Logitech Music Server / SqueezeBox / LMS - invisible entries on random lists and skipping songs

Datatalk / Music.

Yes. Old technology, but it's still working.

I have some issues lately, so I'm now trying to troubleshoot my ages-old installation. The problems that I've seen:

1. Random play doesn't list the right tracks

2. Sometimes the last bit of a song is skipped

Where to find more information

With LMS not that popular anymore (wow, go figure, 20 years old technology that hasn't been for sale for a decennium 😂) it can be even hard to find a forum or a product page with product updates...

Links

• Logitech Forum
• LMS Software
• Nightly Builds
• Versions

1. Random Play

Recently, random play doesn't show the right tracks anymore. Very weird, as I haven't changed anything on the server, nor added any new music. Utterly confusing, this.

Here's my latest attempt...

1. Uninstall 8.3

2. Reboot

3. Install 8.4

4. Settings / Plugins

5. Disable any plugins I don't use (Deezer, MusicIP, Napster, Pandora, Audioscrobbler, etc.)

6. Add Material Skin plugin

7. Settings / Advanced / Performance

• Memory config: Maximum
• Disable library statistics
• Do not pre-cache artwork
• Use LMS to resize artwork
• Maximum Playlist Length: 0 (unlimited)

Something weird happens when disabling pre-caching artwork... It still seems to pre-cache?

8. Settings / Advanced / Rescan Music Library

• On
• 01:20 AM
• Clear Library and rescan everything

9. Apply

10. Wait 60 seconds

11. Full rescan

For some unknown reason the full rescan failed on pre-caching, even though pre-caching was switched off... I did another full rescan, and this time it passed. I found out, however, that the Material Skin plugin doesn't show all artwork unless pre-caching is switched on, so I switched pre-caching back on and triggered another Full Rescan.

And now it works again...

2. Sometimes the last bit of a song is skipped

Songs are not played all the way to the end. This has been a problem for a very long time, but I never found a satisfying solution.

Still working on it... I'll update this post once I've figured out what's going on.

3. Schedule

To save power I automatically put the server to sleep at 01:00 every day, except for Sundays.

Daily

Daily schedule (except for Sundays, using the Windows Scheduler)

1. Sleep at 01:00

Sunday

Sunday schedule (using the Windows Scheduler)

1. Reboot at 01:00
2. Squeezebox LMS fully rescans the music library at 01:20. A full rescan takes a little less than 40 minutes.
3. In Windows (10) I have set active hours as 09:00 to 02:00. Typically Windows will start updating either at the 01:00 reboot, or at 02:00, when the active hours end.
4. Sleep at 02:30