Titles of Albums and tracks?

I just began using my brand new Sansa Fuse, and I have this one question:

When I load tunes I ripped from homemade CDs such as “audience recordings” of live concerts, it comes up initially as “uknown album”, etc.  But when I add the names for the album name and the song names, I can see them on my computer, and they show up again on my computer screen when I drag them onto the Sansa…but then when I go to play them on the Sansa, they are still labeled “unknown album”, or the like.  When I plug the Sansa back into my USBII port, I can see the properly named albums and tunes in the window!  So, the info is there, but it’s not visible properly on the Sansa screen.  Nothing I’ve tried seems to fix this.

I am using a Dell laptop with Windows Vista as my operating system.

The Fuse manual says to right click on the file and select “properties”, and then select “Summary” tab…well, there IS no summary tab. 

Any help would be appreciated!  Thanks,

Matthew

hello,

i have the same problem with several tracks who worked correct in itunes and wmplayer but not on the fuze. after trying the tool mp3tag (freeware under Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)) with deleting and creating totally new tags tags everything ist working fine. so test this out!

Message Edited by snoopythedog on 01-18-2009 01:25 PM

Ok so the Albums and such shows up on your pc but not on your sansa. My guess would be since most studio recorded cd’s have the information stored on them examples: album, Track name. That your sansa cant find the album on it internally. I would try to make one for sansa without using wmp or the like and see if that works.

Your Fuze does not sort by or display by file/folder names. Only by the information contained within the ID3 tags embedded in the song files themselves.

Normally when you rip a commercial CD and are on-line (as most people are now), your media program will contact an on-line database to fill in all the ID3 info such as Artist, Album, Track # and name, and so on.

Since you have created your own CD’s and are trying to convert these to .mp3’s, no on-line database is going to have the information on these recordings. So you will have to create the tags from scratch if you want the tracks sorted, listed and played properly on you Fuze. Otherwise, it will dump everthing it doesn’t understand in the ‘Unknown’ folders and could even cause the player to freeze up during start-up.

Bone up on ID3 tags here.

“can see them on my computer” leaves loads of room for misunderstanding.  Remember all those jokes about the “any” key and 2x retractable cupholders.

Are the albums named on your computer by file/directory names or by tags? If tags, what format?

Simple Solution Download Mp3Tag, use it to edit the information for each track, re sync to the fuze.

@tapeworm wrote:

Normally when you rip a commercial CD and are on-line (as most people are now), your media program will contact an on-line database to fill in all the ID3 info such as Artist, Album, Track # and name, and so on.

 

Bone up on ID3 tags here.

Actually - I have alot of classical CD’s and they often come up as unknown when I rip them. By often I mean 20-30% of them are unknown - some are pretty old.  Sometimes the tags are found for the first disk of a two disk set, and the second one is unknown. It is a pain!

@mp3geek wrote:

Actually - I have alot of classical CD’s and they often come up as unknown when I rip them. By often I mean 20-30% of them are unknown - some are pretty old.  Sometimes the tags are found for the first disk of a two disk set, and the second one is unknown. It is a pain!

This is indeed more of a problem with older CD’s and also with the Classical genre. I have some older CD’s that have been re-mastered and/or re-released since my version and when I load the CD to rip, the newer Album Art comes up from the on-line database, not the cover of my CD.

Classical music is a ■■■■-shoot too. Even on the ones where the tag information comes up, it’s rarely correct. It more often than not needs some degree of editing.

Thanks for the replies.  The tag software was easy to download and easy to use.  It has solved the problem for all but one set of tracks that seem to have a weird extension that is blocking the tag software from seeing and editing…so that is a different problem I am now working on.  But for the most part, I now have all of my “homemade” tracks nicely tagged and labeled and showing up properly on the Fuze.  Thanks again.

Matthew

Sorry for the poorly written message.  I think most of the responses to this thread understood what I was trying to say, which was that I could see the proper file names when I opened the files under My Computer-My Music, whether I was looking at them as on my computer harddrive or on the Fuze device plugged in to the computer.  It was surprising to me that the file and folder names that would show up when viewed this way did not carry over to being visible labels when viewed on the Fuze itself.   I did not understand how files and folders are “tagged” for Fuze purposes until reading the responses to this thread.

Just an observation, or gloat. I use an Iriver H320 and all music is in folders. Whenever some online track IDer put tags in the track info, I delete it all except for leaving track titles. Most of the other relavant info is still there and found by the names of folder and subfolder structure.

Unfortunately Fuze won’t do folders because the Sandisk business model is based on ignoring 50% of the  potential customer base, namely we folder fools who (even after making changes) prefer to boot up in a few seconds instead of several minutes.

Oh no!  The secret is out, and our conspiracy is exposed!

Au contraire, navigating by the embedded ID3 tags in the mp3 or wma files themselves was the idea.  The metadata that allows us to catalog a track by album, artist, genre, song title, etc is part and parcel of the MP3 standard.

Songs ripped with Windows Media Player and most currently available ripping engines will automatically fill these data fields in the track.  Songs downloaded commercially also include the requisite information, so why no use it in the interest of making the user experience easier?

Probably my favorite ID3 tag editing tool is MP3Tag.

Navigation by folder is on the list for future development, though.  It would come in handy as an option.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

“so why no use it in the interest of making the user experience easier?”

Because it does not make my user experience easier, it makes it harder.

Walk into a record store back in the day when these existed in every town and city. First thing you notice is that all the albums on the shelves are seperated into sections: Pop, Jazz, Classical.

Go to the Classical section. You wish to find a particular composition you have in mind to search for versions by various orchestras. You first walk down the aisles past the alphabetical indexes and come to B for Beethoven. He is not the artist, nor the singer, he is the writer. There  is a very good reason why the music store at the top sorts the classical list by composer. If they did not, and the record store across the street did, then every shopper would be shopping at that other store where they could actually find things. And now let’s say you want to also buy a popular album before leaving.

Go to the Popular Section (we’re back in the he 1960’s). You heard Jan and Dean’s surfer song: “Deadman’s Curve” on the radio, and want the album. So head for the Pop section, walk down the aisles. But not to W for Wilson,Bryan (the Beachboy who wrote the song for another group, namely J&D). We may not know and right now we surely don’t care who the composer is.  Over to the J shelf for Jan and Dean, examine the albums for the song we want, and buy. The top layer (top folder) is set  up by ‘artist’ in the pop section, if not then the confused customers would all leave.

Yes, the folders on my player are headed by classical, pop, jazz. Exactly like the music store was and for the same reason.  But the subfolder structures are several layers deeper to make things several times easier than the 1960’s (the magic of digital).   

The album and track info retrieved online database systems for classical is crazy, not useful at all. They need a system divided into 3 catagories (at least): popular, jazz, classical. The system is set up only for popular and so we wind up with ‘song titles’ like “Adagio” and ‘artists’ like “Mozart”.  Who recorded him?

The NY symphony CD of “Don Juan”: The same online database lists the ‘artist’ as Mozart on a few tracks and as Levine on other tracks of the very same CD!   And the opera becomes scattered to the winds on the player. There is no field for composer because in pop who cares about the songwriter?

Using folders, and more importantly a deep layer of subfolders, we can correct all this silliness very easily. 

There. Now I feel better.

Excellent points Crowdriver. The tag system is so inflexible, so you can’t have different amounts of information for different types of music as needed. There are also several different types of tags, and the Fuze is fussy about which it accepts. Then there are slight variations in tags which cause music to sort improperly. Tags can be edited with tag editing programs, however sometimes they need to be edited more than one put everything in its proper place. This is extremely annoying, especially for podcasts that will only be played once then deleted. The solution to all this is navigation by folders. I didn’t appreciate how great navigation by folders is until I had to do without it. My old one gig AAA battery powered player navigates by folders. I bought the Fuze then the Clip since I wanted more space than one gig. Navigating by tags, and connecting the player to charge are very annoying. I find myself reaching for my old player rather than my newer players, since the old player is so much more convenient. I even bought a Sandisk Slotmusic player, however the lack of a display on that player is so annoying. I hope Sandisk develops folder browsing soon for the Fuze and Clip, or at least comes out soon with a new player that navigates by folders and runs on a AA or AAA battery, and has a card slot and a display.

@crowdriver wrote:

 

Unfortunately Fuze won’t do folders because the Sandisk business model is based on ignoring 50% of the  potential customer base, namely we folder fools who (even after making changes) prefer to boot up in a few seconds instead of several minutes.

The iPod garners about 80% of the customer base and the Zune is #2…and neither of these navigate by folder. iRiver navigates by folders (apparently), and its been progressively losing market share. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like navigation by folders (and I can’t see any way they can feasibly grow beyond 16GB with their current “refresh” model), but that feature certainly doesn’t appear to translate to sales, and there’s no reason to blame Sansa for something that all of the industry leaders do.

@bdb wrote:

 and there’s no reason to blame Sansa for something that all of the industry leaders do.

There is somewhat true story of an animal called the Lemming where the herd will follow the leader and jump off a cliff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming.  According to Wikipedia this story is a “frequently-used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences.”

Here is a chance for SanDisk to take the lead from other companies managed by 25 year olds who listen to nothing but this week’s top 10 hit. You know which those are…

p.s. I have worked in the real world more than long enough to know how true the metaphor is…

CrowDriver,

Ah, a fellow classical music fan.  I must agree with you on this point: the CDDB and other databases are seriously skewed towards the needs of the popular music crowd.

One can, of course, navigate by tag using Artist / Album / Genre, but the hole in this boat is found once we see stupidities like “Berlin Symphony Orchestra” listed under Artist or “Album”.

Hey, man, I’m just looking for Antonin Dvorjak, okay?  I think I can find Claude Debussy’s La Mer listed as Leonard Slatkin.  I feel your pain.  If only the GUI allowed navigation for the serious Classical listener, with uber cool choices like Composer / Orchestra / Conductor and such, I’d be one serious happy camper.

I have to repair all of those tags using MP3Tag, even though it’s simple, I still have to tweak the database on the device to match.

In a nutshell, folder navigation is a great alternative, especially in light of the “gihugic” collection of my favorite performances, all on pristine vinyl, awaiting transfer to digital soon.  Classical music is a bit of an enigma, as one will settle upon a particular recording, and a particular session, that just has that magic touch.  Other recordings of the same piece just won’t cut it.

Doing it yourself carries with it the burden of due diligence in sorting your folders, especially with a large collection, but it’s possible.

Hang in there, firmware updates are coming.

For now, don’t let a navigation issue keep those beautiful pieces from playing.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

@mp3geek wrote:


@bdb wrote:

 and there’s no reason to blame Sansa for something that all of the industry leaders do.


 

There is somewhat true story of an animal called the Lemming where the herd will follow the leader and jump off a cliff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming.  According to Wikipedia this story is a “frequently-used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences.”

 

Here is a chance for SanDisk to take the lead from other companies managed by 25 year olds who listen to nothing but this week’s top 10 hit. You know which those are…

 

p.s. I have worked in the real world more than long enough to know how true the metaphor is…

And yet your metaphor is completely false: http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp.

Nevertheless, what part of “navigate by folder is coming” don’t you people understand?

@jfencl wrote:

And yet your metaphor is completely false: http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp.

 

Nevertheless, what part of “navigate by folder is coming” don’t you people understand?

I wrote “somewhat true” which is arguably a little more accurate than “completely false”. They do jump off cliffs, and some of them that do die - they just do not expect to die. I work in a company facing bankrupcy - we all act like we will work here forever. We could use a little history lesson as well.

You say “navigate by folder is coming”, do you have a date?

@mp3geek wrote:


@jfencl wrote:

And yet your metaphor is completely false: Did Disney Fake Lemming Suicide for the Nature Documentary 'White Wilderness'? | Snopes.com.

 

Nevertheless, what part of “navigate by folder is coming” don’t you people understand?


I wrote “somewhat true” which is arguably a little more accurate than “completely false”. They do jump off cliffs, and some of them that do die - they just do not expect to die. I work in a company facing bankrupcy - we all act like we will work here forever. We could use a little history lesson as well.

 

You say “navigate by folder is coming”, do you have a date?

You didn’t read the link, did you?  They only jump off cliffs when forced.  So I will say that your metaphor is completely and utterly false.

I believe it is supposed to be in the next firmware update.  You’re not much into research either, I see.