to work on it.  that wont be for a long time.  If it fails, its just getting returned.

Like I said earlier, I wanted a cassette deck, not a new hobby.  same for the wife.

It will probably work just fine the way it is.  I hope.

Edit:  it hit me that the fuze was in MTP “juke box” player mode, and to install a file it has to be in MSC “disk file format”  mode, as the firmware is not music, its a file.  thats why when you try drag and drop a “file” in juke box mode, it wont let you.

change to file format, and it works.  so now am at 2. 26a . MTP Media Transfer Playing—MSC MAss Storage  Computing

back to packing.

I’ll give this a “fixed”.

d

Message Edited by doanson on 01-01-2010 07:46 PM

Message Edited by doanson on 01-01-2010 07:55 PM

Glad you have things working!  The firmware, once unzipped, can be transferred in MTP mode, after you click on Internal Memory to open the root directory.

The tree: Sansa Fuze > Internal Memory > root.

µsansa