Building audio database

My Xpand 128GB has 70GB of audio. I do understand that building the audio database for so many files will take some time, but my battery is dead before the build is complete. Obviously, there’s no way to charge the phone and keep the drive connected to the device. Will my battery always give out before the build is complete, or does the build pick up where it left off? Is there some way for me to build the database myself and send it to the Xpand drive? Suggestions?

No one can tell me how the app builds the databse? If the build is archived incrementally? 

This process has wiped my battery 3 consecutive days. Should I give it up?

Bueler?

70GB is a lot of music so it is going to take some time to build the database for that. As a work around you should be able to use the file view. From the file view you should see the folder structure you have on the iXpand and browse your music via the folder structure like you would see it in windows explorer. 

You could also try using a adapter that splits the lightning port into two ports like the one linked below.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/09/08/belkin-announces-simultaneous-lightning-headphone-and-charging-adapter-for-iphone-7 

Thanks for replying.

Can you tell me how the database is built? Is it saved incrementally?

I’m not sure about buying another product (which may not pass power through both ports simultaneously), unless I know this product will address the issue. Does the 128 GB USB 3.0 model need power from the iDevice too?

Just read up on the dongle you linked:

The RockStar delivers power in to your iPhone/iPad, and only supports Lightning Audio. It does not support syncing or any other USB data, or similar protocol like Serial or UART.


The RockStar delivers power in to your iPhone/iPad, and only supports Lightning Audio. It does not support syncing or any other USB data, or similar protocol like Serial or UART.


good catch. I didn’t see that. 

 

If you look at the music view do you see some of the meta data there? If so it would seem it is building the database incrementally. 

 

Have you tried looking at the music in file view? That also may be a work around you could use. 

Hi,

I bought this product yesterday and found same issue with the audio DB building.

Slow, with app shutdowns and freezes.

In my case, I bought the 128Gb model and I started with 100Gb of music… :slight_smile:

I have a 5s iphone but I tried with a 6s and the performance is better but… drain the battery in the same way.

Just added 2 albums to my 32g ixpand and it is still rebuilding the audio database 10 minutes later.

Sandisk, can we please have a PC application that builds the database before connecting to phone/ipad?

Graham

I’m struggling with the same problem and trying to encourage much needed improvement in this area. As it is, it doesn’t work.

How anyone thought this was an acceptable solution is beyond me. My guess is they never even tried to fill a disk with music files. Sad, very sad.

So after working through the customer service chain being guided to reformat my disk, re install the app, load the music in small chunks - none of which solved anything, I got this message from Customer service.

"Dear John,

I appreciate your time and patience. We are aware of this issue that you are facing. Loading large amount of music files results in the database taking an extremely long time to complete. We would like to thank you for your feedback and we will pass this to the development team. We are currently working on this issue and will release a fix in future. However, we do not have any specific date or timeline when the update will be released. As a work around I would recommend you to use folder view to browse by folder to play music. We understand and acknowledge that this is not ideal, however currently this is the only work around we can offer. In the current implementation, genre sorts on song but album."

It’s pretty clear to me that they shipped a product they never tested.

It’s curious that the  music can be played from files but not when you launch the music player. The music player seems to get lost formating audio files and formating thumbnails. Why does it need to format audio files for the music player but not when you play music from the file system? And if processing thumbnails is what is taking all the processing time then they should just add a switch to disable thumbnails - until they figure out a better solution.

The really sad thing is that SanDisk doesn’t bother to post a bug description and a guide to how one can work around it. That would save a lot of time and effort for everyone!

Here’s what I suggest for someone trying to work with a large music data base that is composed mostly of traditional “albums”.

Create a file for each genre. Add another file within each genre for each artist. Within each artist file add a file for each album.

For the most part, iTunes created a file for each artist and within that a file for each album already for me so it was mostly a matter of moving the artist file to the correct genre file that I created. Complication albums required a bit more work. Forget about using artwork.

For a large music library that was created by iTunes this can be a fair amout of work but I found that it made my SanDisk library managable. And it does seem to work - just don’t launch the buggy and ill-conceived music player, i.e. the music buttion. Find the album you want through the file system and play that. Yes, this is lame for an IOS music player in 2017. And the SanDisk app was certainly a lame attempt at developing and TESTING an app. If there’s anyone in the company that really  cares about any of this I’ve yet to find them.

@johnjaypl wrote:

 

 

It’s curious that the  music can be played from files but not when you launch the music player. The music player seems to get lost formating audio files and formating thumbnails. Why does it need to format audio files for the music player but not when you play music from the file system? And if processing thumbnails is what is taking all the processing time then they should just add a switch to disable thumbnails - until they figure out a better solution.

 

The app is not changing or reencoding the audio file. From the email from support you posted it seems the issue is related tot he app parsing the metadata for the audio files to build the audio library database. Folder view works because the app is not parsing the metadata to build the library database. They confirmed they are working on the issue so I am sure it will be improved in a future update. 

 

 

 

 

The app sometimes says ________ ( I forget the exact word and I don’t want to ever try the music button again because I finally have my music is a form that I can use.) audio and sometimes it is processing thumbnails. Most of the the time seems to be spent on the thumbnails but then it goes back to audio.

Sure, they confirmened they’re working on the issue after they told me they never heard of this problem beore, afte they had me reformat my disk and loose the 70GB of audio  I had put on it, after I had to reload the app on my IOS, after I had to arrange a phone call with them, after I had to send them all kinds of model numbers and revs for both my SanDisk and IOS device, after I had to use their debug log to mail them debug information - then, yes they said - we’re aware of that problem! I kid you not.

Why are you sure it will be improved? Have you used their music player? Ignoring that it doesn’t work for anything but tiny music libaries, have you ever seen a less capable IOS music player? Do the people who created this terrible app even listen to music? Do they have a music library that they tried to put on their creation and use? Have they tried to use Apple’s music player so they could learn what features a music player should have? It doesn’t look that way to me.

And why did they release this product without testing it with substantial music libraries? Do they even do Beta testing? And why don’t they even respond to problems on their own forum?

If it’s a simple bug with meta data processing why is it taking so long to fix? People have been reporting this problem to them since before Christmas?

Kudos to johnjaypl for persistence in following up this bug and at least getting some kind of response.

Unfortunately, while people have been complaining about this for more than 4 months here, anyone from SanDisk looking at this forum (IF they ever do) will find just a small handful of users who have written about it.

So they could brush it off as a limited problem and not prioritise it.

I can’t believe that we’re the only people who bought the ixpand with music in mind. This seemed the perfect way to circumvent juggling internal memory and getting round the hassles with iTunes and the various alternatives - just plug in the USB drive and drop your files in “Music”.

What could be easier? Nothing.

What could be faster? Just about anything!

It would be good to know what happened to the earlier posters - does the database ever get built? And what happens when you add a few more songs or delete something? Does the whole process start all over again?

So here it is a year-and-a-half later, but I found this thread because I’m also having this problem.  Anybody driving the bus?