imported playlist only partially complete


I’ve read postings in this forum about the same issue that I am having and wondering if there is a fix or workaround.

That is, a large imported playlist (from my music library) only appears to contain a fraction of the songs in the original playlist.  For example, an 8900 song playlist is imported but when added to the queue (or replacing the queue) only loads only 1200 or so songs into the queue.

I’ve read that this issue may be due to a timing limitation of the playlist import process.

Aside from a workaround like creating multiple shorter playlists from the original and importing those, are there other suggested workarounds?  I’ve taken to occasionally random sorting of the original playlist then re-importing it so that i get a different grouping..

Or maybe there’s a fix?  If the issue is related to a playlist-import-time limit, maybe there is a way to increase that time limit?  I do not think i can speed up the connection to the music library.

Thank you

data:  i use only a sonos connect - before the serial number is “1603” so i believe manufactured in March 2016.  it is wired ethernet to my gigabit network.  the music library (and playlists) are on a synology NAS which runs well (i’m able to stream 1080p and higher rez HDR video from it).  i’ve rebooted the NAS and  the Connect and i believe both are running latest firmware versions.


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10 replies

Userlevel 7
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How many tracks do you have total? If you have a 8000 item playlist, you have a large collection and may simply be reaching the limit of storage size on the old devices.

i have almost 28,000 tracks in total

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

i have almost 28,000 tracks in total


Hmm, not suspiciously large. Have you compared the original playlists with the truncated ones? Can you see a pattern to the items that are missing? Is it just the “last X” or is there some other pattern?

It is possible that the track metadata and/or file names are verbose and simply exhausting available storage in the player. Particularly for opera collections it is common for the rippers to use the first stanza as the track name and file name. As far as SONOS is concerned the file names are arbitrary and could range from 1.flac to 65000.flac. Since each physical CD is in a separate folder, my file names are simply the track number or TRK001.flac, etc. This scheme allows me to more easily identify the tracks if I need to find something in the future. Note that there is no burning need to use three digit track numbers for actual CD’s because they will never have more than 99 tracks.

I have some opera but not a lot 

When I try to browse my larger imported playlists in Sonos, I get an u"to browse music" error.

No problem with shorter imported playlists.

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

I have some opera but not a lot 

When I try to browse my larger imported playlists in Sonos, I get an u"to browse music" error.

No problem with shorter imported playlists.

Oh, that sounds like the timeout issue more than a storage-full issue. If on Windows try the same operation in my app (see profile).

thank you - using PU i can see the list - it looks like it’s in alpha order by artist and only into the “A”s so on a portion of the list.  

does PU have an import or library refresh function that would pull in the entire playlist?

this is interesting - thank you!

and yes i agree it looks like timeout as it takes quite some time even for PU to display the whole list

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

Glad you made some progress with my Windows app.

My iOS app allows for playlist import/export to certain formats, but I’m not sure if it will help your specific requirements here. You might be able to use it in conjunction with SoundIIZ to further slice n dice your playlists, though I have only used SoundIIZ with music service playlists myself, not old-school local file playlists.

so using your program i know that even if i sort my playlist before importing it to sonos it appears to import in alpha order.   So even that workaround will not work.  so i would need to break it into multiples i guess.

or go back to the drawing board and see if can find something better than sonos for my purposes … it ain’t heos which i also have but has a 500 song queue limitation.

does not look like SoundIIZ will import my playlists/content from my personal library to any streaming service which could then be used with sonos.  Also I do have some content that is unavailable on any streaming service.

Thanks for trying and yes your app did provide some useful info.

For testing purposes build a fake library of very short tracks with very short file names and metadata. Start with a folder of track file names such as ‘T01.mp3’, ‘T02.mp3’, through ‘T99.mp3’, and store these in album folders ‘A01’, ‘A02’, etc. You can then use these Albums to build an Artist folders ‘F01’, ‘F02’, etc. Each layer is built with a copy and rename of tracks, then album folders, and finally artist folders. The first 99 tracks are the most tedious to build, but the process snowballs quickly.

The SONOS library can include 16 shares. If you have large shares of 20000, 10000, 5000, 1000, etc. tracks you can quickly build libraries of various sizes by including shares, then experiment with playlists of various sizes. Take care to avoid exact duplicate Artist-Album-Track because duplicates will be discarded by the indexer.

Computer science types can speculate over the consequences in terms of index space utilization and run time because of the very similar names at each level.