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[RevM]

I have MC 22 running on Windows 10 x64 and a phone running android 6.01 which I not keen to root. USB connections between the two devices seem, for some reason, to be somewhat flaky and incredibly slow. Is it possible to sync music from my PC  to my phone wirelessly? There are plenty of utility programs that can transfer files etc. wirelessly: AirDroid, MyPhoneExplorer, etc. Unfortunately these do not add the phone file system to the PC file system but use there own interface. There is, sadly, no way to run an SMB server on the phone without rooting it which I don't want to do. Such a system would also allow syncing to be 'silent' as and when required.

Can anyone offer any assistance on this?

Mark

[rexmcartor]

I would love to see wireless sync added.  This was one of the best things about MediaMonkey.  But honestly I think they need to fix the issues with syncing period before they try to add wireless.  No matter what if I try to sync to my android with ANY DSP most files will fail.  This sucks when you have a lot of 24/196 albums, or 5.1 surround albums and you want them compressed for android. 

[Bill Kearney]

No matter what if I try to sync to my android with ANY DSP most files will fail. 

Is it the handheld sync (via USB) from MC22 into the phone?  Which USB transfer mode are you using (on the phone's side)?  Which model phone is it?

[mwillems]

The android application "foldersync" can do exactly what you want using, for example, a connection to an SMB share or other share on your computer.  It will sync on a timer or subject to conditions (only on wifi, only when plugged in, etc.) or both.  You just need some kind of sharing setup on the host PC (foldersync supports most open standards like smb/cifs, s/ftp, dav, but also supports several proprietary filesync services like dropbox).  There's a free version (or there used to be), but the $2 I spent on the full version was probably the best money I ever spent on an android app.

I also had miserable issues with wired syncing before figuring out a wireless solution.  Now I use JRiver to "sync" to a directory on my harddrive, and then foldersync just wirelessly and automatically pulls everything onto my phone the next time I charge my phone (so I don't have to worry about it hogging bandwidth when I'm using my phone).  Once you set it up, it's magic.

[rexmcartor]

Is it the handheld sync (via USB) from MC22 into the phone?  Which USB transfer mode are you using (on the phone's side)?  Which model phone is it?

Yes.  I was using USB on MC22.  Was never able to get sync working.  I was trying to transfer some of my auto playlists (and the songs within) and have it do a slight compression to the tracks. Bring all bitrates higher than 96k down and compress 5.1 to stereo just to save some space.  But it will not work.  Even if I change the folder used for the conversions.  I don't even know why a folder is needed as MediaMonkey does these conversions on the fly.  The only reason I want to use JRiver is because I prefer it as a player and the sync is supposed to allow for more detailed options.  MediaMonkey doesn't allow as many stipulations to be made like bit rates and surround sound.  But for the time being I am having to export my playlist from MC22, import to MM, wireless sync to phone.  My main problem having to use MM is that for whatever reason MM is missing about 1% of the tracks from some playlists and can't figure out why.

[Bill Kearney]

How are you determining the tracks being missing, via MM?  Are you looking at the disk files themselves, or how the tracks appear in your player?

Because I've seen some players that won't show tracks if there's "anything" wrong with the tracks.  I say "wrong" in that it could be encoding, metadata, filename special characters, etc.

I've never had USB transferring fail.  I've transferred to thumb drives, kids media players, SD and microSD cards and directly into several Android phones.    Which phone was it that was having these problems?   

[rexmcartor]

I can tell the track are missing due the listed number of tracks in the playlist (usually missing 1-20 songs).  I know they are in the list though as if I drag and drop the list into MM to play it shows all tracks, but if I import the list so I can sync it is missing some.  I don't know which songs nor and easy way to find out as they are auto lists that that have hundreds or thousands of songs each.  It displays the number of tracks on the bottom just like JRiver does.

As for not showing if things are wrong.  Like I said it will have all songs if I drag and drop the list into now playing.  But if I import it they aren't there, so idk what could be wrong.

I have never had USB transferring work with JRiver.  Even a new card, new format.  I admittedly haven't transferred without applying dsp as that is kind of needed to cut the unnecessary size of 192khz or 5.1 songs down.  The phone I tried was a Galaxy S5.  I have not tried with my new V20 yet but I will at some point in the near future.  I have seen several topics of people having issues with android syncing so I know I am not alone.  I have never had an issue with this on MM and MM allows wireless syncing which is super convenient.  Just JRiver is a better windows player.

[Bill Kearney]

Use a file explorer on your Android device, or look into the connection via the file Explorer in Windows.  See if the tracks that aren't showing up are actually ON the device.  Because if they are then it's possible there's "something" about them that's preventing the phone's player from handling them properly.

I've used various versions of MC for doing USB transfers, and almost all of them involve transcoding down to lower quality to both save storage space and deal with player audio quality limitations.  On the rare occasions something wouldn't immediately transfer I discovered previously unnoticed problems with the source media tracks. 

While it might be inconvenient to have to "dig through" the large playlists, that's really going to be the only way to get to the bottom of why some aren't transferring.  Without that additional debugging it's going to be impossible to identify just what's going wrong, or what needs to be fixed.

[rexmcartor]

So I reformatted my card and tried a sync with my phone again.  This time it worked, except the playlists.  I used smart playlists to pick what to transfer, I assumed it would then also transfer a copy of said playlist.  However it didn't copy a playlist file, just the songs.  When I tried to resync, JRiver now wants to recopy all 6000+ songs.  It is like it doesn't see that it copied them there already.

[Bill Kearney]

How about trying a sync to a USB thumb drive?  Or to any other kind of connected media.  This to make sure all media and playlists files are being handled correctly.  If that fails then it'd certainly be a MC bug.  But if that works then what about the way you've got the phone configured to allow connections is different from a regular drive?  Many Android phones can connect in several different ways; as a phone, file transfer, photo transfer, etc.  There's typically a message that will appear on the phone in the drop-down notifications list.  From that message you should be able to control which kind of connection is being made.  I'd aim for 'file transfer' if possible.

That and depending on what else has been installed there's potential for problems with drivers on the PC used to make the USB-phone connection.  Sometimes it's best to 'start fresh' with the drivers.  Which can mean finding the most current release of them and removing any old ones already on your PC.  Use the Device Manager to remove the driver for it, unplug the phone, reboot the PC and then re-install the latest drivers for the phone.  Reinstall BEFORE plugging the phone back in, unless your particular phone model/driver instructions indicate otherwise.

But I'd start by just syncing to a generic thumb drive or SD card first.

[rexmcartor]

I don't have any USB drives with enough storage, I'd need at least 150GB (more if uncompressed).  I tried a resync, figuring it may rescan and fix some.  What it did was deleted a good chunk, tried to reupload them and most encountered errors, it seemed to be random the ones that were getting errors.  Except all 24 bit flac above 96k failed trying to lower it to 96k.  Also all surround sound albums failed trying to change them to stereo.  So it is DSP issue for me.  Gonna try and copy with no dsp and see how it goes.  I have enough space on my SD card to hold all I want uncompressed just will be mostly full so was hoping to compress some of the unnecessarily large files.

As for what mode to set my phone.  I set it for the USB File Transfer setting as that logically seemed to be the right option.

PS. Thanks for trying to help.  I love MC other than these sync issues.  Never had issues like this in MediaMonkey, plus that had wireless sync.  But MC is just a better program.

[Bill Kearney]

Glad to help, I don't have any specific cure, other than to suggest step-by-step debugging.  Sometimes stepping back and breaking it down to fundamentally repeatable conditions leads to discovering the weak points.  Could be the source media as "something about it" that MC doesn't like.  Once you pin down a specific file it might be something the JRiver folks could use for testing.  You'd have to reach out to them.  I sympathize with your plight, but also with the developers.  There are just SO MANY potential variables that even with users that "know what they're doing" it can be hard to debug problems like this.   

[rexmcartor]

Well I have gotten it to transfer most files if I transfer with no dsp.  However random ones still encountered an error.  It seemed this time to be a random selection of songs which are in my EDM folder.  Most music is Artist/Album/Tracks.  But the EDM folder is just a lot of single files.  But not all fail and I can see no similarities in tags between the ones that fail and ones that succeed.  Honestly I am fine with a few of my EDM tracks not transferring.  My main problem is the playlist file themselves not being transferred.  Do Smart Playlists not copy a working m3u version on sync?  I don't see any setting or anything to change playlist sync settings.  Just the folder to copy to and the option to check them to sync.

[Bill Kearney]

If you have a lot of tracks from varied sources there can be metadata in them that causes problems.  They might not look obvious.  But oddball characters used in text fields are often a hassle.  That and strange bitrate/codec choices. 

I've had to clean up junk tracks in the past.  Best to use the tag editor to brute force change track metadata.  Remove what's not needed.  Then force those values back onto the disk tracks to avoid the problem coming back.  This includes doing file renames to ensure they have safe values.

[maxxsid]

For me wired syncing was working fine in older days with msc protocol (phones and dedicated mp3 players).
With newer phones things got quirkier...
I ended up just removing the SD card from the phone and syncing directly to it.

Just got a new phone yesterday. Synced wired from MC and it worked 98%. Out about 200 albums, three albums behaved strangely.
-- They did get transferred on the first run however, on sync re-check they were marked for deletion and re-syncing.
-- Upon re-sync they got transferred but the previous copies were not deleted but renamed to xxx.mp3.dup#
-- Next re-sync would add another copy of xxx.mp3.dup#
Interestingly all those 3 albums were CD #2 of 2CD sets (I have other 2CD sets but they synced OK).

Anyways, mwillems, I tried FolderSync (thanks for the tip!). It worked but was very slow.
I tried MyPhoneExplorer (also via wifi) from the PC side and it was 10 times faster! (5MB/s vs 500KB/s).

max

The android application "foldersync" can do exactly what you want using, for example, a connection to an SMB share or other share on your computer.  It will sync on a timer or subject to conditions (only on wifi, only when plugged in, etc.) or both.  You just need some kind of sharing setup on the host PC (foldersync supports most open standards like smb/cifs, s/ftp, dav, but also supports several proprietary filesync services like dropbox).  There's a free version (or there used to be), but the $2 I spent on the full version was probably the best money I ever spent on an android app.

I also had miserable issues with wired syncing before figuring out a wireless solution.  Now I use JRiver to "sync" to a directory on my harddrive, and then foldersync just wirelessly and automatically pulls everything onto my phone the next time I charge my phone (so I don't have to worry about it hogging bandwidth when I'm using my phone).  Once you set it up, it's magic.

[blgentry]

Out about 200 albums, three albums behaved strangely.
-- They did get transferred on the first run however, on sync re-check they were marked for deletion and re-syncing.
-- Upon re-sync they got transferred but the previous copies were not deleted but renamed to xxx.mp3.dup#
-- Next re-sync would add another copy of xxx.mp3.dup#

I've had similar problems in the past.  I *think* I tracked it down to the file names.  If I remember right, the file names had "funny" characters in them that were somehow confusing the sync process.  I believe I renamed these files without the weird characters and fixed my issue.

Brian.

[maxxsid]

Eureka! I found the culprit. That's the "Disc #" mp3 tag. If present it screws up the sync.
Phew... Now MC sync to my android phone works 100%

I've had similar problems in the past.  I *think* I tracked it down to the file names.  If I remember right, the file names had "funny" characters in them that were somehow confusing the sync process.  I believe I renamed these files without the weird characters and fixed my issue.

Brian.