ah…no. should I have done? and, at the risk of appearing dim…how do I do it?
Yes …
For whatever reason, likely the directory structure and files it lays down when you do it, the A&K players have some issues if you don’t format the card in them before you use it.
You can remove it and transfer music it to it using a card-reader once it’s been formatted in the player, and then put it back in (which is faster than transferring to it with it in the player).
This was an issue with my SR15, SP1000M and the new SP2000.
Once done, indexing will be faster. It’ll spend less time updating the index at start-up. You’ll avoid the “Wait/Cancel” process prompt at start-up. And it’ll power back-on in the same place you left it.
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thanks for this. I cannot see an obvious way to format the microsd card in the SR15. can you help?
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Go to “Settings”, “System Information” and choose “Erase SD Card”.
Make sure you have a copy of your music somewhere else first!
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Great - done. the SR15 goes into erase then appears to reboot. is that right? is that now done or do I need to do anything else to format? Sorry to be so amateur…and thanks
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You can now either power-down and remove the card, or do a “Safely Remove” with it powered up.
Copy your music back to the card, re-insert and power back on. Let the unit sit for a bit tinder the card (if you pull the notification bar menu down you can see where it is still indexing the card), and then you’re good to go.
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thanks - will reload the card overnight and try again in the morning. much appreciated.
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update - that doesn’t seem to have worked. Loaded microsd overnight. the put it into player. then switched on. then left it to scan media. when complete, selected a track and started playing. Switched off. Switched on again later - started scanning media again and instead of starting with the track it was playing it has gone back to “unknown song title”. No matter how many time I let it scan media whether automatically or manually, it still won’t start where it left off when I switch it off and on again. This is infuriating and frankly renders the player utterly useless from my perspective. I thought I was leaving these issues behind with Fiio……£550 wasted.
Instead of throwing a tantrum, which makes me entirely disinclined to spend further time trying to help you, you could have just said you were still having a problem.
Media scanning is not part of the issue, so repeating that won’t help.
If you did the reformat properly (sounds like you did, but I can’t see exactly what you’re doing), that’s the first probable culprit eliminated.
The next would be to ensure you’re on the latest firmware.
I know the SR15 (and SP1000M and SP2000) will power back on as I left them because I’ve owned them, still own the SP2000 - and after fishing it out of a drawer last night (where it had sat unused for the last two+ weeks), it fired right back up in the middle of the album I’d turned it off on.
You should call whomever sold it to you, or A&K to figure the rest of it out, though - I don’t think it’s wise to encourage you if one failed trouble-shooting attempt, when you clearly didn’t read (or follow) the instructions with the player before using it, for one problem (which I know is resolvable) is the end of the world.
Fair criticism and I apologise. Obviously not aimed at you and I do appreciate your help. I am not particularly tech savvy (as you will have gathered) and find it very frustrating when things don’t work as they should and I don’t understand them enough to work out why. I did follow the instructions hence the reason I found a download to enable me to reformat the card before using it.
In my own simplistic way I am going to go back to the beginning, factory settings, clear card, update firmware and take it step by step.
Appreciate your disinclination to assist someone who obviously came across as a stroppy teenager but i will update and if you change your mind then I would welcome any further input and promise to keep it tantrum free. Thanks
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I think we’ve all been in the place where things are just not operating the way we expect, anticipate, or have paid for.
Sometimes, it’s like programming. The system is very literal and does exactly what you told it to. Figuring out exactly what you told it is the challenge, and there is a very good feeling when it starts working the way you had planned.
It’s quite different when you are working with personnel. In that case, sometimes it doesn’t work because of an attitude problem. With hardware, at least, you can rule that out.
Take a deep breath, start over, and eventually you will get it right.
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Or, you could rage quit and give it to me… Just a thought. I’ll pay postage.
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Tempting as that may appear to be from my previous meltdown, I’ll pass at this stage @ProfFalkin! 
Interesting development - I have left the player playing until the battery drains. when I recharge and start, it opens up at the beginning of what appears to have been the last song playing.
But if I switch it off and restart while it still has power it doesn’t.
Very odd.
I will see how it behaves today and then perhaps try the back to the beginning approach if it’s still misbehaving.
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Update on my travails. Steps taken:
- erased card in player
- reset player to factory settings
- restarted it and checked firmware - 1.33
- copied 2GB music into internal drive and tested - all worked perfectly
- erased internal drive.
- copied 2GB music into micro sd card and tested - all worked perfectly
- erased card
- copied 98 GB music into micro sd card and tested - played first track but with incomplete description - gave artist name but said “unknown album” even though the song details showed the album name). Tried to skip forward - got error message - “too many unplayable files” - could do nothing other than go back into my song list, play another song and try that - same issue.
- rescanned media to see if that resolved things. no. wouldn’t play anything.
- switched off and on again. selected song from song list. Played it but with artist name and “unknown album” again showing on the play screen. Played through track to next track (on shuffle) which played with artist name and album name showing
- skip forward now worked properly as did skip back.
- powered off again
- powered on again x2 and worked x2
- loaded on another 100GB and the same cycle repeated itself.
- loaded on more (42000 tracks now on in total). the same cycle repeated itself. All good at this point.
- loaded on another 80GB so now up to 55,000 songs.
- at this point the issue reappeared. Switching off and on again did not bring the last track played back. It went to the “unknown song title” error message
to my uneducated eyes it would suggest that there is a tipping point in terms of capacity which affects functionality.
Any thoughts/suggestions welcome.
Me again. So, with up to 50,000 songs on the card, I had reached the point where:
- if I switched off from pause and then switched back on - went to “unknown song title”
- If I switched off while playing, it came back to the start of the song that was playing on switch off.
I have now loaded everything so have 68,000 songs on and whichever way I switch off, when I restart it goes to the “unknown song title”.
As I said previously it feels like a capacity issue and despite the website saying it supports cards up to 1TB, functionality is affected once you go past a certain number of files or a certain level of memory usage.
Am I making sense? Does anyone have any thoughts?
Also, one question - is it supposed to rescan the media card every time it is switched on?
The size of the supported storage card is simply a function of what low-level block-structure the card interface and OS supports. It says nothing about how many files the index on the player can manage (which is often simply variable based on the amount of RAM on the player).
You can rule out it being a storage CAPACITY issue.
But it’s certainly possible that there’s either an actual limit to the number of indexable tracks or that behavior changes when some other, soft, track-based, limit is exceeded. Most players have such limits; some document it, some don’t.
My portable library sits at 1.5 TB (which is as much storage as the SP2000 can mount). That’s about 48,000 files, all lossless or hi-res. I don’t have the issue you’re having, so, again, it’s not down to the amount of storage used.
To get to 68,000 tracks in 1 TB I have to assume a lot of them are either very short, or there’s a good proportion that use lossy encoding, which may simply push the index/tracking limits past what A&K assumed would be the maximum they’d encounter. Or it could be a lower limit for the SR15 than it is for the higher-tier players due to them having fewer resources to play with.
It should do a quick index refresh on power-up, which is just looking for new content not in the index.
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Thanks for that. All makes sense. As I have increased the number of tracks on the card, aspects of function have slowed down which is understandable and I can see that the player would have an expectation of having to process a maximum number of tracks. As you identify I have a significant proportion of lossy tracks from the Ipod classic days before I graduated to better equipment. Struggling to find the time to redo in lossless/hi-res. Rescan for new content makes perfect sense also.
me again. this is still nagging at me because:
- when I switch the payer off while a track is playing and then switch it back on, for a split second the track that was playing shows but is then replaced with the “unknown song title” screen
- when I let it keep playing till it runs out of power and then switch back on, the last track that was playing comes back on
I can’t understand why it would behave differently in these two situations………it feels like it wants to go back to the last track that was playing but something stops it in the first situation but not the second.
I am going to do some trial an error on track numbers to see if there is a consistent tipping point where behaviour changes. It feels like it’s around the 50,000 mark.
Are you stopping or pausing playback on the player before switching it off, or just turning it off while it is still playing?
What happens if you stop the track and let the unit power-off via the “Auto Power Off” setting?
Have you contacted A&K support?
Ok so I have tried it in various ways so that I can answer you as accurately as I can:
1 Switched player off while music still playing. Then powered on - the last track playing showed for a split second then the screen went to “unknown song title”
2 Switched player off while on pause then powered on - as above
3 let the player switch itself off via the auto power off setting then powered on - as above
it feels as if the player wants to do what I want it to but something stops it.
As for A&K support, the only address I have managed to find is support@theinvixion.com which I think is the US distributor (I am in the UK). They have tried to help but I am not sure I have managed clearly to explain my issue.
Any ideas continue to be gratefully received.