Fuze track order is making me nuts - please help!

I have a problem with the display of my track lists on my new Fuze - the same tagged mp3 files which display alphabetically for artist on my Walkman phone will not display likewise on Fuze, and when I attempted to put all files into one single “album” group per artist, the order in which they displayed did not make any sense to me at all. Somebody elsewhere declared that my track tags were the problem, despite my not having such problems on my other mp3 player. Nobody suggested otherwise, so I experimented by doing the following:

I cleared the tags on three groups (Artist), using my tag editor (EasyTag), each with multiple albums, and re-tagged them for Title, Album, Artist, and Genre, and no more. When viewed under FUZE’s Artists->Play All, they were not alphabetized for the Artist, but the order seemed to follow the the alphabetical list of Album titles, which they appeared to be sorted on after some study. It actually takes some study because there are no album titles, not even a freakn’ line space to separate these groups - one just runs right into the next! Hardly the mark of a product I’d pay half as much for, especially with no options to display a list of tracks alphabetized by the artist.
Anyway, I decided to try and work around this by clearing my Album field in my tracks, so that they would all display under one “album”, the “Unknown”. This didn’t work, as they were still showing out of order under Artist->Play All. Without the album titles there to compare with the tracks, I really couldn’t tell if the order was completely random, or just unchanged from the way they were displayed when the album groups existed (in this case they would still be on some level, wtf?). If you don’t transfer to your mp3 player AND play all of your tracks by the album, then you know just how ridiculous it is to have album groups, which are typically poplulated with 1 to three tracks. It’s inconvenient enough for me that I decided not having them around for reference at all would be better than not being able to sort my files around the artist in question, but something which is absolutely not apparent in my file tags is sabotaging this. If it’s my fault for not for anything which I still don’t know about tags, I knew much less about them when I got them all to display perfectly, and exactly as I wanted them to on my Walkman phone (Ericsson w580i, which you could get free with a new contract >18 months ago). Everything that I’m struggling with for the FUZE was completely unnecessary with this cheap and slightly more primitive player, which didn’t make you start playing the first track before you had the chance to make a selection. I checked only two fields before I achieved this on my Walkman - title and artist, AND the rest was a complete mess of half-populated fields, among them Album, Genre, Year, Track #. Under these conditions, the Artists displayed alphabetically, the Albums which were named did as well, and so did the Tracks, which were alphabetized perfectly around the Artists. On my Fuze, the groups have been treated much more carefully to eliminate all undesired tag items like Year and Track #, which could possibly upset the sorting of the Tracks. So if anyone thinks it’s still because of how I deal with my tracks, or something else I’m ignorant of, it sure would be good of you to clue me in on how to make life easier with the FUZE, because if it didn’t look so nice, and didn’t have better-than-expected sound, I’d be set to return mine.

Oh, there’s one more thing which may be a lead on this mystery, for those who understand such cases - there was one group which I was able to sort by track title, but it was really under an Album group (well, for book tracks it would be author). It’s mostly the audio books which I have complete groups for “albums” on, and I have never noticed the same trouble with getting tracks to display alphabetized under their origional album titles. While it is always desireable to have all of your book tracks display under the same book title (album) in order, and I have not had insurmountable trouble with this, it’s often more desireable to mix the tracks from multiple albums into a single group per artist. FUZE does not seem to offer this and sort it as a single group too, so I tried to force it to do so by eliminating the Album tags, or by giving all of one artist’s tracks the same album name. Considering that there is nothing else appearing in my tag window which would cause it to do otherwise, I’m going absolutely crazy trying to figure out how why they still won’t alphabetize under the Artists menu.  Things I noticed while experimenting with groups of tracks on FUZE:

  1. I had initially had trouble with tags which were named with book title initials “TBW 01of50”…“TBW 50of50” They displayed as I expected them to with these names on my Walkman, as I could see no reason why it or any other mp3 player wouldn’t, but FUZE couldn’t sort them alpha to album until I changed the titles to “TBW 01”…“TBW 50”! There is definetly something about the differences in these names which causes Fuze to behave differently, even if most of us would expect both list schemes to produce the same results in order a group of 50 such items, with each increasing the first number field by 1.

  2. When I removed the Album entries from my tags, to merge all tracks for each Artist under one group, it should have displayed the tracks in each group alphabetical to the Artist, but this did not happen. I didn’t have the Album list to check them against, so I could’t compare the list to it’s order when the Album tags were there, so I don’t know whether the order was as if there were still album entries for fuze group my tracks against or if it was something beyond my slightest grasp, but wouldn’t it be weird if Fuze is trying to group my files against tag entries which aren’t even there, or aren’t anymore. They’re all mp3s, so there shouldn’t be any hidden stuff. Anybody got a clue on what else would cause this?

Thanks.

I may not provide you the best answer for your concern but they have a thread here in the forum that you can try just visit the link below for further information;

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=announcements&message.id=201#M201 

 Hope this help. :wink:

My guess is that you are not tagging in the right ID3 version. ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1

The Fuze is picky about this–too picky by far–but as long as you have tagging software like Easy Tag, you should be able to do what you need. 

I’m more familiar with mp3tag.

Unless you are using Linux and really need EasyTag, you might as well just switch, or, if you must, find equivalent commands in EasyTag. 

Anyway, set Write to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. The version is 2.3; the ISO is how the characters are rendered. UTF (the other choices) may appear differently or confuse the heck out of the Fuze. The Fuze does decently with ID3v2.2 (which I get from iTunes), but v1 tags, if that’s what are on your files, are just not understood. 

MP3tag, under Tools, has an Auto-Numbering Wizard with a Leading Zeros option, so it puts track numbers as 01, 02, etc. Many other tagging softwares do 1/12, 2/12, etc. The Sansa only reads the first digit, so it would play 1/12, 11/12, 2/12. Leading Zeros fixes that. I don’t know if EasyTag has the same function–but it definitely should. 

With every album I get, I open the folder with mp3tag (it’s among the right-click options), highlight all the files once they are in order,  go to Tools/Auto-Numbering with the Leading Zeros checked and run it.  No problems after that. 

Thanks - must admit I didn’t know there were such complexities to adding a few lines of text!

HOWEVER, it turns out that EasyTag had the settings default to  ID3v2.4, ISO-8859-1! Changing the version to ID3v2.3 only made the problem worse. I must presume that the reason I seem to be the only one complaining of such a problem is 1. Fuze users don’t care if their tracks don’t list alphabetically, 2. They all use Windows MP3tag, which somehow works better at the same settings, or 3. The slimy Amazon merchant sold me a crappy beta version. Whether he did or not I still have cause for calling whoever runs “Blue Proton” the slimy %*#@ which he is for selling me an expansion card bundle with cards which do not fit the Fuze!

Anyway, I’ll see if I get any better luck with Windows MP3tag, even though I just can’t see how. If it doesn’t work, than I’ll know I can stop wasting time trying to make it work so that I can pursue my next life’s mission of bringing down at least one creepy scumbag merchant who anonymously hides behind his brother-in-law at Amazon - NOT THAT I’LL FORGET TO TAKE A PIECE OUT OF SANDISK FOR THIS TOO!!!

REPORT:

The tags for all of my files were originally saved in Easytag (several days time invested altogether) with the default ID3v2.4,UTF-16 - these are the default settings in EasyTag, but here I learned that Fuze, which was produced and sold this year, does not read anything so advanced.  This is extremely interesting when my Walkman phone, which I obtained free with the contract >18 months ago, never had a problem with these tags.  As advised, I downgraded my settings from ID3v2.4 to ID3v2.3, and swithced from UTF to ISO-8859-1, and then re-saved all my test files. After deleting all those file groups from my Fuze and re-transfering them, THERE IS STILL NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER!  For those who really think it takes a Windows system, I did the same thing with my Windows system and MP3tag, noting that this particular tag editor doesn’t deal with ID3v2.4 at all. Well, maybe the files are permanently changed just because I saved the tags in a format which is unheard of in Windows-world, but then  wasn’t Sandisk marketing directly to the Linux community by purporting to support the .ogg codec (I don’t have any myself, mine are all .mp3)? Sandisk, there simply are no more excuses - your product can’t properly handle what was handled by more primitive product years ago, and I’m through letting you waste my time in blaming it on MY tag editing! It’s YOUR firmware engineers who dropped the ball in this case, and it is YOUR responsibility to either correct the firmware of my Fuze or refund my money!

First, take a long deep breath and think of beautiful things.

Second, this is a user group, so if you want to scream at SanDisk, call their tech support line or send them an email. 

You’re right, you shouldn’t be having these problems. But I don’t think they are beyond fixing.

Have you updated the firmware on the Fuze? The latest firmware is largely compatible with ID3v2.4 (though it still likes 2.3 better) and, for what it’s worth, plays .ogg.  

It also has, under Music, Folder navigation that will play songs alphabetically by filename.  Why you would prefer that to following the track numbering of the album is beyond me, but…

There’s a sticky near the top of the forum page about updating the firmware, with links. You need to see whether you have a v1 or v2 Fuze, as explained there.

Take the files off the Fuze and fix them with mp3tag (or Easytag if it has the right settings–there’s nothing magic about mp3tag). While the files are off the Fuze, go into the root directory of the Fuze and delete mtable.sys . That’s the database gathered from the ID3 tags. With all the changes you’ve been making, the database might be messed up. Then put the nicely tagged files back on, unplug, and when the Fuze reboots it should gather all-new and presumably working tag info. 

The Fuze documentation really should be precise about its preferred tag version. However, with ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 tags, it should work.

 By the way, ID3v2.4 is not unheard of in Windows, and my version of mp3tag does have a 2.4 option (with UTF, so not for the Fuze). I hope you have been using a recent mp3tag–it’s up to version 2.44.

To the OP: “Enter”/Carriage Return/Paragraph break can be your friend…

Hey, Black Rectangle, thanks for sticking with me on this - I know I flew a bit off the handle, and it’s not because that I’ve been spending way too much time in my cave. It’s because there’s been light around every bend, which turns out to be the flames of another electronic dragon to put down!

I have, after calming down a little, contacted Sandisk support, and will leave it to the gurus to decide on the firmware upgrade. Considering the track record so far, I’m afraid to go any further without a promise from somebody. 

As for my wanting the track numbers, huh?? Did I say that? I want alphabetical sorting, so I went through all my tags and cleared the 20-percent-populated year and track# fields so that they would not be the factor in throwing off my alphabetizing on track (tag) title.

[quote=Black-Rectangle]

 By the way, ID3v2.4 is not unheard of in Windows, and my version of mp3tag does have a 2.4 option (with UTF, so not for the Fuze). I hope you have been using a recent mp3tag–it’s up to version 2.44. [/quote]

You’re right, my bad for not noticing that option displayed above the older options (if they are). 

Well, I’ve had enough for now - Sandisk support will either send me a good fix, or I send it back, and in the meantime I’ll go spend some time outside for once.  I really hope they take care to avoid this sort of problem with future products, but it won’t be until I see it before I will recommend Sansa to anybody.

Message Edited by Itchyfinger on 08-15-2009 10:12 AM

Message Edited by Itchyfinger on 08-15-2009 10:13 AM

Robisan,

Having the decency not to go nit-picky and bust the chops of "OP"s who’s writing style is likely under the influence of too many frustrating hours dealing with problems which should not exist with any product sold for more than $10 may get you more friends!

Message Edited by Itchyfinger on 08-15-2009 12:26 PM

The firmware upgrades on this site are from Sansa tech support directly. I’m sure they’ll just tell you to use the latest. 

I have 1.02.26A on mine, with Folder navigation included and no problems, but I don’t have any ID3v2.4 tags.  You’re probably still better off with ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1.

Your subject line says "track order."Most people like their tracks to play in the order the artist sequenced them, but…

If you do want alphabetical, and your files are named alphabetically, you can use mp3tag to (1) sort them by filename (click on the top of the column) and then (2) highlight them all and use the track numbering wizard (with leading zeroes for best results) and you’ll get tracks numbered from 01-xx in the same order the files are listed. Maybe EasyTag has the same functions.

Then you can have them alphabetically in both the ID3 navigation and the Folder navigation. Belt and suspenders…

Message Edited by Black-Rectangle on 08-16-2009 09:40 AM

Black-Rectangle,

I know I’m learning something new everyday, but I didn’t know most want the original album order. I could understand this for a theme album (Rush 2112, Tommy), but I woulda thought that most aren’t even ambitious enough to rip from CDs, and go to the perfectly-legal networks (like me, :wink: and download by the track to save money.  This would lead to short album lists, making the whole artist collection a better option for long sessions on the bikeway, etc.  Do the tag programs really sort them like this by default, and how would it KNOW the album order? Anyway, in the absense of any track numbers being displayed by Fuze, I meant that I am interested in having all tracks display according to what it DOES display, which is the track (ID3 tag) title order. I’ve gone and removed the track tags because I didn’t want them to upset the alphabetical sorting which I expected, but maybe they’ll turn out to be useful if I rewrite them to work with this order.  

Guess not, I just tried putting track numbers on a group, concurrent with alphabetical track title order - no dice. So, guess I’ll try the firmware upgrade for what it’s worth - if anyone ever says I didn’t jump through Sandisk’s hoops…:angry:

If you buy tracks from most bigtime retailers, they have track number as part of the ID tag, in the Track field.  That way, if someone buys the whole album, it plays in order. It doesn’t make sense for, say,  Amazon or eMusic  to offer separate tracks without the track numbers–they’d have to encode and store twice as many. If the single happens to be (as usual) Track 2, and the buyer doesn’t buy Track 1,  it’s no big deal.

But there are also a lot of people who buy full albums. And musicians truly agonize over the proper sequence, even though now everyone puts things on shuffle anyway. If you did go to Artist and Play All on the Fuze, it would play the albums (alphabetically) and the established sequence of tracks within each album. 

Exactly what happened when you tried to play the tracks you had supposedly alphabetized and then put in track order?  What order did they play in? 

How did you put the track numbers on? Manually? With a tagging program? Using leading zeroes and no slashes? (1/12, etc., is not good for the Fuze.)  Are you sure you saved them? It should really not be giving you this much trouble with the right ID3 version. Zillions of people use tagging software or get legitimate mp3s with no problems. 

Can you use tagging software to show the tags and attach a screen shot? 

One other random possibility: Are there Comments imbedded in the ID3 tags? Sometimes people put ridiculously huge Comments in that field. Get rid of them. (You can just highlight them all and <blank> them in mp3tag.)  

@itchyfinger wrote:

Robisan,

 

Having the decency not to go nit-picky and bust the chops of "OP"s who’s writing style is likely under the influence of too many frustrating hours dealing with problems which should not exist with any product sold for more than $10 may get you more friends!

But . . . inserting more paragrahs with blank lines between makes your post MUCH, MUCH easier to read & digest. It’s too easy to miss a point or tidbit of information when you’re trying to wade through a mile-long sentence and/or paragraph.

Honestly, when I opened this thread and saw the enormity of your 1st post, I simply scrolled right past it. Didn’t even consider trying to read it! My eyes would be crossed and my mind like soft Jello pudding if I tried to fathom what you were trying to convey in that manner.

Breaking up what you are trying to say when you type is like taking a breath after each point made, or thought completed.

People read this way too. Their eyes and mind need a short break after absorbing the latest information they’ve just read, so they can re-focus on your next thought. Think of paragraphs as long ‘bullets’. You want the person reading what you’ve written to understand, comprehend, digest and remember each ‘bullet’ before they go on to the next one.

Nit-picky? Maybe. But do you want help, or not? Do you want people to read your posts, or not? Do you want those people who read your posts to understand completely what you are saying, or not?

You can type however you’d like; it’s no skin off our noses but . . . it’s kind of a waste of your time if the people who may be in a postion to help you can’t, or won’t take the time to decypher what you have just spent the last 20 minutes typing a message hoping for some help, isn’t it?

Busting your chops? That’s a result of your attitude and mood when you read Robisan’s suggestion. No malice was intended or directed. Frustration is no excuse for rudeness.

@itchyfinger wrote:

Robisan,

 

Having the decency not to go nit-picky and bust the chops of "OP"s who’s writing style is likely under the influence of too many frustrating hours dealing with problems which should not exist with any product sold for more than $10 may get you more friends!

But . . . inserting more paragrahs with blank lines between makes your post MUCH, MUCH easier to read & digest. It’s too easy to miss a point or tidbit of information when you’re trying to wade through a mile-long sentence and/or paragraph.

Nit-picky? Maybe. But making it as easy as you can for others to read & understand your plight is the best way to insure quick responses that address your particular issue.

Busting your chops? That may be how you see it, obviously a result of your attitude and mood when you read Robisan’s suggestion. No malice was intended or directed. Frustration is no excuse for profanity, threats or rudeness.

Message Edited by Tapeworm on 08-17-2009 04:25 PM

I tried re-applying track numbers to make them synchronous with the alphabetical order of all tracks in my artist-centric test group. It changed the list order some, but there are still some which are out of order, and no evidence within my tag editors to explain why (EasyTag and mp3tag have produced the same results and displayed the same info). So I went ahead with the firmware update, installed the 2x version after determining through my system info that it’s the right upgrade, but the order is still wrong as ever. The only program which fail to display my tags in alphabetical order is Sandisk’s Fuze firmware, therefore the ball is entirely in Sandisk’s court.

How about a specific example–you can take a screenshot of mp3tag with the PrtSc key.

I know next to nothing about encoding, but for all I know there are some invisible artifacts from all the UTF-to-ISO changes you have been making that are confuZing the Fuze. 

You could also make a new start with the filenames themselves.

Mp3tag has another lovely feature. With Convert you can turn filenames into tags, assuming your filenames are consistent. 

This explanation is going to seem convoluted, but just click on Convert, highlight a song and play with it. It’s pretty straightforward and gives you a lot of options that you can preview.

The field (Album, Artist) is between the % signs; anything that doesn’t go into the field, just put it outside the % signs. If your files are just Song Title, just use the Convert option of %title%.  If the filenames are Artist–Song Title, then the Convert option would be %artist%–%title%. You can type the – into an existing option or make a new one.  The explanation makes it sound much more complicated than it is, because in all likelihood there’s already an existing option for your particular kind of filenames. 

Just out of curiosity–where are you getting these files? 

@itchyfinger wrote:
I tried re-applying track numbers to make them synchronous with the alphabetical order of all tracks in my artist-centric test group. It changed the list order some, but there are still some which are out of order, and no evidence within my tag editors to explain why (EasyTag and mp3tag have produced the same results and displayed the same info). So I went ahead with the firmware update, installed the 2x version after determining through my system info that it’s the right upgrade, but the order is still wrong as ever. The only program which fail to display my tags in alphabetical order is Sandisk’s Fuze firmware, therefore the ball is entirely in Sandisk’s court.

I maybe missing something here, but if you have a set of files named in alpha-numeric order, and you want to see/play them in that order in the Fuze, why don’t you just use the Fuze’s ‘Folder view’ instead of trying to tag them? That way you see the FAT file and directory names rather than the tag info.

Already suggested

I have this problem, on my fuze and on the Mrs’ creative zen, so it is not exclusive to to the fuze. I find brandy helps to calm me down.

@black_rectangle wrote:
Already suggested

Ah. Well I did say I might be missing something.

Looks like the OP did too…