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Contributor I
Jun 22, 2018 8:25 AM UTC
Answered

Dealing with storage limitations

I've had a Sonos system for a couple of months now, and already, "my Sonos" will no longer hold any more albums or playlists. Is there a simple work-around for this problem? Is that what "My Cloud Home" and "Plex" are for, since both are add-on services for Sonos?
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    bockersjv
    bockersjvAnswer
    Local Superstar
    Jun 22, 2018 9:51 AM UTC
    The limit afaik is on the indexing. The index is held in each and every one of the Sonos Players. The restriction is because the older players have a limited amount of memory and Sonos would not want to increase the limit and effectively end the life of older players.

    The index is limited by the number of characters in the music file tags. You could use a tool like MP3 tag to clean these and create a more room.

    13 replies

    bockersjv
    bockersjvAnswer
    Local Superstar
    Jun 22, 2018 9:51 AM UTC
    The limit afaik is on the indexing. The index is held in each and every one of the Sonos Players. The restriction is because the older players have a limited amount of memory and Sonos would not want to increase the limit and effectively end the life of older players.

    The index is limited by the number of characters in the music file tags. You could use a tool like MP3 tag to clean these and create a more room.
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    Belly M
    Jun 22, 2018 12:06 PM UTC
    More and more people are switching away from locally stored music to streaming services, the limit that Sonos has is actually quite large but some people do have vast music collections that they want to use. The services you mention are designed to let you workaround this. Bluesound (another system) also has a limit but in tests this has been over 200,000 tracks.
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    Avid Contributor II
    Jun 22, 2018 5:03 PM UTC
    I don't know if this is helpful, but I keep a separate folder on my NAS for my Sonos music. My collection is too large to all be on the Sonos.
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    Belly M
    Jun 22, 2018 5:12 PM UTC
    I don't know if this is helpful, but I keep a separate folder on my NAS for my Sonos music. My collection is too large to all be on the Sonos.

    How do you manage it? Swap directories when you want different music?
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    Avid Contributor II
    Jun 22, 2018 6:00 PM UTC
    I keep two "Sonos Music" directories on my NAS drives. One is for the stuff I want to keep at the ready and always want access to. The second is for short term music that I only want to hear once or twice.
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    Prodigy II
    Jun 22, 2018 6:17 PM UTC
    While the "many people are happy to rent their music" narrative does make local libraries less of an issue for Sonos as they focus on ensuring compatibility with the streaming/subscription services, it is annoying that Sonos doesn't seem to give users any info on the size of a local library or memory used so that those of us with large music collections can manage them better. Am I missing an option somewhere? Is there an easy way to at least see how much Sonos storage I'm using?
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    Avid Contributor II
    Jun 22, 2018 6:49 PM UTC
    To Sonos' credit, one feature I could not live without is the ability to browse my music collection by folders. From from all my music has good tack data.
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    bockersjv
    Local Superstar
    Jun 23, 2018 4:49 AM UTC
    While the "many people are happy to rent their music" narrative does make local libraries less of an issue for Sonos as they focus on ensuring compatibility with the streaming/subscription services, it is annoying that Sonos doesn't seem to give users any info on the size of a local library or memory used so that those of us with large music collections can manage them better. Am I missing an option somewhere? Is there an easy way to at least see how much Sonos storage I'm using?
    Repeat, It is not the size of the collection but the index of that collection. If you cut the music tags down to the bare minimum you can index a lot more. If the tags are long with loads of info the numbers start to fall. Therefore it is very difficult to specify exactly what the limits are. 65k is the guide given by sonos. Back when the early players were introduced I doubt they anticipated music collections so large or tags getting that long.
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    bockersjv
    Local Superstar
    Jun 23, 2018 4:54 AM UTC
    There have been a few threads on this issue.
    This one had some workarounds.
    https://en.community.sonos.com/advanced-setups-229000/workaround-for-large-music-collection-16126
    And here is a long thread on the 65k limit.
    https://en.community.sonos.com/music-services-and-sources-228994/future-of-the-65k-limit-6046321/index1.html
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    Stanley_4
    Grand Maestro
    Jun 23, 2018 5:41 AM UTC
    I'd try some testing to see if it worked for me. Make a copy of your music, use a tag editor to remove all but essential tags from the copies. Compare how many load compared to the originals.

    Might also get a few more by fiddling with album names and track titles.

    I'm not going to try this, my collection hasn't grown in several years and I can't see it growing in the future either.
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