When will Sandisk learn to put normal file browsing on the players?

MP3 players Sansa Clip | Clip+
1

On my old mp3 player I could browse the music by folders and file name. Like browsing files on a computer!

Not everybody tagged their mp3s and I would like to have a folder specifically for workout for example, and another folder for studying, and then be able to browse the files in those specific folders.

Having to make a playlist or tag the music with this is too much trouble, compared to just dropping it into a folder.

Also it is just better sometimes to find a specific song by browsing for the filename.

So I am not asking to drop the album, artist, etc browsing, just add an option for file browsing. 

2

*shoots self*

4

I really don’t understand why this is such a big issue.  Usually people who want folder browsing have used a strict naming convention on their files and folders, in which case getting them tagged properly can be done automatically with any number of tools.  A few hours of work and it’s done.  And then you open up a whole range of possibilities that you simply don’t have without tags.  Not just for Sansa players, but for pretty much every piece of digital media hardware or software out there.  I guess if you don’t have tags and you don’t have a standard naming convention then you got a lot of work to do, but it’s worth the effort.  Tags are a fact of life at this point and you are severely limiting yourself without them.

There may be cases where browsing by folder could be convienient for people who have organized their folders in a way not easilly duplicated by tag based filters, but there’s really no excuse not have tags at all.

5

Tags or no tags. I just would like the option for file browsing.

One reason I also already explained is browsing by directory, so you can easily just put songs for one purpose in a directory, and not spend time on making a playlist.

Message Edited by oggologgo on 06-26-2008 10:58 AM

6

it is not like playlists are hard to make. you can make a playlist in the same amount of time it take you to create a folder with the songs you want in it. six of one half dozen of the other.

technology is constantly changing so if you dont like getting on board with new technology you will have many more gripes like this in the future.

7

drlucky, Please tell me how you make a playlist.

Message Edited by oggologgo on 06-26-2008 01:24 PM

8

drlucky, please tell me how you make a playlist.

9

drlucky, please tell me how you make a playlist. Since I do own and use a Sansa Clip I have no other choices.

10

drlucky, please tell me how you make a playlist. Since I do own and use a Sansa Clip I have no other choices. And how do you later on add a new song to that playlist?

11

Amen. Our entire world society is limited by what’s “convenient”. An Oil Economy. Personal Vehicles vs. Mass Transit. Acceptance of Tyrannical Regimes. Folder Browsing…

Man that’s too bad this sent cydewaze over the edge…I’ll take up the slack, in his honor…

I realize I’m beating a dead horse but…WHY keep multiple copies of the same media file in seperate folders, redundantly occupying precious memory space (assuming you want to listen to the same song(s) in combination with others - think about it for a second and it’s clearly a geometric progression) when you can leave them all in fixed locations, or one folder even, and use a tiny little text file far smaller than a single MP3 (AKA “a playlist”) to instruct the player to sequence any number of files, in any way you want? And better still, have dozens of these little tiny files to choose from?

It might not be as much an issue on a 80GB hard drive DAP but with 4GB or less to store everything on, playlists and tags make tons more sense. To me anyway.

Maybe folder based playing will come along for the Clip -but even if it does, I’m committed to playlists and won’t devolve into using an inefficient, archaic, and dated methodology just because it’s “easier”.

No offense but…what drlucky said, Simple As.

12

drlucky, please tell me how you make a playlist. Since I do own and use a Sansa Clip I have no other choices. And how do you later on add a new song to that playlist? Now don’t mention programs like Windows Media Player or iTunes please, because having to start up some program, instead of just dropping the file in a folder already makes it slower.

Click, you simply don’t understand the advantages of file browsing in some aspects. Also, I don’t have and don’t plan to have my entire music collection of the player (nor is it anywhere near possible with 4 GB or less), so why would I care if one song happen to be on there twice? The music I have for a couple of different purposes are distinctly different anyway, so there are no dubblicates

For the gym I often listen to mixes and other songs where I wouldn’t care about getting them tagged correctly, but use them for nothing else than putting them on the player until I get tired of them. Why have the trouble of creating playlists, when adding the option for file browsing should be easy, and many players do have that.

I am obviosly not the only one wanting this, so there is plenty of reason to put it there.

Message Edited by oggologgo on 06-26-2008 01:47 PM

13

well i do use both itunes and WMP 11 to make my playlists but opening an application takes not more that 2 secs on any of my computers. this is my opinion is no slower than navigating to the directory where my music files are stored and creating a new folder then copying the files i want to that folder.

if your computer takes an extended period of time to load a simple music management application you need to do one of two things.

  1. clean all the spyware and bloatware from your computer 

  2. get out of the cave and upgrade your hardware.

no offence intended but it is the truth.

how someone can complain about a feature that is in no way advertised or promised is simply beyond me.

also contrary to your belief you are by far in the minority wanting this feature. the majority find id3 tag editing to be much more efficient in the long run.

Message Edited by drlucky on 06-26-2008 01:53 PM

14

I understand that you don’t want to use a file browser and wouldn’t even get close to it, but some of us would and many mp3 players do have this feature. I understand the advantages of playlists and tags and am not arguing against using playlists or using WMP and iTunes. They are great. I do use them too. Virtually all of my songs are tagged correctly. But, for some things I prefer to use file browsing.

“but opening an application takes not more that 2 secs on any of my computers”

In 2 secs I have already put my file in the folder I want it in and unplugged the player! And after those 2 secs, you still have to find your song, create the playlist, and transfer the playlist and the song. I am not saying your way is a slow process or not as good, but I am saying that your claim about it being faster than putting it in a folder is wrong.

Creating a folder takes no time. And usually the folder will already be there, so all I do is drop the file into the folder that is already there, since I have a folder already for for example going to the gym.

I tend to download songs from various sites having nothing to do with wmp or itunes, and the mixes I use for the gym, I just drop them in the gym folder. It takes not even a second.

There is also nothing old and nothing wrong with my software or hardware. It’s a matter of preference and a matter of different ways of using it.

“how someone can complain about a feature that is in no way advertised or promised is simply beyond me.”

What does it have to do with whether it is advertised? I am saying they should start adding that feature, since it is pretty much the only drawback for the player (in the opinion of some of us).

“also contrary to your belief you are by far in the minority wanting this feature. the majority find id3 tag editing to be much more efficient in the long run.”

How is that contrary to my belief? I haven’t epxressed that it is not a minority that wants this feature! I said I am obviously not the only one.

And probably the majority understands nothing about neither file browsing or id3 tags and don’t know of any other ways of doing it. So saying they find it more efficient is wrong. They don’t know the difference and have no opinion on the matter.

I still use the Clip, because it is an excelent player in all other aspects, and this is not such a major issue that I can’t live with it and do the playlists when needed. I just wish for the option like on other mp3 players I have had.

Message Edited by oggologgo on 06-26-2008 02:34 PM

15

wow this seems to be a very touchy subject for you. 

i have for many years used file tree browsing to sort my mp3 collection and i have to say that when i first learned about id3 tags i was just as much against using them as you are. this being said once i decided to sit down and tag my entire collection (i had over 100GB of untagged tunes) i found that a whole new world of possibilities were opened. song rating, album art (it makes my library all pretty now), and several different browsing selections just to name a few advantages.

that being said it is really a moot point to argue this with you because it is simply a matter of opinion and like they say opinions are like @$$holes everyone has one and they all stink.

i just would not hold my breath waiting on sansa to add this feature. very few people want this feature and i seriously doubt they will put forth the engineering effort to add it. (and no it is not an easy feature to add. adding any feature especially one of this magnitude would take weeks to release starting by engineering the firmware, then full QA cycles, finding bugs, fixing the bugs, then back to the full QA cycle. and for what? to make such a small percentage of customers happy? simply not going to happen.) 

Message Edited by drlucky on 06-26-2008 02:29 PM

16

I refuse to use id3 tags for my mp3 collection. the information I need is on the file name. Most important is song title, second is artist (or where its from). don’t care about album and if its it’ll be in its own folder. my music folder heirarchy is by general genre. subgenres are the next depth. if the album was really that good, I’d have a folder for it or if I have simply enough songs from one source, it’d have its own folder, but that rarely happens.

even if I had a problem to automate tagging them, I would not be happy with the tagging. and I remember my music through my own heirarcy (making folder view idle).

but yes this issue of want for this is well known, and I’m getting tired of seeing it repeated and recreated threads.  

Message Edited by thoma on 06-26-2008 02:30 PM

17

I understand that you don’t want to use a file browser and wouldn’t even get close to it, but some of us would and many mp3 players do have this feature. I understand the advantages of playlists and tags and I am not arguing against using playlists or using WMP and iTunes. They are great. I do use them too. Virtually all of my songs are tagged correctly. But, for some things I prefer to use file browsing.

“but opening an application takes not more that 2 secs on any of my computers”

In 2 secs I have already put my file in the folder I want it in and unplugged the player! And after those 2 secs, you still have to find your song, create the playlist, and transfer the playlist and the song. I am not saying your way is a slow process or not as good, but I am saying that your claim about it being faster than putting it in a folder is wrong.

Creating a folder takes no time. And usually the folder will already be there, so all I do is drop the file into the folder that is already there, since I have a folder already for for example going to the gym.

I tend to download songs from various sites having nothing to do with wmp or itunes, and the mixes I use for the gym, I just drop them in the gym folder. It takes not even a second.

It’s just an mp3 player, I don’t care about rating the songs or having correct tags on it. 

There is also nothing old and nothing wrong with my software or hardware. It’s a matter of preference and a matter of different ways of using it.

“how someone can complain about a feature that is in no way advertised or promised is simply beyond me.”

What does it have to do with whether it is advertised? I am saying they should start adding that feature, since it is pretty much the only drawback for the player (in the opinion of some of us).

“also contrary to your belief you are by far in the minority wanting this feature. the majority find id3 tag editing to be much more efficient in the long run.”

How is that contrary to my belief? I haven’t epxressed that it is not a minority that wants this feature! I said I am obviously not the only one.

And probably the majority understands nothing about neither file browsing or id3 tags and don’t know of any other ways of doing it. So saying they find it more efficient is wrong. They don’t know the difference and have no opinion on the matter.

I still use the Clip, because it is an excelent player in all other aspects, and this is not such a major issue that I can’t live with it and do the playlists when needed. I just wish for the option like on other mp3 players I have had.

Message Edited by oggologgo on 06-26-2008 02:39 PM

18

alright enough said, there are always two great spectrums to a feature.  lets just deal with what we have at the moment and hope Sansa is working on getting folder view.  Plus most of us are power users anyways, we can work around what we have until then. 

just be glad we aren’t as ghetto as someone carrying their laptop and listening to music, bobbing their bodies away having one whole arm accupied by a laptop, imagining we have the state of the art portable player (I’ve seen this on the trains in NYC, hah it was great laugh). 

19

@thoma wrote:

… Plus most of us are power users anyways, we can work around what we have until then.

Good point!

20

@drlucky wrote:

 

also contrary to your belief you are by far in the minority wanting this feature. the majority find id3 tag editing to be much more efficient in the long run.

The majority of people who own an mp3 player (not to be confused with the majority of people who post on those boards, who are but a tiny fraction of the Clip’s user base and a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the people owning an mp3 player) do not know how to edit ID3 tags. All my students have an mp3 player, but when I told them I had edited the tags of my own recordings for the class, not one of them understood what I was talking about; I had to explain what an ID3 tag was, and honestly, they hardly seemed to care.

And no, even though I obviously know how to edit tags, I hardly believe it is always the most efficient way to deal with mp3 files. It is alright if I plan a playlist in advance and then stick to it, but not if I feel like adding or removing songs all the time. If I feel like adding just one song to my “workout” folder on a whim, it takes less than a second: just drag and drop. With the tag system, I must not only drag the file and drop it, but also: start a tagging program, click a few buttons, then TYPE in the new tag. All of that for just one file.

Tags have their use, but they are not the be-all and end-all of file sorting, not by a long stretch. I hope that the “ID3 is superior, just be converted or be left behind” attitude is not shared by the programmers, who should program for their user base, not for themselves. I repeat: the great majority of mp3 player users do NOT know how to edit tags, and from my experience, are simply not interested in learning. Since the majority of people knows how to use folders but only a minority knows how to edit ID3 tags, then folders should be offered at least as an option. To state that those people will have to learn or be left behind is a kind of elitist “we know better than you what is best for you” attitude that really irks me.

Message Edited by Sinocelt on 06-26-2008 10:40 PM

21

Hello to everybody,

I just read this post two hours ago and did not want to add my point of view at that time. Since then I have been trying to fill my clip in MSC mode (it’s a 4Gb clip I bought last week, french version). Well, it’s been sufficiently painful for me to decide to finally share my views.

Let us imagine a MP3 collection with 10 albums, of which one is a “best of” type (20 artists tag), + 20 diverse MP3 (20 different artist and album tags). I don’t know how you do, but I usually like to listen to one particular album. Tag browsing, be it by artist or album is just impossible. My 19 full albums are overwhelmed amongst 40 “one-file” albums. I just can’t listen to my “best of”. The only advantage of tags seems here to be to have nice homogenous display (like “%artist% - %song%”). Who cares if it means the only comfortable thing you can do is shuffle playback ??

Ok, some would say “use playlists”. I did. The only thing is I don’t want to “sync” (I would have bought an iPod…). I don’t like these funny files .alb in an hidden Albums directory (I can’t figure the purpose), neither these .wpl files which are empty when you try to edit them with a notepad. I do not use WMP, I do not want to use a another software each time I buy a gadget, I hate the tag-based library for the very same reasons that I hate them in my mp3 player (can’t find my albums, don’t want to spend hours tagging files just to be able to put some stars if I like a song).
So I tried .m3u. It’s been a headache finding the right way to do it on this forum. I figured it.

//
For those who are in the same case than me, here is the minimum to do to make it work :
the .m3u is to be placed in the “Music” folder. (The playlist folder is of no use for m3u).
It must start by the line :
#EXTM3U
Each line must have the format (exact same names than on the device) (where directory1 is the name of the directory placed in “Music” and in which the song is) :
Directory1/Directory2/…/yoursong.mp3
//

Well it worked for some directories. It didn’t for others (some well tagged, some not). Can’t understand why. Spent one hour trying to. (If someone has a clue ? I think it has something to do with a loosy handling of renaming and modifying files on the device…)

Doing so, I had to plug and unplug the device (I don’t know if other MP3 players allow USB and listening in the same time but not being able to do so is soooo boring). The clip did not like it (sometimes directories disappeared if I was too quick). It’s understandable since it’s not a true MSC mode : look how the context menu is different from the usual context menu, look particularly how you CAN’T edit you m3u files from the device, or look how you can’t drag and drop the files from the device to foobar for instance…

It’s not a matter of opinion/preferences. Could someone just tell me how you do album-browsing with a tag-managed mp3 player ??

I must say I am kind of disappointed with the clip. It’s a shame since it is very nice and quite cheap.

PS : I’m sure you will excuse my approximative English :slight_smile:
PS2 : I was not surprised when this forum asked me one digit and one upper case letter in my password !! (It’s not like I had something so important to hide and now I am sure to forget the pass…). Nor when he said my browser was not supported (I am using Opera).