I have found out several things, in trying to settle into the Reader this week:

1) there seems to be a limit to the number of MP3 files which the Reader can read from a memory card. I put 738 files on a 4GB SD card, and the Reader says 400 files next to Audio. Moving to the 400th song and then trying to move to the next song moves back to the first song, so there's obviously a 400 song limit.

2) the Reader plays the music sequentially, not a random order, which will get pretty monotonous after a while. Perhaps a future system update will include a random playback possibility. Or maybe I've just missed something but I don't think so.

3) I thought that perhaps the limit to 400 songs was because of the stated limit of 2GB on SD cards, compared to the stated limit of 4GB on Memory Sticks so I bought a 4GB memory stick and copied the MP3 files over to it and the Reader still only shows 400 songs. :angry:

4) I removed the extra 738 MP3 files which weren't being recognized, leaving 400 song files on the SD card. BUT, when I put the SD card in the Reader, it now shows that there are only 242 songs. Curious! :huh:

So it seems that the playback of MP3 files, which I knew from the start to be weak, is weaker than I had thought, and I am very curious as to why it is only showing a certain number of files.

I'm going to check and make sure that they all have the necessary data in the song name field of the MP3 files, to be sure I haven't messed up there.

I'll report back when/if I learn anything new.

If anybody has any ideas of why all this is happening, I'll be happy to read them!

The quality of the playback is just fine, it's only the file-system stuff I'm miffed about.

Replying to my own message I thought I'd share further experiences:

1) I checked the mp3 tags on all the files and they are fine;
2) I renamed all the files because I had initially named them with the track number and title and thought that might be causing some sort of glitch;
3) after renaming the 738 files which are on the memory stick, which had previously shown there were 400 song files, the Reader now tells me there are 327 audio files present. Go figure!

What am I doing wrong?

I haven't used the MP3 player at all yet; I may start doing so for podcasts-only. But take everything I say with a grain of salt since I haven't used it at all yet.

Anyhow, wasn't there a limit to 2GB period before the upgrade? Maybe there's some kind of glitch related to the MP3 storage system over 2GB - or some other kind of upper limit to MP3 storage in sheer file size. How much memory do those 242 or 327 files take up? Are they remotely similar in overall file size?

ETA: Are any of the songs not making it outside the MP3 specs? From the Op Guide: 32-320kbps bit rate (doesn't say that variable bit rate supported,) frequency 22.05 or 44.1 kHz. I don't see anything in the Op Guide about a maximum storage limit on MP3s, but it still wouldn't surprise me if there were, or a glitch as above.

Replying to my own message I thought I'd share further experiences:

1) I checked the mp3 tags on all the files and they are fine;
2) I renamed all the files because I had initially named them with the track number and title and thought that might be causing some sort of glitch;
3) after renaming the 738 files which are on the memory stick, which had previously shown there were 400 song files, the Reader now tells me there are 327 audio files present. Go figure!

What am I doing wrong?

I have no idea what you are doing wrong, but since the playback is sequential by track title anyway, I used some internet freeware (easy audio cutter) to create a few CD-length tracks. I have tracks that are entire albums, or in the case of classical, entire symphonies -- makes the music managable in terms of finding what you want to play, and you are unlikely to run into any kind of hidden track limit when those 700 tracks become 50 :-)

Cheers,

ScS

Not sure if that is your problem since I encountered in a different context (on my mmc Nokia 770 card, and heard people complaining on mp3 players too) but many times there is a limit on the number of files read under the root folder on a card.

Make several folders and put your mp3 files in them not in the root folder and check then.

I wonder if you take a pretty short MP3 and just name it 500 unique names so it's under 2gb if the Reader would still limit to 400 or would show 500.

I think this problem is related to the FAT system on the memory card.
I don't know the figures offhand but I thought you could only have 512 files on the root for a FAT 16 system.
If you put your files into folders you can store many more.
I also think the file names will affect the number of files that can be read.
Long file names = less files read.

I don't have a Sony Reader so I don't know if it can read FAT32 which does not have the limitations of FAT 16.

It's not the number of files in a single folder, because I just reorganized them all into separate folders, so there are no files in the root directory, and each folder has no more than 30 files in it, and it still reads well under 400 files.

I think it may have to do with the file which the reader writes to the memory card under the Sony/Cache folder.

I'm going to look into combining the songs into longer, CD-length single files (since playback is sequential anyway).

I'll try that and see how many songs I can fit on the Reader and be able to play them.

I'll keep you all posted.

To be honest, I think the ability to play MP3 files was rather an "afterthought" that some marketing wizard told Sony that the Reader had to have. It has many problems (eg, there's no "stop" - just a "pause" - and it's very easy to inadvertantly leave it playing and drain the battery flat).

Personally, I use the Reader for reading, and my iPod for music and audio books. Each is the perfect tool for the job. I know I can play MP3 files on my Reader and read eBooks on my iPod, but that's not what either was really designed for.

Well, I'm stumped, myself.

One thing I'd suggest is, can you try the same thing with a smaller card, maybe? Like LaughingVulcan, I remember an 'official' 2 GB limit, too, so I'd be interested to now if you see something similar on a smaller card.

I think you're the first to do an actual file inventory on a 4 GB, so the reports of them working, might simply be a matter of us not realizing they were only partly working. :shrug:

There is no known limit that I found.

I loaded a 2 GB San Disk SD card with 740 mp3 files and inserted it while the Reader was on. In less than 2 minutes the wait arrows faded and and the Audio section reported 740 songs. So far so good.

I then removed the card and added another 321 mp3s. After reinserting the Audio read 1,061 songs. To test if they would play, I played a sample of them. No problem in playing them. I then removed the card and deleted the files.

I'm going to try it on the 2GB Sandisk SD cards -- I have great frustration with the 4GB SD card (I know it didn't say they were supported ) as well as with the 4GB Memory Stick, which the documentation does say IS supported.

I did find that things worked better when I used the Connect software to load the mp3 files onto the card, and I also discovered a couple of corrupted files which may have been part of the original frustration, but even with those missing the most I can get is 2GB of audio files before the computer tells me "device not available."

I think that anything above 2GB, even on memory sticks, may be limited to books only.

I'll keep trying.

Thank you for your experiments to help me out!

Well, on my 2GB Sandisk UltraII SD card, I copied 595 MP3 files. The Sony Reader tells me I have 438 audio files. This is what I've been running into right along -- Windows Explorer showing that I have a certain number of files on the memory card (apparently it doesn't matter which size/format of card I have) and the Reader telling me a different number.

I've put them all in the Sony Reader / Audio folder. Are you putting them into other folders? I've tried that and it never tells me an accurate count. It tells me an accurate count of the number of books I have on the memory card, and it also tells me an accurate number of MP3 files when I have below 331.

I'm about to give up on it, unless someone tells me a different folder structure which works for them.

Thanks!

My folder structure was straight from my music server. In the root was the artist as a folder, below that were the albums each in their own folder, and in each of those folders were the mp3 files.

For "fun" I copied a playlist and it was ignored.

Now I did all of my card loading outside of CONNECT, straight to the card.

You mentioned earlier that there were a few ill formed mp3s that did not show up but the number that you are showing vs what you loaded seems too far afield to be ill formed files alone. Could it be that the tags of the files are not correct or that many resolve to one as when the artist and track are both blank? Could it be a problem with v2 or v3 tagging of mp3s?

Good ideas -- I checked that and there were a few with blank ID tag fields, but not enough empty tags to account for the wide discrepancy in numbers. All my MP3 files are either v2 tagged or not tagged -- I don't have any v3 tags.

Since you have used a folder structure based in the root directory of your card, I'll try building such a thing and see if it makes a difference -- I know I'll get things right eventually.

And thank you for telling me how you loaded the card -- I did seem to have better luck through Connect, but never quite accurate counts. I'll try the smaller number of files in many different folders. Someone had mentioned that earlier in this thread and I had tried it, but perhaps my folder structure wasn't correct or I still had too many mp3 files in a single folder.

I'll keep plugging away -- thanks for your insights!

Any mp3 file that is not tagged will not show up in the Reader. It will resolve to blank and be ignored just as an empty tag would be.

Thank you for pointing that out -- guess I'll be doing a lot of editing of tags to be sure they're all accurate and unique! :-(

If anybody still cares: :-)

Well, after many different experiments, what I am finding is that even though the Reader manual mentions specifically the 4GB Memory Stick, which would indicate to me that it can handle that size stick (especially since it also only specifically mentions a 2GB SD card) in reality at least for my reader, it can only handle 2GB of stored data, whether books or audio.

Using the Connect software, my 4GB card shows up as being 3.8GB (I expect that for formatting uses up some of the storage space) and the moment I try to put anything which moves the card below 1.8GB available space, I get an error message which states that the device is no longer available. If I remove some files so the level rises above 1.8GB available, the device becomes available for new data again.

If I use Windows Explorer and simply copy the files to get beyond that limit, the files don't all show up. This happens whether or not I have books stored on the card along with the MP3 files, and it happens whether or not I have the mp3 files all in one folder or stored in smaller numbers in different folders.

This is the same action I found with the 4GB SD card I experimented with.

So as long as I remain at or under 2GB of data on the memory card, all my mp3 files work just fine.

So from my experiments, it is obvious that the limit isn't on the number of mp3 files but rather the limit is on the amount of storage space the Reader recognizes.

I looked in the cache.xml which the reader stores in the Reader/Database folder on the memory card and when I put more than 2GB of audio files on the stick there are a lot of entries which start out with "<corrupted" where the other entries start out with "<audio" and there is no evident reason for which files get that "corrupted" entry. At first I was afraid the files might be corrupted, so I deleted them and then found that other songs which had previously had legitimate entries in the cache file now had the corrupted entries.

It's all very curious, but as long as I keep the stored data at or below 2GB everything's fine. If anybody has gotten different results with a 4GB memory stick, I'd be delighted to know the brand/model of memory stick you're using. Mine is the SanDisk 4GB Memory Stick Pro.

The answer is simple, get a 2 GB memory for the Reader. By your description your 4 GB gives only ~ 1 GB of space. This is perhaps an internal memory allocation table that the Reader cannot load all of from the 4 GB memory card and therefore files become corrupted. There may also be a disconnect between the size the memory card thinks a file allocation unit is and the size the Reader thinks it is. I don't know the internals of the Reader or the specific formatting of the memory card you are using so this is at best a guess.

To be honest, I think the ability to play MP3 files was rather an "afterthought" that some marketing wizard told Sony that the Reader had to have. It has many problems (eg, there's no "stop" - just a "pause" - and it's very easy to inadvertantly leave it playing and drain the battery flat).

Personally, I use the Reader for reading, and my iPod for music and audio books. Each is the perfect tool for the job. I know I can play MP3 files on my Reader and read eBooks on my iPod, but that's not what either was really designed for.

I bought the Reader to more or less replace my iPod. I don't have a lot of music (maybe 1GB) and being able to read and listen to music at the same time was one of the reasons I bought it. I think at least a "random" feature would be a nice addition. Also, when a song title starts with "A" or "The" it should really go off of the first letter of the next word. And I'm way too lazy to go through and change the Title property of my songs to start with the Artist name. :p