What MP3 player(s) are you guys using ?

[Sweet Spot]

I'm frustrated by the lack of support in the Mp3 player market today, for anything but MS or Mac. I do have larger DAP's, but now want something small, which I can put in a vest pocket for work. The problem is, as seen with the new Sansa Fuze I bought yesterday, that tagging issues are a bloody mess !

I use K3b to rip and encode my CD's to Mp3 (wish the Fuze did Ogg) and they seem like they're tagged just fine, but now I'm wondering about that, or wondering if it's just the Fuze which is botching things up. First off, it doesn't put albums in the right order, but I kind of expected that, as there is no file tree browsing. I did however use EasyTag to try and label the albums with numbers, but that was futile.

The next problem is that none of the songs in any of the albums were listed correctly. Everything seems to be listed randomly, and no, it's not on shuffle. I assumed that K3b would id my tags just the same as what I was seeing as they're listed in the burn/encode list, but this doesn't seem the case, and I"m not sure if it's the DAP or something K3b is doing.

I like K3b because it's one stop shopping and aside from this problem (which may not be its fault) it's perfect for me.

So to the title: What DAP (small, more than 4 gigs, possibly 8 with expansion slot ?) are you guys using to battle the proprietary hardware and software prerequisites of hell ? I know that I can go Cowon, but I haven't looked into them quite yet. I was really set on the Fuze, or some other Sansa (tried the view, and it was worse) because they're available locally, but if it's this much of a pain, it's just not worth it.

[Cappy]

The SanDisk Sansa are fully linux compatible. They are/act just like USB flash drives.

[Sweet Spot]

Yes and no. Yes, you can drag and drop. But you can NOT do anything with playlists unless you use the MTP feature. And I'm finding that even though my files are all tagged (using K3b and even again with easytag) the files are still put in random order. The sound quality of the Fuze is fantastic, but it's a shame I can't sort this out.

I'll probably post a dedicated thread, but would like to ask if there's a way to check to see what version of id tag k3b is adding and if it's changeable. Even easy tag didn't sort my woes out. The Fuze is supposed to read Id3v1 tags and I thought that's what I was using, but can't tell for sure.

doug

[ramjet_1953]

My Meizu Mini Player SL works great with Linux.

Even the Windows software that comes with it for Video Conversion works under WINE.

Regards,
Roger

[open_coder]

Yes and no. Yes, you can drag and drop. But you can NOT do anything with playlists unless you use the MTP feature. And I'm finding that even though my files are all tagged (using K3b and even again with easytag) the files are still put in random order. The sound quality of the Fuze is fantastic, but it's a shame I can't sort this out.

I'll probably post a dedicated thread, but would like to ask if there's a way to check to see what version of id tag k3b is adding and if it's changeable. Even easy tag didn't sort my woes out. The Fuze is supposed to read Id3v1 tags and I thought that's what I was using, but can't tell for sure.

doug

I am having the same problem. I found that using MSC in amarok and changing the file naming conventions worked for playing them in order, but it didnt add the album art. i dont know what's going on. I know my tags are right and the files are named

artist-year-album/track-artist-name.mp3

i tried to get mtp working, but it doesnt. I don't know what the problem is.

Officially frustrated.

[shadwstalkr]

I use a Creative Zen V Plus, the 8 GB model.

It's only MTP, but it works well with Amarok, has great battery life, and is about the size of a TicTac box. It's also surprisingly rugged, I've dropped mine on a concrete floor many times with no damage. It still has no scratches after a year, even though I keep it in my pocket with coins.

I've never tried putting videos or pictures on it, so I don't know if that works in Linux or not, and it doesn't support ogg. It seems to only support certain MP3 bitrates, so make sure Amarok is set up to transcode files as they're transferred. That will also mitigate the ogg problem.

[Sweet Spot]

Meh. I'm being told that the Fuze requires Id3v2.3 tags, rather than the newer 2.4 tags. That's pretty damned specific, but I can't yet confirm that this is true since the person who told me, I'm pretty sure is using Windows.

That said, what program can I use to tag my files with id3v2.3 ?

Doug

[Sweet Spot]

To answer my own question and hopefully help others out, I've found that Mp3tag (windows proggie) works well under WINE. I've been having mixed success and failure with it in terms of tagging, but the failure may just have been my fault in setting some of the parameters incorrectly. I just successfully tagged an album right after ripping it, and am about to try another one. If I can get this going on a consistent basis, I'll post how it's done.

Admittedly though, this is a pain in the ***. I'd rather K3b just tag my stuff properly the first time ! I'd love to find another ripper/encoder which does it all in one shot. Yet another reason I'm eager to get a Mac *sigh*.

doug