Trending Lyricist I

Sonos can't process large library, even if it is well below the 65,000 track limit... unless split into separate folders

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
June 14, 2022
24 replies
2056 views

I have a fairly large music library (~27,000 tracks), which is well below the 65,000 track limit. Recently, after adding some more tracks, I discovered that the Sonos library was only showing about 10% of the tracks… Somehow in the import/indexing process it had broken. I don’t know for sure, but while my library has about 800 album artists, it has far more actual artists (e.g. compilations), and the tracks I recently imported were compilations with many artists. So I suspect that the problem is related to the number of artists.

I was able to resolve the issue by splitting my library (on my NAS drive) between a compilations folder and “everything else.” When I did, Sonos was able to import/index the whole library. What that tells me is that I haven’t hit some limit for the library in general (i.e. it can handle all 27,000 tracks) but that the import/index process can’t handle all of the tracks when it runs the indexing process (possibly because of teh number of artists, but that’s just a guess.)

The problem is resolved, at least for now, but I worry that as I add music I will hit this limit again, and continuing to split my music library isn’t a great solution.

Has anyone else experienced this?

This seems to be something that Sonos could easily fix, as it clearly isn’t running up against any hard limit (e.g. memory or similar), otherwise it wouldn’t be able to handle my whole library (which it does.) i.e. This really seems like a bug in the import/indexing process that could be fixed.

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Outburst

Enthusiast II

Certainly not a general issue, I have no issues with ca. 45k files in my music library.

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brennan.carleyAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

. If I can resolve the problem by splitting my library into two folders, which results in the Sonos software running the indexing process two times (i.e. once for each folder) but writing the results into a single index (to be stored in memory) then it is almost certainly an easy fix.

I have not read the whole thread, so I may have missed something - but per the quoted are you saying that with this, your use case is fully addressed?

Not fully addressed. I have found a workaround, at least for now. but somewhere there is either a bug (e.g. a memory leak) that can be fixed, or a design limit that is unrelated to the physical memory limits of the devices, and which therefore can also be fixed.

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brennan.carleyAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

The running time theory might be it though, although I can’t imagine why Sonos would cap the running time and simply give up after some period of time.

Implied as part of the indexing process is a hash or sorting scheme. These are surprisingly complex processes that have exponential time penalties if the input data is accidentally in the wrong order. One of the simplest sort schemes is blazingly fast if the data is accidentally in the correct order, but is one of the worst possible choices if the data is accidentally in reverse order.

I think that a fundamental SONOS design philosophy is not to allow a system to be trapped in an endless loop of some sort. The most graceful bailout from an apparent endless loop is a time limit. At least there is some sort of error message indicating that the situation is somewhat under control. In the case of our library index, it is possible that, if the process was allowed to run for a few more hours, it could complete normally. I think that each share is treated as an independent block of files, resulting in a smaller time exponent for each of the smaller, more or less independent blocks.

Possibly the case, and as a software developer with Comp Sci degree, I am familiar with exponential algorithms. Your comment that “each share is treated as an independent block of files” is undoubtedly correct, which is why splitting my library into two shares resolves the problem. And that also points us at the correct fix, i.e. it should be very straightforward to modify the code so it treats each folder or subfolder “as an independent block of files” and therefore limits the upper bound of the hashing scheme.

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brennan.carleyAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Sonos staff can see data you can’t on your Sonos, it might be worth calling and starting a series of tests with them to see if the diagnostics you can submit or their other tools can show them anything that they can share with you.

Did that, and spent probably 8 hours or so (across multiple calls). A lot of that was fruitless (“are your files in MP3 format or some protected format?”) and to be honest I got to a resolution more by thinking about where the problem might be and through trial and error on possible circumventions (e.g. trying to import JUST the newly added tracks to confirm there wasn’t something in those tracks causing it to blow up… which confirmed that the problem was not in the tracks themselves, but in the aggregate of all the tracks… e.g. the # of tracks, or the # of artists, or some other variable that exceeded a limit in the indexing software.)

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brennan.carleyAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Certainly not a general issue, I have no issues with ca. 45k files in my music library.

Which is why I don’t think the problem is with the number of tracks (i.e. I have fewer tracks than you do, and <½ the guideline limit. Which is why I suspect that the issue is in something like the number of artists (which is large as I have a ~200 albums that are compilations with about 2,000 artists on them plus another 800 artists on non-compilations...) My guess, and it is just a guess, is that there is a table used somewhere in the indexing process that keeps track of artists and it is hitting a limit (that the software doesn’t check for and generate an error message for).

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anmatr

Trending Lyricist I

Hi,

just wanted to add that I have a similar issue and am still working on resolving it. I might try you split into multiple folders next.

No selections are available - again and again - no errors reported

To me (also a developer) it is hard to accept that even the Sonos support team don’t have enough information to find out why the index suddenly is gone. Also some visibility during a indexing process is needed, like progress.

Very expensive hardware and appalling software is my verdict - I cannot recommend it.

buzz

Grand Maestro

On the Windows Desktop Controller sometimes there is an error message in Help → Error Log… if you’ve initiated the Library Index from that controller.

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anmatr

Trending Lyricist I

On the Windows Desktop Controller sometimes there is an error message in Help → Error Log… if you’ve initiated the Library Index from that controller.

Right, but that is a very much useless log as it just reflects the errors that are displayed on the screen. No further details or reasons for the errors are given. In fact when I build up my library now on 3 folders I kept getting this error over and over and just ignored and continued till eventually it all worked fine. So the error stating that the drive is unavailable is flat out wrong as the mapped NAS drive was there all the time.

Ken_Griffiths

On the Windows Desktop Controller sometimes there is an error message in Help → Error Log… if you’ve initiated the Library Index from that controller.

Right, but that is a very much useless log as it just reflects the errors that are displayed on the screen. No further details or reasons for the errors are given. In fact when I build up my library now on 3 folders I kept getting this error over and over and just ignored and continued till eventually it all worked fine. So the error stating that the drive is unavailable is flat out wrong as the mapped NAS drive was there all the time.

Maybe load the entire local library into a tag editor, like MP3Tag for example and see if there any errors or special characters in the tags and correct them accordingly… also check the Cover Art too.

Here are some of the Sonos library limitations, that I have gathered from other posts here in the community:

Field Name Character Limits

Artists - 76
Album - 92
Track - 100
Genre - 22
File name - 100

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anmatr

Trending Lyricist I

On the Windows Desktop Controller sometimes there is an error message in Help → Error Log… if you’ve initiated the Library Index from that controller.

Right, but that is a very much useless log as it just reflects the errors that are displayed on the screen. No further details or reasons for the errors are given. In fact when I build up my library now on 3 folders I kept getting this error over and over and just ignored and continued till eventually it all worked fine. So the error stating that the drive is unavailable is flat out wrong as the mapped NAS drive was there all the time.

Maybe load the entire local library into a tag editor, like MP3Tag for example and see if there any errors or special characters in the tags and correct them accordingly… also check the Cover Art too.

Here are some of the Sonos library limitations, that I have gathered from other posts here in the community:

Field Name Character Limits

Artists - 76
Album - 92
Track - 100
Genre - 22
File name - 100

Hey thanks for this information, I appreciate it, but I am already aware of this and I am using this already. But really it has nothing to do with faulty or oversized metadata. If you read my post here:

No selections are available - again and again - no errors reported

It states that I had this error coming over and over and did NO change at all to the files. Just by ignoring that error and doing the indexing again it eventually worked. But no error anywhere to see. So this does not point to any faulty/oversized metadata at all (because nothing on the files was changed). All I am pointing out and trying to make people (and Sonos!) aware is that the software that they deliver to a very pricy hardware is mediocre, faulty, incomplete and tedious to use. The only way I could manage the library is to split it into 3 folders with each of them having about 90 folders.

It takes far too much time to make use of the music library features.

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