Sansa Fuze+ Firmware 02.37.01

audiobooks and podcasts are seperated on a few different things. 

  1. if you place any file in the audiobook, audible, or podcast folders the files will show under the respecvtive menu option. 

  2. the genre also will sort the file regardless of the actual storeage location. for example, if the genre is set to audiobook it will show under the audiobook menu option. if the genre is set to podcast it will show up under the podcast menu option. no matter what folder the file is stored in.

once the files is sorted under the correct menu option it will be listed first by ID3 tag and if no ID3 tag is present it will be listed alpha numerically by file name. 

to sort by ID3 tag I would suggest setting the Artist to the book name, track to 01, 02, etc for the order you want them played, and title to chapter01, chapter02 etc in the order you want them played.

For sorting by file name i would suggest the following file naming convention. Name_of_book_chapter01.mp3. This will sort them all together and in the order you want them. 

note that when numbering the tracks you will need to lead with 0’s. for example if you have 25 files you will need to lead with 01,02 etc if you ahve 100 lead with 001, 002 etc. 

when is sansa fuze+'s next update. my f+ realy could use a few fixes

  • doesnt always lock or unlock right away
  • few album pics apear
  • time stops while off and/or charging
  • …menus that go in a circle would be nice to lol

@drlucky:

Actually, your username and post sum it right up. The firmware of the fuze+ is currently so userfriendly that is breaks in all possible scenarios, except if you are either lucky or do some backwards **bleep**ed up **bleep** like tagging your files completely the wrong way by putting track numbers in the title tag and Album or genre info in the artist tags etc…

@rebillihp:

Welcome to the fuze+ user expierence. For the album art, it does work, but read the first part of my post. It only works in some exceptional scenarios, and you need some luck. Basically it boils down to this.

Your album art needs to be…

A. …jpg (actually, maybe bmp works, I never bothered to try)

B. …non progressive (see the options when you save with an image editor)

C. …called folder.jpg and be in the same folder as the audio files or be embedded in the audio files themselves

D. …square (eg.500x500)

E. …if you want to fix the album art for music already on your fuze+, you need to delete the music from the player, unplug the player and turn it on, turn it off and then put the music back on. The player only updates it’s database for new files (well, not for new jpg files called folder.jpg thus, ahem…).

good luck! you’ll need it.

This is another splendid example of how the firmware breaks in every scenario except one very specific one which you could never figure out unless you read about it on a forum.

Decent software design should aim for the opposite. Don’t break except for in exceptional cases. It is not a problem if a small minority of the users manage to break something, but it is a serious problem if only a minority of your users manage to get something working without reading up on forums, contacting support and wasting a lot of their (and your) valuable time…

Good design is a win-win situation. You get paid back a thousandfold in user loyality, increased sales from better reputation, decreased technical support spendings etc, etc, etc…

I couldn’t possibly recommend the fuze+ to anyone right now, and the ridiculous thing is that the hardware seems fine, and the firmware ■■■■. What a potential with this hardware. Get on with it. Have the developers devoted to this and have it finished and thoroughly tested, than it is over. Users happy, you happy… Sales and reputation up…

Great job guys! This firmware update is really a big improvement! The problems with slow playlist and lock are now away! :smileyvery-happy:

I would say that the next step for the next firmware update should be:

  • Boot time when nothing new is add to the library 30 second boot even with full 16go library is too much (i don’t even have a sd card!)

  • Audiobook spread in single file if they are mp3

  • tag mixing up while playing

  • can one dreams that we get some id3v2,4 support?

keep on the good job!

Is there a difference in updating the player manually or by the updater?

@zombified456 wrote:

Is there a difference in updating the player manually or by the updater?

Only the method used. The end result is exactly the same.

Change the genre of your books podcast and they will show up in the podcast section even if they are in the music section.  The audio book section is useless.  If you leave the genre set to audiobooks they will go to the audio file regardless where you place them.  If you are having problems with file order see my postings under " audio books sorted by titles."  

You will be enjoying books on your player soon.

Could we get official information and an active timeline as to the complete support of FLAC codec? It seems as though absolutely no tags are well-supported, which is ridiculous. Could we get support for embedded ID3 tags in FLAC? If the standard is already supported on the Fuze+, then that should be feasible. This would really help Linux users as EasyTag lets us add these tags to .FLAC files.

Also, while now the Fuze has a visible device profile in Banshee, it claims it only supports MP3, not even OGG, which is not the case. This is less of a concern, but probably easier to fix. Both would be nice, though.

Thank you for continued support but please, resist writing FLAC as a supported format when it is clearly not in good shape.

Sadly this will remain a pretty but useless tech gadget sitting in my desk drawer until it handles 90% full internal memory and external 32 GB card.  I have never before purchased such a promising product which so totally failed to deliver. I check back here every few months to see if the basic functionality of the unit with a decent size music collection is there yet.  It is not, and it is inexplicable that the team focuses on these goofy little bugs like tweaking the lock every release, the endless volume bugs and the random renaming of books and podcasts while the unit essentially is completely non functional anywhere near capacity. 

The warranty on this thing will be long out of date before I ever get to use it.    My money is on Rockbox coming out with a usable release befoer Sandisk does… after Sandisk had a couple years head start.

@ lukemcd,

Not sure what problem you have but i’ve been using flac’s for a long time on 6 different firmwares.

First off Flac files can’t use ID3 tags they use a different tag format… Not sure what OS your running

but my tagging software on my Windows tags the files fine and i also added cover art through the tagging app

and or with folder.jpg both work fine, my advice is just make sure the sizes of images are not too small…

MAKE sure your tags are correct before you blame sansa !

*Some downloaded pirated music have bad tags :wink:

the only bug i rememeber hearing was the Album Artist Tag and i think they fixed that long ago…

obviously their is bugs but i see some people that could simply fix things if they spent some time and effort

a little little little hope from Sandisk support.

_Thank you for your continued response in resolving your issue. As of this time, we do not have a permanent solution to your concern since you can see that it is under the known bugs of the player. You can visit the forums every now and then to check if there is new firmware available and hopefully we can have a better song navigation system on our firmware by then. We do not have any estimated date or time when it would be released but rest assured that we are working on this for a definite solution. _

@andrej wrote:

It would be quite important feature for me, that  Fuze+ can read and interpret the CD-Number tag in ID3v2 for sorting of the track titles. Currently if I have an album consisting of 2 CDs it mixes them that way, that first you have both first tracks, then both second tracks and so on. This is annoying.

either retag the trakc numbers for disc two or change album names to: ALBUMNAME (disc) 1 ALBUMNAME (disc) 2

I also listen to a lot of audiobooks, and maybe someone can explain the sorting issue to me. Why would you want to have hundreds (or many) of MP3 files on the Fuze + for a single audiobook? Why not merge all of the seperate files into 1 MP3 file? I cannot think of a single reason to have so many little files for 1 audiobook.

I would like to know why you simply don’t merge the MP3 files into 1 audiobook file. It would seem to solve the sorting problem.

@bret19 wrote:

 

I would like to know why you simply don’t merge the MP3 files into 1 audiobook file. It would seem to solve the sorting problem.

 

Well, I can think of one reason although I don’t listen to audio books myself. If for some reason the bookmarking feature did not work, or reset (like if one plugged into their computer without finishing a chapter) and one had to manually find their place again, sorting through a humongus file instead of several smaller ones would be extremely time-consuming and frustrating.

@bret19 wrote:

I also listen to a lot of audiobooks, and maybe someone can explain the sorting issue to me. Why would you want to have hundreds (or many) of MP3 files on the Fuze + for a single audiobook? Why not merge all of the seperate files into 1 MP3 file? I cannot think of a single reason to have so many little files for 1 audiobook.

 

I would like to know why you simply don’t merge the MP3 files into 1 audiobook file. It would seem to solve the sorting problem.

It could be that I have misunderstood your question.  Do you play you audiobook in the Audiobook section or the podcast section?  

I like having the breaks at the chapters.  The chapter heading and breaks add to the story in most books.  I think it would be as awkward having a 500 page book with no chapter breaks.

Hi Sandisk Sansa team,

As a real Sansa liker, I had a View first, than a Fuze and I really liked folder browsing (directory browsing). I hate organizing my ID3 tags… unfortunately my View and Fuze broke down and I bought a Fuze+.  Happy until I searched the menu for my favorite function…IT IS NOT THERE!!

Please add folder browsing AGAIN, just like you did with previous Fuze. Make a difference to all other MP3-players (iPod etc) and implement this again!

Thanks in advance!

BR Pdekanter

update your firmware.  folder browsing was added in the latest revision.

Hi Heavy,

You made my day! I update to 2.37.01 last friday and didn’t expect an update this fast!

Thanks!

<3

@pdkanter wrote:

 

You made my day! I update to 2.37.01 last friday and didn’t expect an update this fast!

2.37.01 had been out for a while, you just happen to get it late in the game. Enjoy the new firmware; I am!