Question

Error log: "Not enough Sonos player memory to complete index" - Why?


I just finished purchasing and setting up my Sonos amps and bridge (well, my installer did it, actually) and I am trying to load the music from my ReadyNasNV+ into the Sonos desktop software. My NAS has approximately 90,000 FLAC files, all properly tagged and in redbook resolution. Sonos is very slow to load, and ultimately only a few of my folders showed up in the library. I received the following error message in the log: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - 11:11 AM Eastern Time Not enough Sonos player memory to complete index of '//NAS-01-3A-DA/media/Music'. A partial index has been stored. After some further reading on this site I noted that there is apparently a limit of 40,000 songs. Sonos claims it can handle large music libraries, so why is the limit only 40,000? Granted, most people don't have 1.6 TB of FLAC files, but I had absolutely no problem streaming all of them using my old Squeezebox system. I am incredibly disappointed and frustrated with Sonos. Why on earth is there a limit? I am going to have to return all of this gear to my installer for a refund, and then go back to using my old Squeezebox if there is no solution to my issue. Please offer any suggestions. Thanks. Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - 11:11 AM Eastern Time Not enough Sonos player memory to complete index of '//NAS-01-3A-DA/media/Music'. A partial index has been stored.

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17 replies

Userlevel 5
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You're correct that there is a track limit within Sonos, though the cap lands somewhere at approximately 65,000 tracks. The limit is based on Sonos's capacity to store metadata / tags, so it's not a hard limit. If you have tracks with very short (or no) tags, these take up less memory than tracks with long tags. Sonos will be able to index more tracks with short tags than tracks with long tags. However, the limit still hovers close to 65,000 in these cases, so unfortunately Sonos will not be able to index your entire library of 90,000 FLAC files on your NAS. During the index, it's hitting the memory cap and showing the error message that you posted. I apologize for any frustration, please let me know if you have additional questions and I'll be happy to assist further.
Unfortunately I hit this limit this weekend when my collection grew to over 66K songs. This is very disappointing as I was not aware of this limit and I have had my Sonos system for over a year, no way to return it now. Might I suggest that you add a software feature that allows people with large collections to at least see all their music and be able to play it. You don't have to store all the tags for every song on each device (I assume this is what the software does). This will certainly slow things down a bit for large collections, but it is better than not being able to play all your music. I manage what I play mostly through playlists, so if you make sure that all songs in a playlist have their tags stored the playlist access would be fast. Also, one more question. Is the album art stored for each song on each device? It would think no, but I have no idea how much memory each Sonos device has on board. I have all my album art embedded in the mp3 tags, if I change that so the album art is just a link to a file in each album directory will this help me index more songs? Is there anything else I can do with my music to reduce the memory requirements? This whole thing is too bad, I was seriously thinking about buying a couple more Sonos components, now I will be thinking twice about that.
I've apparently got the same problem, although I received no error messages whatsoever. I didn't know there was a limit to how many songs Sonos could handle. In fact, I was told before I bought Sonos that there was no limit, otherwise I would have purchased some other system, as I'm going to have to do now, anyway. So, all the Sonos hardware I bought is now just a pile of unusable garbage. And, it isn't even predictable which music it decides to load and which it doesn't -- it seems to jump all over my music folders when "loading/indexing" for Sonos. Complete waste of my time. I definitely won't ever be buying anymore Sonos products.
this is completely ridiculous, I have just replaced (and sold off) all of my old squeezebox system for Sonus, and I cant even play my FLAC library.....
Userlevel 5
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Hello everyone, Thank you for the responses and the feedback on the 65k track limit, it is appreciated. We have a thread going in our Share an Idea section where an idea regarding expansion of the 65k limit is marked as Under Consideration. I'd recommend leaving some additional feedback and adding to the conversation there as well: https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/65k_limit
Really thought Sonos was the answer to my music streaming, but an arbitrary limit without options or workarounds is amateurish, not what I expect from Sonos
I only have 4700 items about 26G and I am getting the same message. What is going on. I can't get my playlist imported. HELP
Userlevel 5
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I only have 4700 items about 26G and I am getting the same message. What is going on. I can't get my playlist imported. HELP
Hello, would you mind submitting a diagnostic report from your Sonos system? I can take a look at the memory reports and help find out what's going on. You can find instructions on how to submit a diagnostic report in here. Let me know what your confirmation number is when you submit the report. Thanks.
Hello

I have just hit the "memory barrier" with 31,343 mp3 files and 14,983 flac files making a total of 46,325. If the number of library files is variable depending on the existence and length of the metadata then I have a number of questions..
1) This is nowhere near the 65k tracks I was hoping for, is this because they are all well tagged?
2) How do I know how many files have been added to the library?
3) Which metata data/tags does Sonos cache, is it just the five; "Artist", "Albums", "Track", "Genre", Composer"?
4) My tracks have embedded artwork, does this affect the memory?
5) As this issue was raised over a year ago and is still "under consideration", is Sonos going to release a new product that doesn't have this limitation?
I was going to expand my Sonos system but now I am very reluctant to, given that I still haven't finished ripping the CD collection. I have another 300 to go which is at least another 3,000 tracks.
Userlevel 5
Badge +2
Hello

I have just hit the "memory barrier" with 31,343 mp3 files and 14,983 flac files making a total of 46,325. If the number of library files is variable depending on the existence and length of the metadata then I have a number of questions..
1) This is nowhere near the 65k tracks I was hoping for, is this because they are all well tagged?
2) How do I know how many files have been added to the library?
3) Which metata data/tags does Sonos cache, is it just the five; "Artist", "Albums", "Track", "Genre", Composer"?
4) My tracks have embedded artwork, does this affect the memory?
5) As this issue was raised over a year ago and is still "under consideration", is Sonos going to release a new product that doesn't have this limitation?
I was going to expand my Sonos system but now I am very reluctant to, given that I still haven't finished ripping the CD collection. I have another 300 to go which is at least another 3,000 tracks.


Hello Andy,

To answer your questions:

1) It's more likely for well-tagged files to take up more indexing space, yes. It has to do more with the length of the tags than the number of tags on the file, though. Classical tracks, for example, can have long tags for the track name. This would take up more space than a track name with just one word.

2) I can let you know the answer to this if I can see a diagnostic report from your system. Just let me know the confirmation number.

3) Yes, these tags will take up most of the memory. Sonos also reads the track numbers tagged on the files for sorting.

4) This doesn't contribute to the track limit. The embedded artwork isn't indexed on the players. Sonos accesses the album art from the files over the network when needed.

5) No updates on the status of this at this time.

Once I have the diagnostic report, I can also let you know how to pull up a list of the tracks that have been indexed by Sonos so you can see the information it's pulling.

Thanks.
Hello

I have just hit the "memory barrier" with 31,343 mp3 files and 14,983 flac files making a total of 46,325. If the number of library files is variable depending on the existence and length of the metadata then I have a number of questions..
1) This is nowhere near the 65k tracks I was hoping for, is this because they are all well tagged?
2) How do I know how many files have been added to the library?
3) Which metata data/tags does Sonos cache, is it just the five; "Artist", "Albums", "Track", "Genre", Composer"?
4) My tracks have embedded artwork, does this affect the memory?
5) As this issue was raised over a year ago and is still "under consideration", is Sonos going to release a new product that doesn't have this limitation?
I was going to expand my Sonos system but now I am very reluctant to, given that I still haven't finished ripping the CD collection. I have another 300 to go which is at least another 3,000 tracks.


Hello Ryan

I can't seem to send a diagnostic report; I get an error message "Your diagnostic report could not be sent at this time". I have tried switching off the firewall and it still doesn't send.

I have been reading other forums and using the HTTP command to query the Sonos I can see the indexed track report.
http://Sonos-IP-Address/status/tracks_summary

It's also reported in these forums that filename length can affect the Sonos memory, so I have renamed a few hundred files and improved the COUNT from 41836 to 43408. I shall carry on renaming the rest of my files so that I can index the whole HDD of music, it should only take a week or so if I do an hour a day.. ahem!

One thought for a software change which could help a large proportion of Sonos system owners. would be to be able to switch off the caching of various tags, particularly the "Composer" tag. I only have a small collection of classical music and so I do not use the "Composer" option. I know it wouldn't help classical music fans, but at least it would make the system a little more flexible for some of your users.

I must say I'm pretty disappointed with this 65k limitation. When I first bought my Connect I thought it was the best toy I had bought in many years, but sadly it hasn't lived up to the promise of "All the music on earth" as it won't even play all the music in my house
Hello

I have just hit the "memory barrier" with 31,343 mp3 files and 14,983 flac files making a total of 46,325. If the number of library files is variable depending on the existence and length of the metadata then I have a number of questions..
1) This is nowhere near the 65k tracks I was hoping for, is this because they are all well tagged?
2) How do I know how many files have been added to the library?
3) Which metata data/tags does Sonos cache, is it just the five; "Artist", "Albums", "Track", "Genre", Composer"?
4) My tracks have embedded artwork, does this affect the memory?
5) As this issue was raised over a year ago and is still "under consideration", is Sonos going to release a new product that doesn't have this limitation?
I was going to expand my Sonos system but now I am very reluctant to, given that I still haven't finished ripping the CD collection. I have another 300 to go which is at least another 3,000 tracks.


I'm a bit concerned about this issue, as I've just decided to start a SONOS installation, and my system is currently indexing. Are there any updates on the situation and potential solution ?
Hello

I have just hit the "memory barrier" with 31,343 mp3 files and 14,983 flac files making a total of 46,325. If the number of library files is variable depending on the existence and length of the metadata then I have a number of questions..
1) This is nowhere near the 65k tracks I was hoping for, is this because they are all well tagged?
2) How do I know how many files have been added to the library?
3) Which metata data/tags does Sonos cache, is it just the five; "Artist", "Albums", "Track", "Genre", Composer"?
4) My tracks have embedded artwork, does this affect the memory?
5) As this issue was raised over a year ago and is still "under consideration", is Sonos going to release a new product that doesn't have this limitation?
I was going to expand my Sonos system but now I am very reluctant to, given that I still haven't finished ripping the CD collection. I have another 300 to go which is at least another 3,000 tracks.


Hi, if you have fewer than 65,000 tracks then the best thing to do is to reduce tue length of the file names. I originally named mine 'artist-album-track-trackname' but I ran out of memory with only 36000 tracks. Once I renamed them to 'track-trackname' it almost halved the memory usage. The 65k limit is going to become a big issue soon for me though, as I still have half my collection to rip.....
Hello

I have just hit the "memory barrier" with 31,343 mp3 files and 14,983 flac files making a total of 46,325. If the number of library files is variable depending on the existence and length of the metadata then I have a number of questions..
1) This is nowhere near the 65k tracks I was hoping for, is this because they are all well tagged?
2) How do I know how many files have been added to the library?
3) Which metata data/tags does Sonos cache, is it just the five; "Artist", "Albums", "Track", "Genre", Composer"?
4) My tracks have embedded artwork, does this affect the memory?
5) As this issue was raised over a year ago and is still "under consideration", is Sonos going to release a new product that doesn't have this limitation?
I was going to expand my Sonos system but now I am very reluctant to, given that I still haven't finished ripping the CD collection. I have another 300 to go which is at least another 3,000 tracks.


Hi, if you have fewer than 65,000 tracks then the best thing to do is to reduce tue length of the file names. I originally named mine 'artist-album-track-trackname' but I ran out of memory with only 36000 tracks. Once I renamed them to 'track-trackname' it almost halved the memory usage. The 65k limit is going to become a big issue soon for me though, as I still have half my collection to rip.....
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Hello

I have just hit the "memory barrier" with 31,343 mp3 files and 14,983 flac files making a total of 46,325. If the number of library files is variable depending on the existence and length of the metadata then I have a number of questions..
1) This is nowhere near the 65k tracks I was hoping for, is this because they are all well tagged?
2) How do I know how many files have been added to the library?
3) Which metata data/tags does Sonos cache, is it just the five; "Artist", "Albums", "Track", "Genre", Composer"?
4) My tracks have embedded artwork, does this affect the memory?
5) As this issue was raised over a year ago and is still "under consideration", is Sonos going to release a new product that doesn't have this limitation?
I was going to expand my Sonos system but now I am very reluctant to, given that I still haven't finished ripping the CD collection. I have another 300 to go which is at least another 3,000 tracks.


I have invested several thousand pounds in my Sonos system over the past few years. It has been wonderful until this week when I hit the memory/indexing problem. What am I supposed to do now - scrap the whole system as it's not good if it doesn't work! I found something which suggested using Media Monkey provided a solution but I have downloaded it and it doesn't do anything, not that I understand what to do with it in any case. I loved the Sonos for its simplicity and now where am I - in a major mess. What gets me is that as time goes by more and more people are going to suffer from the same problem as they build up their collections!!!! About time Sonos got their act sorted.
Only at 28k files and have reached my memory limit. Any advice on how to open up the remaining memory?
Only at 28k files and have reached my memory limit. Any advice on how to open up the remaining memory?
You must have large tag values and/or very long filenames. Generally the initial tactic is to reduce the filenames to a simply track number, e.g. 1.FLAC, 2.MP3, etc

First, though, go to http://x.x.x.x:1400/status/tracks_summary and post what you see there. The x.x.x.x IP address of a player can be obtained from About My Sonos System.