Limit to the number of MP3 files?

[RWood]

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.

[dhbailey]

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! :-(

[dhbailey]

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.

[RWood]

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.

[Yaksha]

Originally Posted by HarryT

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.