Look at the device when it’s connected in My Computer. Click on it to Explore, and keep clicking to go deeper. You should see folders that are albums.
Auto-detect means that the Fuze will try MTP first, the mode that connects to Windows Media Player, if it finds Windows Media Player on your computer.
When you copy a CD onto the Fuze, what you are really doing is ripping it: converting the songs on the CD into mp3 files. The good thing about mp3 files is that the ripping software can go online and get the song titles, albums, artist, etc. information that goes into ID3 tags–part of the mp3 that the Fuze will display, so you can find stuff.
If you like Windows Media Player, that’s fine–but you have to make sure Windows Media Player is behaving itself.
When you connect the Fuze, look through Tools/Options on WMP. Don’t see Tools? Just right-click on the very top line of WMP, the same line where it says Windows Media Player on the left, and it should show up. Then boss WMP around a little.
Most important: Under Rip Music, make the format mp3 (not .wma) and push the slider toward Best Quality–at least 192 kbps, and 256 if you want even better sound quality. Under Rip Music to This Location, pick any place you want (mine is C:\Albums, not the very complicated My Music folder).
Optionally: Under Player, have it only check for updates once a month–even that is more than enough. Under Privacy, uncheck the box that says Send unique player ID to content providers.
Other software will also rip and put the album into a folder on your computer. Then you can drag-and-drop those folders onto the Fuze–directly, using MSC mode, which makes it look like just one more disc drive on your computer.
Other ripping software does require a little bit of setup. You need to tell it where to put the mp3 files once they are ripped. You may also need to give it permission to look online. It’s the same process as Windows Media Player–look in Settings, use your common sense.
If you want to try an alternative, here’s Foobar.
And here’s Media Monkey,which needs a little tweak after 30 days. If you try Media Monkey (the free version) and like it, search this forum for Media Monkey and lame_enc.dll
Both Foobar and Media Monkey need to connect in MSC mode.
Message Edited by Black-Rectangle on 08-22-2009 07:44 AM
