I had my E280R stolen over the weekend so I replaced it with a Sansa Fuze to use with Rhapsody to Go.
I really like it except that the transfers take forever.
Anyone have any ideas?
Welcome to the “New” Rhapsody DNA.
Unfortunately what you are experiencing is normal.
The E280R was a very unique bird in that it could read .rax files natively, and the device itself had a single “license” that was good for the entire appliance. That is, if the appliance license was good, all the .rax files on the player were good.
Microsoft PFS DRM, which is more widely adopted uses a separate license file for “each and every track” that must be downloaded. As a result, your transfers are much longer due to Rhapsody not only having to download the track, but also it’s associated license file.
Add this to the fact that the .rax files were 128kbit ACC files and the PFS equivalent files are 160KBit Windows Media files, so the actual file size is larger.
So when you add to the two factors that the E280R had to transfer less actual files (just the tracks and a master license) vs the Fuze (which has to transfer larger files and separate license files for each track), and the actual file size is larger for the Fuze, you will notice quite a longer transfer time. (Note how channels on a Fuze take approx 20 to 30% “more space” than they did on an E200R series)
Ironically the E280R was developed to provide more reliable and faster transfers with Rhapsody. However since Rhapsody could not get enough partners to support .rax playback natively, they had to ditch it for what we have now. The downside is we have slower transfers than with the E280R. The upside, is that nearly any player that can support Microsoft PFS encoded tracks can be made to support channels and such with a firmware upgrade.
My advice? Either deal with the slower transfer rates and get used to them just like everyone else who’s never had the pleasure of owning an E200R series player, or purchase an E200R from a closeout seller or ebay.
I found that disabling the virus scan software helps to speed things up, but also exposes you to risks so try to isolate yourself as much as possible from attacks while your active “on file access” virus scan is disabled. Remember to restart the virus scanning software when you’re done. Some virus scanning software lets you disable it for a period of time (10 minutes, 1 hour, etc.)
Also, kill Sansa Updater. This is running in the background and I stopped it once it checked for firmware updates.
It’s still not speedy by any means but every little bit helps.
