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tbaker08550
Contributor I
September 3, 2018

Imported playlists with special characters - why can't Sonos read them correctly?

  • September 3, 2018
  • 16 replies
  • 1763 views
In my music library (on a Synology network server) I have many folder and file names with special foreign language characters. When Sonos scans my music library it reads and displays all the characters just fine on any Sonos controller.

However, when I create and export playlists for this library (via MediaMonkey), the playlist files look fine in Windows Notepad but Sonos can't display them correctly, and the playlists don't work, since (I assume) the playlist entries don't match with what Sonos knows the file names to be.

I have tried exporting the playlists in various encodings (ANSI, UTF-8, and Unicode) and while they all look fine in Notepad, none of them work. I should make it clear that for playlists referring to music files WITHOUT any special characters, Sonos work with both my ANSI and UTF-8 just fine - these work the way they are supposed to. But Sonos chokes on special characters in imported playlists no matter how I encode them.

Is there a way around this besides eliminating all the special characters from my folder and file names?
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    16 replies

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    robismijnnaam
    Contributor I
    November 16, 2019

    Hi,

    I found something that works for me.

    First create m3u file
    Example
    E:\Muziek\Blues\Carmen Maki\Poems In The Midnight\01 - 時には母のない子のように.flac

    Substitute like destination in Sonos
    So, ‘E:\Muziek’ is replaced with ‘\\192.168.5.200\Music’
    Example
    \\192.168.5.200\Music\Blues\Carmen Maki\Poems In The Midnight\01 - 時には母のない子のように.flac

    In excel, use the encodeurl function 
    Output is : 
    %5C%5C192.168.5.200%5CMusic%5CBlues%5CCarmen%20Maki%5CPoems%20In%20The%20Midnight%5C01%20-%20%E6%99%82%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AF%E6%AF%8D%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E5%AD%90%E3%81%AE%E3%82%88%E3%81%86%E3%81%AB.flac

    Then substitute ‘%5C%5C’ for ‘//’ and substitute ‘%5C’ for ‘/’
    Output is : //192.168.5.200/Music/Blues/Carmen%20Maki/Poems%20In%20The%20Midnight/01%20-%20%E6%99%82%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AF%E6%AF%8D%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E5%AD%90%E3%81%AE%E3%82%88%E3%81%86%E3%81%AB.flac

    Then add in front of it ‘x-file-cifs:’
    Output is : x-file-cifs://192.168.5.200/Music/Blues/Carmen%20Maki/Poems%20In%20The%20Midnight/01%20-%20%E6%99%82%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AF%E6%AF%8D%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E5%AD%90%E3%81%AE%E3%82%88%E3%81%86%E3%81%AB.flac

    Save as *.m3u file and copy somewhere, so SONOS can import it.
     

      martin chambers
      martin chambers
      Contributor I
      December 23, 2019

      Goofball, you are a bloody star! Many many thanks for this fix as I have been struggling with this for a couple of years now.  And now it’s all fixed and I don’ have to rename all my Michael Bublé tracks to remove the accented ‘e’. (And now you know my guilty secret!).  Amazing, thanks again.

       

      Martin

      Music Library on Synology DS918+ managed by Media Monkey
        Flapperke
        Contributor I
        February 20, 2020

        I have all my CD’s digitized on a hard disk connected to my home network. My Sonos Cube can reach all music files on there to send them to my audio system. I don’t use playlists, but rather manually select the CD (map) that I want to listen to. But like mentioned over and over again over the past too many years here , all files with special characters will not play. It’s a real pitty that Sonos, after so many years, still didn’t solved that annoying issue.

        What a local , US-only attitude :-( ...a real pitty.

        Stanley_4
        Stanley_4
        Grand Maestro
        February 21, 2020

        Keep in mind that Sonos has been locked into an ancient Linux kernel and apps for many years now with no ability to update much. With the introduction of Legacy status for the most limited Sonos devices there will be a path to moving to a new Linux kernel and applications. I expect that to happen at some point and when it does a lot of the problems we see will just go away with the many year newer base system.

          controlav
          controlav
          Lead Maestro
          February 21, 2020

          Network paths with special characters are a particular challenge, as it requires that the client (Sonos speaker) and the file server (NAS) agree on the codepage.

          Generally Sonos uses utf8 encoding (as UPnP requires it to) but I have no idea what SMBv1 uses for paths. Pretty sure SMBv1 pre-dates utf8, it was created in the wild west days of multiple MBCS code pages (shudder).

          Sonos’ interest in NAS support is pretty low these days (as Windows and Macs don’t need SMB at all any more) so I’d put the chances of improvements in this area as “unlikely”.

          Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.
          kchantraine
          Contributor I
          October 2, 2020

          I’m also having the same issue. I’m going to try what robismijnnaam mentioned as saving as Sonos playlists isn’t sustainable. It caps at a (relatively) small number of max songs across all Sonos playlists which basically renders them useless except for temporary use.

          On the off chance, has anyone gone through the trouble of writing a script to sanitize playlists to be Sonos friendly? Considering this...

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