ratings lost in sync

[petergriffin]

Apologies for an apparently duplicate issue but all other forum topics I'm able to find either deal with a similar (i.e. different) issue or combine various issues with much confusion as to their (partial) resolution. For the sake of clarity, I'm going to deal with a single issue here, confusing enough in its own right. Feel free to moderate/move/merge the topis as you see appropriate, of course.

Here's the reproduction sequence:

1. Create a dynamically generated playlist of ~100 songs using MMW. Match:
   • Rating <> 5 stars; 4.5 stars; 4 stars; 3.5 stars; 3 stars; 2.5 stars; 2 stars; 1.5 stars; 1 stars; 0.5 stars; 0 stars
   • Length (seconds) < 900
   • Limit to 1024 megabytes
   • Selected by Added (least recent)
2. Configure MMW to create a synchronization profile for the playlist/MMA device (keep default settings).
3. Configure MMA to synchronize with the MMW instance and initiate synchronization from MMA.
4. Once finished, adjust the songs' star ratings during their playback using MMA.
5. Initiate synchronization from MMA.

So far so good, except that I find that some of the songs' ratings don't get updated inside MMW. No errors are reported and subsequent synchronization attempts make no difference, as doesn't restarting any of the software involved.

The only way for me to force the synchronization of these omitted ratings to MMW is to manually (batch-) update (i.e. change) them inside MMA and run the synchronization again.

Additional considerations:

• I'm currently experiencing the below issue with the latest MMA (1.4.4.0956) available for my Android 11 device with the latest MMW (5.0.4.2690) running on Windows 10 (22H2).
• I have confirmed the very same issue on all of the prior releases for the past two years using (combinations of) multiple devices.
• MMW isn't used and no changes to the library or playlist are made in between the sync operations.
• Neither MMW, nor MMA is configured for use with any other device/instance/profile.
• Synchronization is always performed over a reliable local wireless network.
• Neither of the devices involved experience any other issues to indicate a root cause independent of MM's own sync/storage mechanism.
• The issue seems to occur randomly as anywhere between 0 and ~90 % of the ratings are synced correctly at times. It may be noteworthy that the rating adjustment in my usecase (step #4 above) may take anywhere from ~3 to ~60 days with no apparent difference to the rating sync omission occurrence.

Finally, allow me to take a wild guess that the issue is some sort of an edge-case combining the way MMA timestamps the rating changes, with the dynamically generated playlist. Should be easy to reproduce as long as the ratings are updated (MMA-side) over a period of a few days.

Thanks in advance for any help with this extremely annoying issue!

[Lowlander]

I suggest trying with MMA 2 beta as this may have already been fixed: viewtopic.php?t=103181

[petergriffin]

I suggest trying with MMA 2 beta as this may have already been fixed: viewtopic.php?t=103181

Yes, I did install the Beta just last night and have started. Will report back. Thank you.

[petergriffin]

Sadly, I'm getting the same behavior in MMA2. Perhaps the issue is actually server-side, then.
Any suggestions as to debugging this further are very welcome...

[Peke]

Hi,
Do you play music in MM5 also or just on Devices?

[petergriffin]

Hi,
Do you play music in MM5 also or just on Devices?

Hi, just the one MMA device. This time I made sure to not even launch MMW in between the sync operations as I had read somewhere around here that similar behavior could stem from a "time of last update" attribute taking a newer value server-side and wanted to eliminate the possibility of triggering that. It would actually be a sensible explanation except for the cause of the server-side update taking place "on its own".

As it stands, just over 90% of the tracks rated on the MMA device will currently not sync unless I "change" their rating again.

[petergriffin]

I'd like to explore the possibility of a "track last updated conflict" further but am at a loss here without source code access. If I were to explore and/or touch the database directly, which values should I be looking at - `TrackModified`?

[petergriffin]

Another observation on the MMA2 side:
Batch-updating the Star Rating using the checkmark under "Menu -> Music -> Ratings -> N stars (long press) -> Properties" does not help to sync the contained tracks once they start to be "ignored" unless the rating is actually modified to a different score. I.e. apparently the batch operation does nothing if the star rating is selected but not changed. If it did, one could use it to work around the issue herein without taking additional steps.

Here's a video to hopefully be worth a thousand words...