I thought I read somewhere on here a while ago that the Fuze was going to support Ogg and Flac in upcoming firmware update. Does anybody know if this is still going to happen? I don’t see much talk about it anymore.
It was officially announced by Sandisk, so I’m confident it’s going to happen. As to when, there’s been no official date or FW version mentioned, but it’s expected in the upcoming FW that should be released within a few weeks. Again, there’s been no official promise of this from Sandisk, but the previous Clip FW added Ogg Vorbis, so it’s anticipated that the next Fuze FW will have Ogg Vorbis and FLAC.
I’m afraid that we can forget FLAC/OGG support for Fuze and any other current Sansa model (except Clip). Here you can read technical support response to my yesterday mail:
“As of now, we do not have an MP3 player that supports FLAC format and we do not have any update information that will allow the player to recognize this format. About the OGG only the Sansa Clip is the one that can support this file and we do not have update information as well if there will be any firmware toallow the sansa Fuze to recognize and play this file.”
OGG supporting Fuze was only a rumour…which is bad…
Message Edited by rayone on 09-26-2008 01:32 AM
@skinjob wrote:
It was officially announced by Sandisk, so I’m confident it’s going to happen. As to when, there’s been no official date or FW version mentioned, but it’s expected in the upcoming FW that should be released within a few weeks. Again, there’s been no official promise of this from Sandisk, but the previous Clip FW added Ogg Vorbis, so it’s anticipated that the next Fuze FW will have Ogg Vorbis and FLAC.
The plans to support Ogg (presumably Ogg Vorbis) and FLAC were announced by a SanDisk official, but were not officially announced. It was mentioned by Jan Hauer, the Director of Product Marketing, at a “conference in London”, and the story was picked up and run by The Register. There is no direct transcript of the presentation available, no press release from SanDisk on the topic, and no timeline mentioned. Every other news story I’ve seen that confirms this announcement cites the article from The Register as the source.
As far as I’m concerned, this does not make it an official announcement: rather, this is an informal note from the marketing department about extra features that they would like to include.
@rayone wrote:
I’m afraid that we can forget FLAC/OGG support for Fuze and any other current Sansa model (except Clip). Here you can read technical support response to my yesterday mail:
“As of now, we do not have an MP3 player that supports FLAC format and we do not have any update information that will allow the player to recognize this format. About the OGG only the Sansa Clip is the one that can support this file and we do not have update information as well if there will be any firmware toallow the sansa Fuze to recognize and play this file.”
OGG supporting Fuze was only a rumour…which is bad…
Message Edited by rayone on 09-26-2008 01:32 AM
As above, Ogg Vorbis support for the Fuze was not a rumour: the mention of the plan to add support for these two formats came from a SanDisk official. It is more than a rumour, but less than a promise.
As for the email you received, it does not imply what you seem to think it does. The support agent you contacted affirmed that there is presently no update available that adds support for Ogg Vorbis or FLAC. Support would be the very last department told about future plans for system updates.
I have my own opinions about the status of the work on these features, but it’s bad form to speculate in the absence of any new information.
Sansa Technical support is like many technical support organizations in that they are not allowed to officially speak on upcoming firmware releases or features as that tends to raise customer expectations. Already, the news of the new firmware has created buzz on this forum and already angry emails have been generated because the code has been delayed by almost a month.
Sansa_Bob, who I would trust much more than the standard “tech support” mantra, has been working with the new code and has not mentioned that OGG and FLAC were not included.
So I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss OGG and FLAC as a rumor as of yet. The Fuze and Clip use the same chipset, and it makes no sense that only Sansa’s entry level DAP would include audiophile level codecs.
So don’t be so quick to dismiss OGG and FLAC as simple rumor, simply because a level 1 tech support rep has given you the standard “we can’t tell you until it releases” boilerplate
Well, yet another month has gone by, so I’m becoming less confident as well. It just seemed very promising that that announcement more or less coincided with Ogg being added to the Clip. I know The Register is hardly the most reliable news source, but the two events together made it seem plausible.
On the other hand, if they aren’t working on Ogg/FLAC support, then what the heck is taking so long on the new FW update? Sansafix has resonded to a number of issues saying that they will be “fixed in the next FW”. But these are pretty much all minor issues, some of which have already been fixed on the Clip. He also gave several estimated release time frames, which all passed months ago. So either they are working on something major that’s taking more time than expected (hopefully Ogg/FLAC) or they aren’t working on it at all. I’m still of the opinion (and hope) that it’s the former, but we really need to see something soon. Six months without even a patch is way too long.
OGG and FLAC will be delivered end of next week .
@sansafix wrote:
OGG and FLAC will be delivered end of next week .
Hope to see it before friday, because if I don’t, I’ll have to buy iAudio instead (without SD support :/)
How much can we wait…
How many people want to use OGG or FLAC? Navigation by folders is much more important than OGG or FLAC. If FLAC gives lossless compression but is only 35% smaller than WAV, then why bother? MP3 at 256 or 320 kbps is high enough quality. How many people can tell the difference in sound quality between 256 kbps mp3 or a WAV file when using a Fuze? How about between a 320 kbps mp3 file and the WAV file? At 256 kbps, the compression is still around 5x, so there is considerable space savings. Others might want to use variable bitrate averaging around 256 kbps or perhaps 192 kbps.
It’s said that Clip/Fuze give quite impressive SQ (even comparing with cheap iAudios or iRivers), so I think it should support high SQ formats. You say FLAC is “only” 35% smaller than wave, but notice that with that (2GB+8GB MicroSD) limited capacity every MB matters 
I can hear the difference between 320 kbps MP3 and WAVe (on Audigy 2 ZS). OGG at ~400 kbps is high enough for me. I don’t expect Fuze to be high-end sound system, but if difference between 320 kbps MP3 and WAVe can’t be heard (with good headphones of course), I guess the SQ is rather not impressive at all.
There is fast growing Linux user community which has all their music only ogg encoded. I am one of those. I am looking only players with ogg support and I will I’ll get Sansa Fuze if it will support ogg. So here is at least one user wanting that ogg support.
" I can hear the difference between 320 kbps MP3 and WAVe (on Audigy 2 ZS). OGG at ~400 kbps is high enough for me. I don’t expect Fuze to be high-end sound system, but if difference between 320 kbps MP3 and WAVe can’t be heard (with good headphones of course), I guess the SQ is rather not impressive at all."
I was talking about on the Fuze though, and with efficient headphones the Fuze will power adequately, not using a large, expensive, power hungry full sized headphone and a pc with a high quality sound card. Those who want to conserve space on a portable player will prefer to use mp3 rather than FLAC.
Let me say that I think that FLAC and OGG support is still very important: I have my music in the best quality formats I can. If my portable audio player supports it then I don’t need to convert any file. No doubt FLAC and OGG support would be great, even when most people wouldn’t notice any difference between high bitrated files using any of those formats. It’s an improvement that would make things easier for a lot of people.
Message Edited by mudo on 09-28-2008 04:06 PM
Message Edited by mudo on 09-29-2008 05:52 AM
Hello,
just to say that I absolutly need the ogg support for the fuze. I bought the fuze player when my previous player (iriver h140) died based on the promise by sansa to support it. All my music except some old files are ogg vorbis
A rockbox support will be perfect (due to some big lack) but I can live without if the ogg support is implemented.
@jk98 wrote:
How many people want to use OGG or FLAC? Navigation by folders is much more important than OGG or FLAC. If FLAC gives lossless compression but is only 35% smaller than WAV, then why bother? MP3 at 256 or 320 kbps is high enough quality. How many people can tell the difference in sound quality between 256 kbps mp3 or a WAV file when using a Fuze? How about between a 320 kbps mp3 file and the WAV file? At 256 kbps, the compression is still around 5x, so there is considerable space savings. Others might want to use variable bitrate averaging around 256 kbps or perhaps 192 kbps.
I can personally affirm that at least one person really wants Ogg Vorbis and FLAC support.
“If FLAC gives lossless compression but is only 35% smaller than WAV, then why bother,” you ask? First of all, I invite you to revisit your compression numbers.
More importantly, though, is that FLAC has a completely different use case than lossy audio codecs. FLAC is well suited for archival audio: keeping your entire audio collection in a format that can survive transcodings from [lossless] format to format, can accomodate different (and even multiple) tagging standards, integrate with many different kinds of libraries, jukeboxes and output devices… all without requiring lossy decoding and recoding stages.
If you have already decided that you want to keep an archive-quality audio library, downsampling your files in order to copy them to your portable audio device is not an onerous task, but the recode time can get annoying. The flexibility of being able to simply copy files directly out of an archival library to a music device without having to recode or downsample is a delightful selling point to those users who care about sound quality - and given the excellent audio circuitry in the Fuze, it appeals to that market for other reasons too.
The issue is not about picking a personal compromise point between storage capacity and audio quality, it’s about not having to make that compromise at all.
You may not be a member of that target demographic, and that is perfectly fine; but the demographic exists, and the members of it really like the Fuze. It’s up to SanDisk to decide on a vision for this product line, the market it wants to court, and the business case for allocating expensive developer (and Engineering, and QA, and Support…) salary time in order to bring features to market.
@gnomon wrote:
You may not be a member of that target demographic, and that is perfectly fine; but the demographic exists, and the members of it really like the Fuze. It’s up to SanDisk to decide on a vision for this product line, the market it wants to court, and the business case for allocating expensive developer (and Engineering, and QA, and Support…) salary time in order to bring features to market.
Very well put. I’d be interesting in knowing what their marketing/sales departments considers the size of this demographic to be, versus the entire potential Fuze user base.
I’m sure most people will admit that posts to this forum would be skewed heavily towards Ogg Vorbis/FLAC fans, as they are more likely to seek out and use technical forums.
Erm… well, this forum is “forums.sandisk.com”. I know that noone from Sandisk officially replied to this thread, but I trust they can see this messages so this should be the best site to ask for a feature, isn’t it? 
@mudo wrote:
Erm… well, this forum is “forums.sandisk.com”. I know that noone from Sandisk officially replied to this thread, but I trust they can see this messages so this should be the best site to ask for a feature, isn’t it?
Sure, why not? Not sure if you’re replying to my post or some other post. Anyway, my point (kinda) was just that Sandisk may not put a lot of resources into supplying functionality for a demographic that’s a small fraction of their total user base. Whether that’s true of the Ogg Vorbis/FLAC demographic, I don’t know.
@Gnomon - very well put. I chose FLAC for all the reasons you mentioned when I ripped my 3000+ CD collection (thank god for EAC+REACT+Accuraterip).
There are also competitive market arguments for FLAC. iPod and Zune both support their own lossless format (not that I would ever advocate using one of those formats) and virtually all players coming out Korea and China (Cowon, Teclast, Onda, Meiuzu, etc.) support FLAC and Ogg. Also, European brands like Trekstor. Popular consumer electronics products like Squeezebox and Sonos support it. Also, many bands and lables are starting to offer FLAC as a distribution format, with Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV being one of the most visible examples.
So, FLAC is gaining a lot of traction in the market, both on the CE side, and on the content provider side. It’s definitely moved well beyond an obsucre, esoteric concern of a few audiophiles. I think from a competitive stanspoint, it makes sense for Sandisk to support these formats. Especially since they are trying to position the Clip and Fuze a little higher up the food chain than previous models.
Now as to whether support for these formats is more important than various outstanding navigation and usability issues, I’m not sure. But I’ll definitely be happy to see it.
Message Edited by Skinjob on 09-30-2008 11:49 AM
