Sansa Fuze Not Recognizing New Media Loaded to Player

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

Hi,

I’m using Real Player to copy mp3 clips to mu wife’s Fuze.

Everything goes well until I disconnect the player from the computer.  The fuze will not recognize the files that are laoded.  I can use WIndows Explorere and see the files in the music folder but the fuze does not find the files.

Firmware version 2.03.33A.  USB mode is Auto Detect.  Not sure what other info to provide.  I did try formatting the fuze prior to copying the new music to it.

ANy help is appreciated.  Thanks.

2

What’s the file format (3 digit extension)? Maybe they’re an unsupported format.

And why bother with Real Player at all? Just copy the files from within Windows Explorer over to the player. Couldn’t be simpler.

3

They are all straight up mp3 files.

Too many files to put all of them on the Fuze.

4

Bet it’s the ID3 tags.

Scroll down Artist or Album to see if you have a whole lot of Unknown.

Or scroll down Music past the first page to Folders and see if they show up.

The Fuze is just too picky about ID3 tags. It likes ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 tags best. It will read ID3 2.2 as well. But it can’t read  ID3v1 or, as far as I know, ID3v2.4. And Realplayer may well be using those. 

If you can change the Tag version in Realplayer settings, try it. It may not offer that option–iTunes doesn’t.

The best thing to do is make the tags Fuze-friendly and then drag-and-drop them directly onto the unit. I have no idea if Realplayer monkeys with the tags, but it might.

If you can’t find a Realplayer setting, then get mp3tag. http://www.mp3tag.de/en/  It’s free.

When you install it, let it add itself to Context Menus.

Open it, go to Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg and make Write ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1.  (ISO-8859-1 is the English/Roman alphabet as Windows renders it.)  Make sure you save that so it’s the default.

Then, when you get a new album, right-click on the folder and choose mp3tag to open it. Highlight all the tags and just Save them and they’ll be ID3v2.3 etc.

Try fixing one of your problem albums on the computer with mp3tag and make a little change in the folder name–like put an extra hyphen between Artist-Album so it’s Artist–Album or whatever.  (Make that change so the Fuze thinks it’s a different album when it goes back.) Then delete it from the Fuze, send it over again from the computer, and see if the tags were  the problem. 

5

Well, I just ended up using WMP to create a playlist and sync with the Fuze.  Worked just fine and dandy.

Thank you for the suggestions.

6

That’s because WMP uses ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 tags. The Fuze is made to sync with WMP (though if you then try to find folders on your Fuze, some of them will have altered names, with added numbers, from WMP’s mysterious workings). Glad it’s working for you.