I have an Express with a 2g Micro SD card. My songs are 64bit WMA. With internal memory and the SD card, I have about 1200 songs loaded. However, when I select ‘play all’, the song counter at the first song says 001 / 000. (It has never shown xxx / 1200.
When I am playing song number 999 and go to 1000, it goes back to 000 / 000, and then 001/ 000 etc.
It seems as though the player doesn’t recognize greater than 1000 songs, although in System Info it shows 1200 songs loaded.
I loaded the firmware updated and did an update before loading anything. FW is 01.01.01A
Any ideas? It would be nice to be able to get up to 1500 songs on the device.
Response from Sandisk pasted below… Bummer, hope they update soon.
Hello,
Thank you for contacting SanDisk Technical Support.
There is currently a limitation in the firmware that only allows up to a 1000 songs to be recognized by the player. That is why you are seeing song “001,000”. This will be rectified in a firmware update. What I would recommend is that you download the sansa firmware updater and keep the firmware up to date.
I apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
Yea, try a 64b encode vs. what you have been doing and see how it sounds. I cannot tell the difference between 64b and anything above, but that’s just me.
Actually 64kbit, my mistake. But at that bitrate it sounds fine to me and I get twice the number of songs compared to 128kbit MP3. Nothing new though, look on the packaging to your Sansa Express, and you will see references to either 250 or 500 songs, based on these parameters.
Sadly, I can tell the difference between the quality of MP3 64, 128, 162, etc. I use 192, because its the “Lowest” Standard I can listen to without freaking out… good songs get 320
I’m bumping this thread up again, from 6 months ago.
I see people have gotten 6 or 8 gig SD cards to work, but I’ve done an upgrade to 05a, and still the player sees only 1000 songs. What is the point of a high capacity card if you can only put 1000 songs on the player?
until SanDisk will fix this issue maybe it helps you when you join some files into one.
I had a similiar problem with the CD/DVD drive in my car. If I put a dvd with to much song into the player he (or the software) couldn’t play the files. Therefore I ripped cd’s-at-once and got just one track instead of 12 or 15.
That’s a good idea and definately an option. Downside is when you skip past a song, you skip past 3 or 4 or 12… It would be nice if SanDisk would just fix the problem. I have had SanDisk players in the past (e100 series) without this fault - and it was a 512k player! Seems they are going backwards with firmware.
I’m really frustrated with this problem and I’m baffled as to why the update promised above has been missed in the most recent firmware. After all, it was back in July. Six months to solve a minor problem like this is ridiculous. If Sandisk are wondering why their mp3 players aren’t ipod killers maybe they should start looking at providing customers with 1) a product that actually does what it says it should & 2) basic customer service. This is a problem that should have been fixed practically overnight.
I’m bumping this because I’m surprised that this problem isn’t being brought up more. I can’t be the only one who bought a large microsd only to discover that I couldn’t use a large amount of it. I don’t enjoy wasting money like this.
I am shocked to find a problem such a simple, yet critical oversight has not been fixed for so long. I purchased an express and yet to have recieved it, but this might be the reason I return it for a zen stone.
I’d like to hear a more concrete answer to the progress of this issue.
I recently e-mailed SanDisk tech support about this issue of the 1,000 song limit (and mentioned that it had been discussed on these boards as far back as last July). I asked whether this limit would be addressed in a future firmware release. The response from them was that there will be no more firmware updates for the Express. (This makes me wonder if the Express is on the last legs of its life cycle.) I guess SanDisk has a lot to learn about how to keep their customer base happy. I’m considering returning the Express now.
Ironically, tech support did confirm that the Express is SDHC compliant (at least with the latest 01.01.05a firmware I guess). Thus, you can add all of the extra memory you want; you’ll just never be able to fill it all up with tracks due to the 1,000 song cap. The whole thing is just plain silly.
I agree this is a poor design decision in programming development for the firmware. This Sansa Express major selling point is expandability with microSD insert. As these players are sold with 1GB or 2GB then the people who normally add in 1 or 2GB microSD at least. With a total capacity of 4GB then most MP3 files would be between 3.5 to 4mb each. Assuming that all mp3 files are 3.5MB for 128kbps then with 4GB memory there will be 1142 tracks. For such a small player the audio quality is normally not hi-fi so 96kps files are adequate, especially for audio story books or voice recordings. Then 4 GB memory will hold between 1500 - 2000 tracks. So this 1000 songs limitation is a severe restriction.
to be fair, if you considered the express as your first option, you haven’t shopped around much. Theres quite a few alternate players on the market and the express is done with (not being made by sandisk anymore).
