Won't play WMA files

My dad just bought a Sansa Clip 4GB. We use windows XP and he ripped quite a few of his CDs to Windows Media Player 11, so they saved as WMA files. After we charged the Sansa Clip we connected it to the USB port, and the computer recognized it as Sansa Clip 4GB. We synced the music from his Windows Media Player to the Sansa Clip and everything seemed to go fine. However, when he went to listen to them on the Sansa Clip they would show up but wouldn’t play. It would stay paused or skip through all the songs without playing any of them. It wasn’t the volume because the pre-loaded songs that came with the Clip would play. This is really frustrating because we had an older Sandisk player that had the same problem. I also tried opening the Sansa Clip’s folder and dragging and dropping the music files into it but that had the same results. I can’t seem to find anything on the internet about this problem. I’ve tried uninstalling and re-installing WMP 11, but it didn’t change anything. Please help!! 

Karen 

Are your WMA files DRM protected?  This would explain why they wont play.

The “skip through all the songs” description sounds a lot like a corrupted playlist issue.  Is he trying to play the songs via a synced playlist?

Also, check the bitrate of the WMAs.  The Clip supports 32-192Kbps only (at least, according to what I’ve read; not sure if the firmware actually handles more than that).

Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 09-30-2008 07:33 AM

If the songs have issues with their ID3 tags, the player will skip through them as well.  You can be sure the tags are OK by using MP3Tag, a free utility.  The Sansa wants ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1 tags.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

"Are your WMA files DRM protected?  This would explain why they wont play. "

AFAIK, the default for Windows Media Player is ripping using protected WMA, so those files won’t play on the player if they are dragged and dropped to the player using my computer or windows explorer, but should play on the player if they are tranfered with Windows Media Player. You can avoid the issue of protection by setting Windows Media player to rip to mp3. I suggest using 192 kbps or 256 kbps if you want better sound quality. I use 256 kbps, but the files do take take twice as much room on the player than at 128 kbps, but sound much better. Many use 192 kbps as a compromise between 128 kbps and 256 kbps.