The SD card needs to be formatted to the primary FAT32 (or exFAT) MBR partition type.
Polyend Play is offered with a 16 GB microSD card, larger SD cards can also be used as long as they are correctly formatted. We recommend UHS-I cards, particularly ones that are rated A1 or A2. The built-in disk-utility under Mac OS will allow you to select FAT32 for formatting.
Having trouble with the “Insert SD card” message? See Polyend Play " Insert SD Card".
The question as to why FAT32 is used as the file system for all Polyend Devices, comes up regularly so i figured i’d add some more detail to this:
Most music gear that you currently find on the market, that uses SD cards as a storage solution, use FAT32 as the default file system for several reasons:
It is a highly compatible file system supported by almost all operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux) and devices.
It is a simple file system with low overhead, which means it is easier to implement in embedded systems (such as music gear) that typically have limited processing power and memory compared to computers.
It supports volumes up to 2TB and individual file sizes up to 4GB. These limits are generally sufficient for most music gear use cases, where typical audio files (such as samples, tracks, or patches) are much smaller than 4GB.
It offers reliable performance for reading and writing small-to-medium-sized files quickly, which is important in music production environments where fast access times are needed (e.g., loading samples).
Due to these reasons, FAT32 remains the default format for SD cards in many music devices despite being older and having limitations compared to more modern file systems.
Thanks for this overview.