Sansa e200r will not play some songs

My trusty Sansa will not play some tracks I have put on it thru Rhapsody.

80-90% of the tracks play fine. But the rest - tracks that used to play - no longer play. It just skips over them.

The tracks play fine when I select them off the Sansa from my computer. But when I disconnect they won’t play from the device.

I have already tried the following which has NOT worked:

  • Deleting and putting the tracks back on

  • Re licensing the device

  • Re licensing the tracks

  • Updating track licenses

Help!  Jennifer

This may be a RAX format issue.  Sadly, Rhapsody has decided to go with  windows media audio only  for subscription tracks, and your previously loaded Rhapsody RAX format tracks will no longer renew.

The Rhapsody Sansa e200R series  is capable of using the new format if you switch over to Plays For Sure  mode and reauthorize the device.  Subscription content in RAX format will no longer be supported.  

If you have a track that will no longer play, as the license on the device for RAX expires, delete the file from your player and then retransfer a WMA version.  It should automatically transfer in the wma format after you switch to Plays For Sure.

On the device, select Settings > USB Mode > Plays For Sure.   This is also known as MTP Mode.

Bob  :wink:

Is there some easy way to figure out which ones may be RAX?

I figured out if I delete and reload from my Library, they still don’t play.

If I relaod directly from the Rhapsody search, some of them play.

How can I a) Identify what to get rid of and b) put the songs back so they will play?

And if I am having this problem, why aren’t these message boards swarming with folks with the same problem?

Thanks - Jennifer

@jen_isis wrote:

Is there some easy way to figure out which ones may be RAX?

 

Open your player up in Windows Explorer (My Computer) and look for the file extensions .rax.

  

How can I a) Identify what to get rid of and b) put the songs back so they will play?

 

Anything with an .rax extenison you might as well get rid of. See if the same songs are available in Rhapdoy’s newer .wma format and re-download as Bob suggested.

 

And if I am having this problem, why aren’t these message boards swarming with folks with the same problem?

 

a.)  People found out about this through the Rhapsody website/forums?

b.)  Fewer people using Rhapsody?

c.)  Not that many people still using the old e200R series players, but moved on to more current models?

d.)  Combination of all of the above?

 

MTO “Plays for Sure” mode doesn’t work with Rhapsody. It does not show any tracks on the device, even though 7.2 Gig are being used.

I couldn’t find a track listing in Windows - I was hoping to locate RAX files that way.

Weirdly, it also now recognizes it as e280r, not e200r

There were NO FOLDERS WITH TRACKS.

Seemingly no music. Checked on both modes.

None. Zero zip.

They may be hidden by Rhapsody. Come to think of it, the e200R model is essentially a v1 with an extra chip in it for Rhapsody, and if I recall correctly, the old v1’s had of all things, their MUSIC folder (and others) “hidden”. You had to set Windows Explorer to “show hidden files and folders” in order to see them. You may want to give this a whirl.

Let’s see if I can detail the several different issues that are at play. I’ll try tackling them separately, since you are experiencing a “perfect storm”  of issues. Hopefully, I can help make it simple enough…

Don’t worry, it’s pretty simple.

First, Rhapsody has gone through some big changes after breaking away from Real Networks. They’ve branched off, hopefully for the better. From what I’ve seen, it’s been good overall.

The Rhapsody servers have been streamlined in order to make access faster. One of these changes has been dropping the RAX format audio from them. Personally, in this age of faster and better servers, I would have preferred of they had kept RAX, but there is a limited number of devices that support it, the primary device being the special Rhapsody e200 series. Rhapsody unveiled the RhapPFS  platform a few years ago which is used on all Sansas today as a replacement. If you authorize a Fuse or Clip, for example, it “morphs” into a device that blends wonderfully with the service, and the Rhapsody Channels  function appears in the main menu automatically. 

As you may have guessed by the name, the PFS part refers to the Plays For Sure or MTP mode on your device. On the R Sansa, select Plays For Sure for Rhapsody use.

Okay, now for the multiple quirks you may be experiencing. I’ll first list the issues together:

  • MTP mode on your PC is driven by Windows Media Player 10 and later. This must be installed for the capability, though Windows Media Player does not need to be used to manage your device.
  • The e200 cannot communicate in more than one USB mode at a time. Your original Rhapsody tracks, transferred in Rhapsody Mode (MSC) cannot be seen from the PC when in Plays For Sure (MTP) mode.
  • When looking at the device using Windows Explorer, the Music folder on the device is hidden by default. This further complicates things.
  • If you have selected Cache a File on the PC (or similar wording) in Rhapsody, you will have RAX format audio files on the computer. If you transfer these to the device, they will no longer play. This is why new tracks transferred from the Music Guide section will play, since they are in Windows Media Audio format.
  • Your earlier cached versions should be replaced with the current format, and they will then play. If you pull a file from My Library, and the version was RAX, the “local” (on the computer) version is sent directly to the player, but not the new version.

If you have a large number of Rhapsody tracks on your PC, and these original versions are in RAX format, the client will transfer your old version of the track from the PC’s hard drive to the Sansa. This will happen if you are in the My Library section. Here’s the tricky part, there are two versions of your library, a virtual one on the server available via the internet, and a second one on your hard drive. What you need to do is delete the RAX format files from your PC, and then continue along using the new format.

This is a little weird, and seems a little scary to go in there and delete everything. You’re only deleting the cached copies of the Rhapsody tracks from the PC.  Opening Rhapsody and going back on line afterwards, when you select My Library, the online version will reappear, and all of your favorites will still be there. Just what happens in the background changes. Rhapsody will send a new version of the track over to you from the server rather than the old version that was residing on your hard drive.

The concept of a “library” isn’t unique to Rhapsody, Windows Media Player does the same thing if you have multiple clients and formats in use.  The “library” is nothing more than an index that the player uses, sourced names of files stored in various locations on your hard drive. If you use  iTunes  for example, or an  RSS feed  of podcasts, or you have  photos  from a camera or saved from the internet, these can all appear seamlessly in Windows Media Player or even in the Rhapsody client, but the original files  aren’t actually “in” Rhapsody or Windows Media Player. They are stored in separate folders, and the client simply makes references to them.

In Rhapsody, I’ll show you where the tricky part is hiding. Go to Tools (at the top of the screen), then select  Preferences.  Under General (the first tab), you will see a box at the center of the window. File Locations is the center box. This is the location of the Rhapsody music files. 

Please bear with me for a moment, as I’m having a little fun looking into the best way for you to solve this puzzle. I have Rhapsody open, WiMP (version 12), Windows Explorer, and quite a few other things running along, like IE9 plus Google Chrome with several pages each. Currently, something amusing and interesting is going on, and I can’t help but smile. It’s a flashback from my past. Nothing is cooler than the memories of a cool, climate controlled computer room, the smell of warm Bakelite, and the whirring sound of one-inch magnetic tape drives performing a search. Very geeky, I agree, but I have a pocket sized version of that running here. Amazing.

Okay, here’s the result. Depending upon your operating system, you can search for all files with the extension  .rax  and delete them. That’s the simplest way to go. The Rhapsody client will “fix” the missing files issue the next time you “transfer them from My Library”. What it actually will do is this: as you select My Library, and select to transfer the file to the Sansa, the client will download a new  wma  format file for you, and if you made no changes in Preferences, it will cache a new version of the file.

Back to the Rhapsody client. Let’s have a look at your settings, and I’ll show you the tricky part.

It’s Tools > Preferences, then select the My Library tab. Starting from the top, notice the  second box  in the list. This is the same situation as in Windows Media Player. See the option _Remove files from hard drive when deleting from My Library? _I prefer to leave this option unchecked. This way, the file is still there, and  you  are the one who decides whether to keep it.

Now the Crown Jewels of our problem are next.  Have a look at the Add To My Library options box. You probably have that first box checked, “download tracks to my hard drive…enables offline listening”. You can still stick with this option of you prefer, though I like to save hard drive space (for many reasons), and selected the second option, to simply stream the files online.

Look at the next boxes.  Here we are. Real Audio format. I love the format, but it’s gone the way of the dodo. Select  WMA , the last option, to be safe.  This will bypass the Rhapsody client trying to do anything silly, like choose a remnant file in RAX, you never know.

Back to the e200 device. You mentioned that is lists differently when shown in Rhapsody. This is a good thing, most likely confirming that MTP mode is working fine, so we don;t need t worry about that. Now here are the quirks.

  • The e200 series Rhapsody uses different firmware optimized for Rhapsody. It will work fine In Plays For Sure Mode.
  • In PFS mode, the only thing you’ll be missing from Rhapsody is the Rhapsody Channels function. This did not work on the basic e200 v1  series either, hence the Rhapsody version. The later v2  versions are RhapPFS devices that do support Channels. So are all later Sansas if you like this feature.
  • The v1s do a goofball thing that was never fixed: the Music  folder’s attributes are set to hidden  by default. On your PC, using Windows Explorer, when looking at the Sansa’s Internal Memory (you will see this new option since you are now in MTP / Plays For Sure mode), go to the top of the screen and change the Folder View options to display hidden files  and your computer will then remember this choice.
  • All earlier Sansas except the Fuze+  have a USB controller that only allows you to see files in one USB mode at a time. Guess what! The music on your device will be invisible from the PC but will still be on the device. Note that the new wma format files are indeed visible.
  • The e200 version-1 and Rhapsody players DO NOT have a “delete track” function on the player (all of the later versions do), so you must delete the old files via the computer.
  • You can delete the old Rhapsody RAX tracks from the device of you select, on the player: Settings > USB Mode > Rhapsody  and then plug in. Remember, this is MSC  mode. After deleting, unplug and go back to Plays For Sure mode for Rhapsody use with the new format (wma).

Holy moly, I hope this makes things a little clearer. Please feel free to post any questions you may have, and we can tackle it one bit at a time.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

Hi Bob – Thank you for your very thorough reply! Some of your responses make sense, others don’t really fit. I’ll walk through. My responses in bold, and questions for you are in italics.

As you may have guessed by the name, the PFS part refers to the Plays For Sure or MTP mode on your device. On the R Sansa, select Plays For Sure for Rhapsody use.

When I selected this option, NOTHING played. This may be because virtually ALL of the tracks (when I could finally find them in the hidden System/Music folders – thanks) on my device were RAX. Some of them play fine on the reg setting, others don’t.

I did not find ANY tracks on my hard drive, other than the one album (Tom Waits – Bad as Me) that I purchased online through Rhapsody. It’s my work computer,so I got rid of the copied tracks a long time ago to not take up space.

I just deleted over 1400 rax tracks from my 280 even though Rhapsody only listed 815.

There were only 78 NON Rax files on the player. I left a handful to see what happens.

Now the bizzaro part – it lists a pile of files with have a single letter or number for the file name (or %) etc). It says they are monstrously huge (the % file says 3,947,436 kb) which is impossible because the player isn’t that big. There are about 20 files called x, most listing between 2-5GB, which is IMPOSSIBLE. When I go to Properties, though, it is zero bytes. What do I do with these?  

There are also a bunch of similarly named empty file folders.

Okay, now for the multiple quirks you may be experiencing. I’ll first list the issues together:

  • MTP mode on your PC is driven by Windows Media Player 10 and later. This must be installed for the capability, though Windows Media Player does not need to be used to manage your device.

I am running WMP 11

  • The e200 cannot communicate in more than one USB mode at a time. Your original Rhapsody tracks, transferred in Rhapsody Mode (MSC) cannot be seen from the PC when in Plays For Sure (MTP) mode.

Still in Rhapsody mode.

  • When looking at the device using Windows Explorer, the Music folder on the device is hidden by default. This further complicates things.

OK, took care of this.

  • If you have selected Cache a File on the PC (or similar wording) in Rhapsody, you will have RAX format audio files on the computer. If you transfer these to the device, they will no longer play. This is why new tracks transferred from the Music Guide section will play, since they are in Windows Media Audio format.

Turns out many of these are not playing. And I can’t seem to get them to transfer to my device any more. I can select them, and then it tells me it will take hours to transfer say, 10 tracks. And by the end of the day maybe 1.5 tracks are transferred.

  • Your earlier cached versions should be replaced with the current format, and they will then play. If you pull a file from My Library, and the version was RAX, the “local” (on the computer) version is sent directly to the player, but not the new version.

If you have a large number of Rhapsody tracks on your PC, and these original versions are in RAX format, the client will transfer your old version of the track from the PC’s hard drive to the Sansa. This will happen if you are in the My Library section. Here’s the tricky part, there are two versions of your library, a virtual one on the server available via the internet, and a second one on your hard drive. What you need to do is delete the RAX format files from your PC, and then continue along using the new format.

 I could not locate a single RAX file on the PC.

In Rhapsody, I’ll show you where the tricky part is hiding. Go to Tools (at the top of the screen), then select Preferences. Under General (the first tab), you will see a box at the center of the window. File Locations is the center box. This is the location of the Rhapsody music files. 

As above- the only files here were the tracks from Bad as Me.

It’s Tools > Preferences, then select the My Library tab. Starting from the top, notice the second box in the list. This is the same situation as in Windows Media Player. See the option Remove files from hard drive when deleting from My Library? I prefer to leave this option unchecked. This way, the file is still there, and you are the one who decides whether to keep it.

That was how it was already set.

Now the Crown Jewels of our problem are next.  Have a look at the Add To My Library options box. You probably have that first box checked, “download tracks to my hard drive…enables offline listening”. You can still stick with this option of you prefer, though I like to save hard drive space (for many reasons), and selected the second option, to simply stream the files online.

  That was how it was already set – to stream only.

Look at the next boxes. Here we are. Real Audio format. I love the format, but it’s gone the way of the dodo. Select WMA, the last option, to be safe.  This will bypass the Rhapsody client trying to do anything silly, like choose a remnant file in RAX, you never know.

I changed this from Rhapsody deciding what’s best to Real Audio Format.

Back to the e200 device. You mentioned that is lists differently when shown in Rhapsody. This is a good thing, most likely confirming that MTP mode is working fine, so we don;t need t worry about that. Now here are the quirks.

Only the playlists are different. I keep deleting tracks from the playlists online, and then it keeps them in the playlist on the player. If I have deleted the actual tracks from my player, Rhapsody keeps trying to put them back on when I plug in. It can’t do it, but it keeps trying to transfer 14 files (gets stuck on #2 though).

  • The e200 series Rhapsody uses different firmware optimized for Rhapsody. It will work fine In Plays For Sure Mode.
  • In PFS mode, the only thing you’ll be missing from Rhapsody is the Rhapsody Channels function. This did not work on the basic e200 v1 series either, hence the Rhapsody version. The later v2 versions are RhapPFS devices that do support Channels. So are all later Sansas if you like this feature.

I like this feature, but say what? I’ve always had channels with v1.

  • All earlier Sansas except the Fuze+ have a USB controller that only allows you to see files in one USB mode at a time. Guess what! The music on your device will be invisible from the PC but will still be on the device. Note that the new wma format files are indeed visible.

Some are, some aren’t/

  • You can delete the old Rhapsody RAX tracks from the device of you select, on the player: Settings > USB Mode > Rhapsody and then plug in. Remember, this is MSC mode. After deleting, unplug and go back to Plays For Sure mode for Rhapsody use with the new format (wma).

First I am just going in to see what still registers as tracks on Rhapsody.

Right now WinExp is showing me 80 non rax music files, 4 RAX files, 36 of those weird files that total 61.2 GB but appear to actually be empty, and 15 “empty” folders totaling 3.75 GB. Please let me know what to delete and what to keep.

Do you think this will make it easier to actually put new music files onto the player? Because it is just not working now.

Rhapsody is still scanning the device. I need to go to a meeting so will post and check back later –t hank you for helping me with this!

OK, after deleting all but 80 songs, and following all the directions…

  • I was able to load about 150 more songs back on, but it goes far too slowly. It may only transfer one song in an hour.

  • In Plays for Sure mode, if I try to use features where I play all of the songs, it doesn’t work. It gives me the Sandisk logo and bombs out.

  • Many of the songs still show up but then do not play

  • I can see more on the player in Rhapsody mode.

How can I get it to transfer songs back to the player without it taking hours per song? This happens in both modes.

  • Jennifer

Jen,

I have same problem, it appears Rhapsody and Sanza do not care about e260R owners, all I know to do is buy a new device and start over…this ■■■■■.  I can play all tracks when e260R is connected to PC by clicking on it’s tracks, but some tracks will not play when connected to my home sound system???  tried windows media setting, nothing works then…Tried playing tracks from e200R using onscreen Rhapsody, it won’t play any with dsl disconnected.  Leads me to believe it is really playing tracks from internet and not the device…

Connected e260R to PC without Rhapsody loaded and opened it’s drive from my computer, went to System, then Music and used the detailed view to see all my 920 tracks are a RAX files. However they have a Real Player icon and a number, so can’t tell what track.    How come then  I can play some of them but not certain albums???

I have no files of these tracks in my C programs Rhapsody folders at all.  If I load Rhapsody and shut off my internet connection I cannot play them.  I can play them all from PC when online.  But, I take e260R to home stereo and it will not play some albums but shows all of them, when selected on screen???   I thought when I got the email last year about RAX,  it only pertained to “purchased” tracks not subscriptions???

OK I figured it out, No.1 problem:  Rhapsody support is a zero.  Back in Nov. when they notified us that “purchased” tracks would be effected by their abandonment of RAX,  I for one did not think it would effect my Subscription tracks…But that must be the case. 

If anyone is still interested and has a e2XXR  series player, you have to reformat it, take all RAX files out of your PC’s Rhapsody program file,  put the device in Plays for Sure mode, cable to PC open my computer and see the device dbl click on it and see the PPI NAND drive, right click on it and re-format it. When player is in Play for Sure mode the drive will look different when opened from my computer then it does when in Rhapsody mode ???  Re- authorize the player in Plays for Sure.  Go to Rhapsody tools, preferences, Library, and set Down load file format for WMA.   So,… get all RAX off PC, re format player while in PFS mode, set both Rhapsody and device to use WMA then re-download your tracks   Took me  7 hrs.  915 tracks by a slow  1.0 Mbps  dsl.  If you have done it correctly, when you open player drive on PC, you will see tracks with WMA icon and file extension.  BTW, the WMA format took up more memory then the Rax files on my 4GB e260R, had to remove some tracks…

Neutron Bob,  Thank you for the direction in this.

No worries!  Glad to hear you have a working system once again.

The current Rhapsody media format is 160kbps WMA, which sounds decent, but it does take up more space than 128kbps RAX did.  The other difference you’ll see is that transfer is slower, since the encryption system is involved (WMDRM).

The Rhapsody client works a bit better than past versions, but as you see there are some quirks. It will revert to playing a track as a streaming file if a playable version doesn’t exist. The library that you access online is a blended listing of “actual” media and “streaming” media.

Bob :stuck_out_tongue:

It may be my bad ears,…but the tracks seem to sound better now.  Also, I looked on the Rhapsody forum site and could not see anyone complaining about this??? Maybe few are using e2XXR any longer??  The Sansa Fuse+ seems to get very poor reviews.   And generally, many have gone to Ipod I suppose?  I was having a problem with play tracks on my PC,  the buffer blue line would move left to right, but the slider button would not show and track would not play ( latest version).    After, a remove and re-load of Rhapsody, that seems to have stopped, for now

The new format, windows media audio at 160 kb/s  does sound very clean.  

Compared against RAX, transfers take a bit longer, as well as relicensing, as the WMDRM system has to deal with the embedded “leaf license” within each track.

I can’t state it strongly enough that having the latest build version of the Rhapsody client is important, especially in the wake of recent changes. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more tweaks aren’t targeted at the R-series devices.

Since Rhapsody officially spun off from Real Networks, the client has improved significantly from previous versions.  I still have fits at the Channels screen, as refresh status is always screwed up, as well as the progress bar.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy: