In all honesty I’ve found even with database update on startup the Plenue DAPs have faster startup than other players. I recently sold my SR15 because the startup was 30-40 seconds, you had to start it, do something else and come back when it was ready, made grab-and-go use more inconvenient. Likewise the DX200 had about the same delay. I remember timing a Plenue V and R when I had them and startup was about 8-12 seconds.
Also, Plenue players have an indexing limit on the number of files/folders that the system can handle: it’s in the manual. A bigger card won’t make a difference if the firmware can’t handle files above that limit. It’s on all Plenue players (bigger limit on the larger screen range), even the PL, so there must be some technical reason why it can’t be increased.
I think you might want to troubleshoot those FLAC files and try to figure out why they don’t work. Yes it’s annoying but probably be faster than waiting for a fix. I had a similar problem on the SR15 where filed that worked fine on other DAPs wouldn’t play, and on a ZX300A I owned for a while it took plenty of troubleshooting to get album art and artist tags all working properly. Bottom line is all DAPs seem to have some issues.
