Sort order - a bit confusing

Hello,

First of all, I would like to say that Sansa Fuze rose above all of my expectations, it is just a perfect player for me.

However, I have some trouble listening to audiobooks. I have a lot of audiobooks, splitted to a bunch of mp3 files, one file per chapter. When I cope these files to the player and try to play them, the sort order seems to be random. I tried to remove id3 tags completely from all the files, so Sansa would order the files by their names (the names are 01.mp3, 02.mp3 and so on…). In the end I got something close to the desired result (but only close):

71

72

73

01

02

03

04

Why it started with 71-73 I have no idea.

I tried to update the Track# id3 field, and it gave me totally random sort order.

I had no problems at all with the same files on my previous sansa player (clip).

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

(btw, I am using msc mode)

I’ll make the rash assumption that you are using Windows drag-n-drop to copy the files to your Fuze directory…

I suspect the Fuze is ordering them by the order in which they were copied. In the future, after you select all the files, scroll up to the first (lowest-numbered) file and use it to start your drag operation. With 73 files, I bet that is more than one Explorer window-full and the individual file you dragged the list with was # 71. Explorer will start the copy operation with the file you drag, work through the bottom of the list, then cycle back from the top to the one above the one you dragged from.

This is a “feaure” of Windows that I only came to realize recently after many years of wondering why the last file in the selection was processed first before the rest in any number of programs. (The answer: I usually drag a selection of files by the one closest to the cursor at the end of the selection, which is the last item on the screen.) Explains why, when I select 4 text files to open in an editor, they usually were displayed in tabs ordered as 4, 1, 2, 3.

Now, as to your real question on why the Fuze is not respecting any tag info, that one I can’t help you with…

Yes, I do use Windows drag-n-drop to copy the files. I tried to copy files one by one in msc mode, but it didn’t help. However, when I switched to the mtp mode and copied files one by one it did the trick. The files were sorted correctly. I guess it’s because in the mtp mode it rebuilt it’s media library after each file been copied. The problem is, no matter how much I love my sansa, I am not going to copy 150 files one by one. Guys, please, please, please fix this issue in your next firmware…

@vladikk wrote:

I tried to update the Track# id3 field, and it gave me totally random sort order.

Hmm…  The Track tag is the correct way to specify the sort order, so you had the right idea.  Not sure why it wouldn’t work.  I noticed your files only have a number for the name.  Does this mean that your Title tags are blank?  If so, try setting the Title tag to the book’s title and make sure the Track tag contains the correct number.  The Fuze sorts by Track and then Title, so maybe it’s getting confused if Title is blank?

Use MP3Tag to set the track numbers and song title tags using ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 format.

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

Worked like a charm!