Enthusiast II

Recent Sonos update is broken on non-ASCII characters in file names

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
May 14, 2021
45 replies
1657 views

It appears that the recent Sonos update, 13.1, is broken with regards to non-ASCII characters in files when updating the library. I have a job that daily generate 30 playlists, and the format of the name of the playlists is Pnn Artist - Albuim.m3u. They are located on a NAS from Synology that I have had for quite a few years.

For instance, there is a file of which the name is P05 - Järngustav - Tiden läker inga sår.m3u. But in the Windows controller, this appears as P05 - Jrngustav - Tiden lker inga sr.m3u. In the Windows controller I see a square with a cross in instead of the å and the ä. Another example is P23 Cicala Mvta - Live at 磔磔- 結成20周年記念.m3u. Here all Kanji characters comes out as question marks. And it is not only matter of prettiness; when I open the list, there is nothing there, and I can’t put it into the queue.

This was working without problem until yesterday, until it was broken. It obviously needs to be fixed - and fixed soon!

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Corry P

Sonos Staff

<Rampant speculation> so the SL has a different SMB stack than every other device? Perhaps it is a sign of a “modern” SMB implementation that will eventually support SMBv2 or v3? </RampantSpeculation>

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

Corry P

Sonos Staff

<Rampant speculation> so the SL has a different SMB stack than every other device? Perhaps it is a sign of a “modern” SMB implementation that will eventually support SMBv2 or v3? </RampantSpeculation>

This is not strictly true, but more humorous than the standard “nothing to share” response. :grin:

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

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Erland SommarskogAuthor

Enthusiast II

Now I have gotten two updates to Sonos since this thread - alas the problem is still there. I can work around by requesting a manual update of the music library - for some reason the scheduled one runs on one of the One SL. Too bad for those who only Sonos One SL and no other player.

H

harrysmith0

Avid Contributor I

I have this problem. I think it’s the same. None of my music will play if either the track name or the folder holding it contains a non-English alphabet character. I have loads like this.The sonos player correctly displays the names but when you ask it to play the track the Sonos Player says ‘Unable to play xxx -the file xxx cannot be found.’

I tried disconnecting my Sonos One SL as instructed but I still get the error on other speakers. Is there a solution?

I manually updated the music library but it does not fix it for me.

Ken_Griffiths

I have this problem. I think it’s the same. None of my music will play if either the track name or the folder holding it contains a non-English alphabet character. I have loads like this.The sonos player correctly displays the names but when you ask it to play the track the Sonos Player says ‘Unable to play xxx -the file xxx cannot be found.’

I tried disconnecting my Sonos One SL as instructed but I still get the error on other speakers. Is there a solution?

I manually updated the music library but it does not fix it for me.

Having manually corrected the characters, did you re-index/update your library within the Sonos App?

E

Erland SommarskogAuthor

Enthusiast II

I tried disconnecting my Sonos One SL as instructed but I still get the error on other speakers. Is there a solution?

I manually updated the music library but it does not fix it for me.

Did you try reindexing after disconnecting the One SL?

I got a feeling that it might have spread to other players, since I had problem after the most recent update with manual updates from my Windows controller one day. But I did not have time to investigate it, and instead I disconnected my One SL pair, and since then the automatic reindexing has been working correctlyh.

Ken_Griffithis:

Having manually corrected the characters, did you re-index/update your library within the Sonos App?

I can’t speak for Harry, but why do you think that the non-English characters would be errors tthat need “correction”? They are certainly not an error in my collection!

Ken_Griffiths

Ken_Griffithis:

Having manually corrected the characters, did you re-index/update your library within the Sonos App?

I can’t speak for Harry, but why do you think that the non-English characters would be errors tthat need “correction”? They are certainly not an error in my collection!

I think we are perhaps at cross purposes here.. I haven’t mentioned anything about ‘errors’ in my post, nor did I ever suggest that anything needed correcting?

My post simply asks harrysmith0 if he had re-indexed his library after he stated he had ‘manually’ updated his library. I assumed by that he had altered some of the metadata characters that was causing his tracks to not play. If so he may have needed to re-index his library first, before attempting to play the ‘manually’ updated tracks once again.

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harrysmith0

Avid Contributor I

This morning the Sonos App was back to normal. I can now play titles containing non-English characters. Maybe performing a manual Music Library Update stops it working? There will have been an automatic update during the night.

Alan Parkyn

Avid Contributor I

I've experienced the same issue where the artists and albums containing non-English characters e.g. Scandinavian we're not appearing in my music library, despite having been visible previously. After lots of testing I can confirm that the issue has nothing to do with my Synology NAS and relates to Sonos systems where the Associated Product is a One SL.

I have 2x One SL in my system and one of these was my Associated Product. Each time I updated the music library I had lots of missing artists & their albums from artists such as Trentemøller.

After some testing, the following work around resolved the issue for me:

1. I powered off both One SL and restarted the Sonos Controller which forced a change to the Associated Product.

2. I then powered on both One SLs and manually updated my music library and the missing Artists and albums reappeared.

It is disappointing that this issue has been known about for a couple of months and Sonos have not yet provided a fix. Hopefully a fix will be provided very shortly.

I have contacted Sonos to ask them to let me know when this issue will be fixed or to arrange to replace my One SLs with Ones.

I hope this helps others in the short term and that Sonos provide a long-term fix.

al_657

Alan Parkyn

Avid Contributor I

PS. I meant to mention that to find your Associated Product:

1. go to 'About my system' in your Sonos Controller (mobile or desktop)

2. note the IP address of your Associated Product

3. look up that IP address up from your list of Sonos components. If it's a One SL you will have the issue explained in my earlier post and may wish to force a change to a non-One SL component using my work-round.

To state the obvious, my work-around will not work if you system only comprises One SL(s).

As far as I'm aware, it is not possible to set a component as a static Associated Product and so, like for me when I woke up this morning, my Associated Product had changed back to one of my One SLs, which when I re-indexed my music library, made the artists and albums with international characters disappear again. I had to re-do my work-around and got the temporary fix.

A permanent fix is required to fully resolve this issue and I would imagine is a relatively simple fix to get indexing working correctly on a l One SL as it does across all other Sonos components. If Sonos drag their heals then I will be requesting Ones to replace my One SLs.

I hope this helps others.

al_657

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