Sansa E280v1 Rockbox Syncing, Media Monkey and Database

[androo235]

I have synced about 2600 tracks to the native drive of the Sansa in MSC mode running Rockbox (RB) and connected to my W7 64 bit machine running Media Monkey (MM).

My situation:

The RB Stats application reveals that all files/songs were transferred (or at least the counts match up so that seems a reasonable interpretation). However if I boot into the native firmware it sees nothing at all. This may not matter but I mention it.

Back in RB I think all the tracks (Albums) appear in Files/Music but not all appear in the database (I have reinitialised it several times)

Some albums although appearing in the database correctly have been put in the file system as Files/Music/Unknown - Track name (that's to say that the artist name isn't picked up though it is in the tags - I've checked). These will play from either location.

Others appear in the file system but not in the database. These will not play.

Some (well most to be fair) appear correctly in the file system and in the db and play from either location.

I am able to play the tracks that appear in the db but not those only in the file system unless I connect the Sansa to my PC in which case it can find all the tracks and play any of them (from the Sansa drive of course not the original PC source).

What is going on?

Any help or ideas appreciated (incidentally I have an open topic in general discussion related to this - not quite the same it concerns spanning the native storage in the Sansa and the minidisc).

[androo235]

I have posted two other topics on these boards but neither has been responded to yet.

I have rebooted, re-installed, recovered and formatted several times now and have spent hours tidying up my music collection on my PC both filenames and locations as well as tags and artwork. I am now only attempting to sync a sample of my songs (24 songs, 2 albums, source ripped from cd - format wma) that have not been appearing in the database (though they do appear in the files).

Still no success. I am at a loss.

I have noticed two other possible problems:

The database, even though there are now only 24 songs on the player says that it has found 485 items and then seems to get stuck there (it says press Prev to return).

The player does not dismount/eject from the pc from within Media Monkey which says the drive is in use - when it isn't and nothing else is open. Sometimes it will eject if I use the windows app for that - not always though.

Some help would really be appreciated as I'm beginning to think that Rockbox despite it's apparent advantages (mainly, for me, access to an 8gb sd card)  is a little flaky and I would be better off going back to the standard firmware.

[LambdaCalculus]

Please do not post multiple posts about the same question across the forums. If someone hasn't answered yet, it's because someone with the knowledge you seek hasn't come by to read your post yet. Don't worry; someone will be around that can help you out, you just have to wait for a while.

[Chronon]

I have synced about 2600 tracks to the native drive of the Sansa in MSC mode running Rockbox (RB) and connected to my W7 64 bit machine running Media Monkey (MM).

My situation:

The RB Stats application reveals that all files/songs were transferred (or at least the counts match up so that seems a reasonable interpretation). However if I boot into the native firmware it sees nothing at all. This may not matter but I mention it.

Back in RB I think all the tracks (Albums) appear in Files/Music but not all appear in the database (I have reinitialised it several times)

If tracks aren't showing up in the database then they probably aren't playable by Rockbox.  Is this the case?  Can you play these tracks from the file browser or not?

Some albums although appearing in the database correctly have been put in the file system as Files/Music/Unknown - Track name (that's to say that the artist name isn't picked up though it is in the tags - I've checked). These will play from either location.

This sounds like a media monkey issue.  It doesn't seem to have anything to do with Rockbox.

Others appear in the file system but not in the database. These will not play.

This is to be expected.  The database won't index files if they can't be played.

Some (well most to be fair) appear correctly in the file system and in the db and play from either location.

I am able to play the tracks that appear in the db but not those only in the file system unless I connect the Sansa to my PC in which case it can find all the tracks and play any of them (from the Sansa drive of course not the original PC source).

What is going on?

Any help or ideas appreciated (incidentally I have an open topic in general discussion related to this - not quite the same it concerns spanning the native storage in the Sansa and the minidisc).

What kind of files are the ones that won't play in Rockbox?  It seems you are trying to sync and play an unsupported file type.

[androo235]

Hi Chronon thanks for responding.

All my files are WMA or MP3 and so RB should play them.

I have 2620 tracks that I wish to transfer to the device. In fact all of the tracks have transferred to the device - I can tell this in three ways,

1. By browsing for a random sample manually in the "Files" section of RB and confirming that the files are there. They are.
2. By going to Plugins/Applications/Stats which tells me that the device has 2620 music files.
3. If I boot back into the standard Sansa firmware all 2620 tracks are found and correctly sorted by that db and all can be played.

The RB db identifies only 1859 songs (it would be nice if there were an easy way to find this out - although I have found one it is roundabout). Those that are not in the RB db but do show in the file system cannot be played by RB.

One last point. I also have an Iphone and these same 2620 tracks synced to that without any problems too. This says to me that it's not MM that's the problem.

I have compiled some stats and summaries which indicate that the files not in the RB db are all WMA except for one. On the other hand lots of WMA's are in the db and RB plays them. See attached pdf of an XL file (I have much more detail but the restrictions on attachments scuppered me).

I'm still at a loss.

Any ideas?

[Chronon]

Is there any pattern to the tracks that won't play?  WMA can bear DRM.  Could that be the issue?

If files are being put in /Music/Unknown despite having valid metadata, this would indeed seem to be an MM issue.  Rockbox doesn't have any control over the paths of files that you sync.  A Rockboxed player just acts as a UMS device.  Files are written to paths determined by the host.  Neither Apple nor SanDisk firmwares will reveal this issue because they don't provide any file browser. 

[androo235]

I know this post is very old (it's about it's first birthday) but I have an update. I eventually gave up with Rockbox - I left it on the player but booted into the standard Sansa environment so as to access all of my tracks. I don't sync very often (looks like about once a year) but let my PC db grow and develop a little before updating the Sansa all in one go. Well I did this recently - adding a couple of hundred new songs, removing others, adding new and modified lists and replacing a few duff rips. Lo and behold the Rockbox software seems to have found everything and now appears to work fine.

I have also Switched to the Rock Sansa display theme which has much improved the devices usability and I have begun to discoverer some of the other tricks that RB can now make the Sansa perform (I don't recall that theme being there last year - I guess it was but I missed it somehow). I particularly like the tuner - now I know how pitch imperfect my singing voice is.

So only one gripe remains with Rockbox. It's a small one and one unlikely to be addressed I suppose, but I mention it in passing. It is that the Sansa remote supplied with the charging/docking station and preamp (see this http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/07/05/sandisk_sansa_base_station/1 ) doesn't work when the Sansa is running Rockbox. Shame.

Still, to end on a more positive note I'm now happy with RB and booting into it in preference to the standard Sansa environment - I especially like how fast it boots, it's pretty much on and ready to use immediately.

[androo235]

I spoke too soon. Reading through this thread again I remember that the RB plugin, Stats, which tells you how many songs are on the device is not the same as the number of songs found by the RB db. Still, it's a lot better than it was. The device has 2722 songs on it which matches the number of songs that I expected to transfer from Media Monkey and the number of songs found by the native Sansa software. However the RB database finds only 2620 songs (so it's missing about 4% of the songs it should/could find). That's a lot better than last year when 800 or so were missing from an expected 2600. I can probably live with this and what's missing may eventually come to light with use and perhaps a cause and so a solution thereby suggest itself.

[[Saint]]

As a small note, the count the database gives during init isn't solely audio files. It is listing every file on the device. This can be witnessed by attempting to init the database with no audio at all present. The database init will not succeed, but you will still see the count increment.


[Saint]