I don't believe the 13,000 thing ALWAYS applies... It seems to be more based on how often you delete and replace songs. At the time I started having issues with my player, I was nowhere NEAR 13,000 songs but had done a lot of removing playlists and adding more.

He's not described his error too well, but any time I have ANY issues adding songs I run the set empeg max fid and suddenly it all works.