Enthusiast II

Sonos Controller - Duplicate Album Titles

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
October 20, 2025
251 replies
3207 views

Just an update to a previously reported issue Duplicate album names queued together | Sonos Community. I have this album on my music library (apologies for some of the titles, but that’s the way it is):

The album is listed three times in the controller:

Selecting any one of the duplicate titles shows only one track:

These results are the same on the Windows, Android, and web controllers. I reindexed before collecting this info. I should add that queueing any one of the duplicate titles only adds one track to the queue.

I emailed this info to Sonos support.

Moderator Note: Removed and recorded case number

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A

Anthony_6

Collaborator II

@Anthony_6

I can’t seem to find any duplicate albums in my library of approximately 47,000 tracks. My path is Storage-Music-Genre-Artist-Album-Tracks. Is your path longer than that? Are the names of the folders in your path very long? I can’t see any reason to eliminate album folders. Could your issue be the tags have too much information? I hesitate to believe tags are a problem either as one member who posted a screenshot of his tags, which had only the necessary information, still had duplicate albums.

I’m baffled by all the folks in this community that have duplicate albums. I’m sure the issue exists. Just have no idea what causes it. Hope there is clarification eventually.

My path is a bit different. Storage-Media-Audio-Sonos-Album-Tracks

Some albums do have longish names, this one for example

Vivaldi; Four Seasons; Pachelbel; Kanon; Albinoni; Adagio [Münchinger]

but that’s about the longest one I could find.

Anthony

User117655

Prodigy II

@Anthony_6 Off hand I can't remember...If it wasn't this thread it was one related to, and probably preceding, it.

I remember at the time checking all my path lengths and track name lengths for compliance. They all complied but I also did some messing with nothing conclusive.

Google says:

Sonos limits file names to a maximum of 100 characters! for local libraries. While there is no formal specification for total path lengths, exceeding 100-128 characters! or having excessively verbose metadata can cause the Sonos indexing system to run out of memory or fail to catalog your tracks. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

User117655

Prodigy II

I'll also re-iterate I am still seeing the search result anomalies mentioned in earlier posts for, specifically, compilation albums with Album Artist of 'various artists'...

MoPac

Headliner III

@Anthony_6

I can’t seem to find any duplicate albums in my library of approximately 47,000 tracks. My path is Storage-Music-Genre-Artist-Album-Tracks. Is your path longer than that? Are the names of the folders in your path very long? I can’t see any reason to eliminate album folders. Could your issue be the tags have too much information? I hesitate to believe tags are a problem either as one member who posted a screenshot of his tags, which had only the necessary information, still had duplicate albums.

I’m baffled by all the folks in this community that have duplicate albums. I’m sure the issue exists. Just have no idea what causes it. Hope there is clarification eventually.

My path is a bit different. Storage-Media-Audio-Sonos-Album-Tracks

Some albums do have longish names, this one for example

Vivaldi; Four Seasons; Pachelbel; Kanon; Albinoni; Adagio [Münchinger]

but that’s about the longest one I could find.

That path structure does not seem very long. I’m pretty sure I have some paths with more characters. All in all this duplication problem is still baffling. Don’t know if the NAS or other storage location has anything to do with it. My library is in a SonicTransporter i5 with solid state drives: one internal & one external.

My tags are Artist-Track Name-Album-Track No.-Genre-Album Artist. All other extra tag information that comes with downloads is removed.

A

Anthony_6

Collaborator II

@Anthony_6

I can’t seem to find any duplicate albums in my library of approximately 47,000 tracks. My path is Storage-Music-Genre-Artist-Album-Tracks. Is your path longer than that? Are the names of the folders in your path very long? I can’t see any reason to eliminate album folders. Could your issue be the tags have too much information? I hesitate to believe tags are a problem either as one member who posted a screenshot of his tags, which had only the necessary information, still had duplicate albums.

I’m baffled by all the folks in this community that have duplicate albums. I’m sure the issue exists. Just have no idea what causes it. Hope there is clarification eventually.

My path is a bit different. Storage-Media-Audio-Sonos-Album-Tracks

Some albums do have longish names, this one for example

Vivaldi; Four Seasons; Pachelbel; Kanon; Albinoni; Adagio [Münchinger]

but that’s about the longest one I could find.

That path structure does not seem very long. I’m pretty sure I have some paths with more characters. All in all this duplication problem is still baffling. Don’t know if the NAS or other storage location has anything to do with it. My library is in a SonicTransporter i5 with solid state drives: one internal & one external.

My tags are Artist-Track Name-Album-Track No.-Genre-Album Artist. All other extra tag information that comes with downloads is removed.

I think it's one of those elusive things. It would be interesting to see if anyone else is using a Sonic transporter i5 to see if they are getting the issue. I can't say I've seen any posts with anyone mentioning that their storage device is a SonicTransporter i5.

I'm off now to Google SonicTransporter i5 🤣

Anthony

A

Anthony_6

Collaborator II

@Anthony_6

I can’t seem to find any duplicate albums in my library of approximately 47,000 tracks. My path is Storage-Music-Genre-Artist-Album-Tracks. Is your path longer than that? Are the names of the folders in your path very long? I can’t see any reason to eliminate album folders. Could your issue be the tags have too much information? I hesitate to believe tags are a problem either as one member who posted a screenshot of his tags, which had only the necessary information, still had duplicate albums.

I’m baffled by all the folks in this community that have duplicate albums. I’m sure the issue exists. Just have no idea what causes it. Hope there is clarification eventually.

My path is a bit different. Storage-Media-Audio-Sonos-Album-Tracks

Some albums do have longish names, this one for example

Vivaldi; Four Seasons; Pachelbel; Kanon; Albinoni; Adagio [Münchinger]

but that’s about the longest one I could find.

That path structure does not seem very long. I’m pretty sure I have some paths with more characters. All in all this duplication problem is still baffling. Don’t know if the NAS or other storage location has anything to do with it. My library is in a SonicTransporter i5 with solid state drives: one internal & one external.

My tags are Artist-Track Name-Album-Track No.-Genre-Album Artist. All other extra tag information that comes with downloads is removed.

I think it's one of those elusive things. It would be interesting to see if anyone else is using a Sonic transporter i5 to see if they are getting the issue. I can't say I've seen any posts with anyone mentioning that their storage device is a SonicTransporter i5.

I'm off now to Google SonicTransporter i5 🤣

Found it, it looks a pretty decent piece of kit for storage of audio. I don't think I'll buy one just to see if it fixes the duplicate album problem though.

Anthony

MoPac

Headliner III

@Anthony_6

They ain’t cheap. I bought mine from a friend who uses cloud servers now.

106rallye

I'll also re-iterate I am still seeing the search result anomalies mentioned in earlier posts for, specifically, compilation albums with Album Artist of 'various artists'...

Isn’t that solved by changing tags, that Sonos not sees as a problem (so they are not going to solve it)?

MoPac

Headliner III

I'll also re-iterate I am still seeing the search result anomalies mentioned in earlier posts for, specifically, compilation albums with Album Artist of 'various artists'...

Isn’t that solved by changing tags, that Sonos not sees as a problem (so they are not going to solve it)?

Sounds about right. Never been a huge fan of systems that require library indexing. Find myself listening to Dolby Atmos from Apple or Amazon most of the time. Still…. I have not found any duplicate albums in my library for some reason. Don’t know why.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

Some of the file and path lengths are related to the SMB protocol, not Sonos choices.

Same with character usage limitations.

Sonos may further restrict both, no good way to tell other than building test data and trying it.

Shame the support section here doesn't have a detailed list of the requirements, the forum might but searching them is frustrating.

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