Need Help on very first MP3 (Sansa)

I just bought a new 8 GB Sansa Fuze today at Radio Shack ($69).  I downloaded the MS Media Player 11 but haven’t charged the Fuze yet. I put in the teeny CD but it looked like it was just for downloading music I didn’t want.  Could anyone tell me where to go for instructions on how to take my collection of CDs (about 70) and get them onto my Fuze?  Sorry for such a dumb question but it is all new to me  <G>.  Thanks so much for any help.

TopdogJudy

User’s Guide

FAQ (not specific to Fuze, but for all Sansa players)

HOW-TO Videos

Spend a little time getting used to ripping your CDs with Windows Media Player 11, creating and managing playlists, etc.  And, oh, before you rip a single CD with WM11, go into <Options> under the “Library” tab, click on the “Rip Music” and change the location your library will be stored to someone other than Microsoft’s standard directory under “Documents and Settings”…  If you have one, use an external drive.  That way, when Windows crashes, and it will, and you have to reload it, and you will have to, you aren’t formating the drive where all of your music and documents are…  

Syncing your music to the Fuze is a piece of cake once you figure out how easy WM11 is to use.  I’m beginning to like it more that iTunes but then again, I’ve never been much of an Apple person… 

Brett

That’s the wonderful thing about computers and most electronic devices; no two people will use the products in the same way.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no MS basher as I briefly worked for MS in the dark ages of computers, but I find their media player one of the clunkiest (is that a word? LOL) pieces of software I have ever used in my life.  I don’t use it at all with my fuze.  I use a dedicated “music ripping” software package; a great mp3 tagger and “Winamp” to create playlists… but that is me.  You may like WMP.

The best advice I can give is to read and completely understand the links supplied by tapeworm first; then experiment to see what works best for you.  Then the nice people in this forum can help you further, if need be, with more specific questions you may have.

Another issue that may crop up is windows media player (wmp) automatically downloading everything from your computer when you try to sync a song to your fuze.

This is solved thusly, with thanks to TAPEWORM, who supplied the following answer to me.

Set Windows Media Player up for ‘Manual’ Sync rather than ‘Automatic’. Open WMP and go to TOOLS, OPTIONS, & click on the DEVICES tab. Connect your player in MTP mode. Highlight your player and click on PROPERTIES. Un-check the box for ‘Start sync when device connects’. Now click on the SETTINGS… button and check the button for MANUAL rather than AUTOMATIC sync.

Better yet, quit screwing around with it all together and use MSC mode drag & drop! This way, YOU (and ONLY YOU) control what goes on and doesn’t go on your player! :wink:

The one thing I think most important with a music collection is to convert it into a LOSSLESS audio format with info tags embedded that are accurate and useful to YOU.  Some call that archiving.  (Don’t think that tag info automatically downloaded from the internet will be accurate!)

With that done, it is trivial. quick work to _ transcode _ to whichever audio format you want on your player; your tags will be preserved!  You can re-encode with newer codecs, to a different quality rating or to a format that is good for another player.  For example, currently, Ogg Vorbis is best quality vs. size on the Fuze and Cowon players, and Nero lc-AAC is the best on Sony and Apple.

I don’t use Windows Media Player.

Programs I use include:

Exact Audio Copy (to rip and convert to FLAC)

MP3Tag  (to edit tags from above)

foobar2000 (to transcode to Ogg Vorbis)

Winamp is popular with many, and deemed easy to use.

Those are freeware, but a beginner might find  dbPoweramp especially simple.

I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to answer my questions.  This is really cool and a great group.