Hi everyone, I recently purchased the mcx8000 and I finally finished analyzing my music library, which took a little over a week, and created an engine target db on my 256gb usb stick. I created crates both in my Engine Library on my computer and my usb stick.
When I plugged my usb into the mcx8000, I noticed that not all of the artists were being listed. For example, I have a crate labeled 80’s, and when i go into the artist view on the mcx8000 it only displays artists starting with the letters A thru J, so Journey is the last artist I can see. However, if I go to the root of the target database on the stick and do a search artist, I can see all of the tracks.
Is there a limit on how many artists/tracks can be displayed from a crate/subcrate on the mcx8000 screen?
I saw those specs but I doubt it’s that, because I only have about 19,000 tracks in total on the usb and only created about 10 crates. So I am well below the limits in the specs.
Did you copy the crates to the stick from your main collection or actually created new crates on the stick?
Did you wait long enough before ejecting (properly) the stick. With the amount your talking about it takes quite a while to transfer all tracks. Especially on USB 2.0.
Weird. I would probably reformat the stick and try filling it again, leaving it overnight. Could just be IT acting up (perhaps a short communication error, stopping the transfer).
And with (still pricey) 256GB sticks, I am afraid you don’t have another one just laying around you could temporarily abuse for the purpose.
That said, it IS very good practice to always have at least one spare copy of a USB stick with you at all times. While not as bad as they once were, they still DO sometimes go south.
Back on-topic: I have to say that re-reading your OP, it seems that I jumped to conclusions on my previous replies, thinking some stuff didn’t get transferred. But you did say that you can see the tracks of the K-Z artists in file view on the actual stick, meaning they are there. Since the MCX8000 uses the index that Engine makes for searches, it would imply that the index is somehow not entirely correct. There are some options to update database and such, but not quite sure if you can tell it to just check/fix the index on the stick.
I am an old IT hand from a former live and I have learned to not spend too much time trying to find the core cause of a problem and fixing it unless it’s a permanent and/or reproducable error. Meaning that all the time you put into trying to make the current situation work, could be wasted if you just wipe the stick, move your crates to it after it’s reformatted (it’ll just be the time needed to copy the tracks, no re-analyzing involved) which will be done while you sleep and the outcome turns out to be that it works. It will remain a mystery why it didn’t work the first time, but I’d rather have the mystery than putting all this awake time into solving a one-time fluke problem.
Just my two cents and just trying to help out.
If anybody has a different/better idea, I’d be very interested to hear it and learn something new.
Hi djboz. I’ve had the same problem with one of my crates. Oddly the artists stopped displaying at the letter ‘J’ for me too. If I searched for all artists on my memory stick, the artists were indeed listed on my drive.
I found a work around but no solution, despite communicating with the Denon UK team who couldn’t replicate the problem.
In Engine desktop, on my USB Target drive, within the crate causing problems (which was called ‘Indie Rock’) I created 2 sub crates - one named ‘A-J’ and another, ‘K-Z’. I dropped in the relevant artists, in effect splitting the crate in 2. This solved the problem.
Not ideal, but that was the only way I found would work. I even tried loading the original crate onto a blank USB drive with no other music and i still had the same problem.
It’s interesting that you suggest the sub-crate because I have another crate of genre and have sub-crates by alphabet like your Indie sub-crate and the same thing is happening, not all of the artists are displaying. I wonder if there is a limitation as to how many artists/files can be displayed in crates and subcrates.
Well I’ve reformatted the usb, created additional crates and the result is that I am seeing the artists in each subcrate, but only a subset of all of that artists tracks. For example, if artist A has 10 tracks, I only see lets say 6 or 7. But if i go to the root of the drive and search for that artist I will see all 10 tracks.
So it seems the crates are useless if this is the case. I have yet to use mcx8000 because I’ve been wrestling with this issue. I sure hope there is a firmware update coming soon, like yesterday, to fix this glitch.
This is the first Denon product I have purchased, I sure hope I didn’t waste $1,300 on this thing and not have it function as advertised. This really feels like I may have made the wrong choice instead of going with Pioneer. Please prove me wrong Denon and fix the glitch.
I too been having this issue. For some reason there is a 254 files crate limitation. I’ve check it on various crates & sub crates. But when you navigate on the Folder option I can go directly to the file or files that are missing on the crates.
I’ve have imported all the files again with Engine 1.5, and nothing “nada” they are still missing in the crate and / or sub crate.
For testing purposes, I rename the DENONDJ2 directory to DENONDJ2.OLD to start a clean db, fire up Engine and imported only one crate with 300 files and I still get that 254 limitation, so I’m missing what ever goes over 255. Does 254 tick a hint… computer terms 0 - 254…?
Now let me explain.
The way I’m creating my USD Drives is using crazycraig procedure. I create all the folder structure on the flash drive with windows. Then I fire up Engine, create the same structure but in crates, then I drag and drop the files to there respective crates. Creating a mirror from folders to crates. This way Engine doesn’t manages my music creating a A B C D… ARTIST / ALBUM / Artist - Title type of structure like iTunes or Rekordbox.
EDIT: Forgot to mention.
You don’t get the 254 limitation on the Playlist, but then you loose the browsing by filters.
Yes indeed, I started a lab session at my studio testing and troubleshooting.
So I decided to break every sub crate into chunks of 250 tracks. To my surprise, now the main crate (parent crate) shows all the files from all the sub crates on the MCX8000 it bypasses the 255 o 256 limitation. So far it looks like it’s working, no more missing files when searching with the MCX8000.
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and I have learned to not spend too much time trying to find the core cause of a problem and fixing it unless it’s a permanent and/or reproducable error. Meaning that all the time you put into trying to make the current situation work, could be wasted if you just wipe the stick, move your crates to it after it’s reformatted (it’ll just be the time needed to copy the tracks, no re-analyzing involved) which will be done while you sleep and the outcome turns out to be that it works. It will remain a mystery why it didn’t work the first time, but I’d rather have the mystery than putting all this awake time into solving a one-time fluke problem.