Hi,

I'd like to see a key press method to jump right back to the playlist menu where I left it before. I have some quite deep nested playlists and to navigate back to a similar level can take quite a few key/menu steps.




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John

I'd like to see a key press method to jump right back to the playlist menu where I left it before. I have some quite deep nested playlists and to navigate back to a similar level can take quite a few key/menu steps.

I put this in a wish list a while ago... It got no response, but I assume that SOMEONE on the empeg team either looked at it and rejected it or maybe it's on the list of stuff to do. :)

Also, one-button-shuffle control is another that I've seen a BUNCH of people request (me included) with no responses. :)

(O|||||O)

Here's another related suggestion: right now, you can easily pick a playlist, pick a song within the playlist and play it.. How about a different play option which would play that song first, then the rest of the playlist in random order, or even in sequential order following that song?
-mark


...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

Also, one-button-shuffle control is another that I've seen a BUNCH of people request (me included) with no responses.

Well, one-button shuffle is kind of useless at this time since it doesn't do anything useful until you select a new playlist.

There's an interesting debate about shuffle play somewhere on this BBS (I forget where), but there's a sort of pro-and-con thing about shuffle play that was brought up.

As it stands right now, shuffle takes the current playlist then saves a static "shuffled" version of that playlist so that they can traverse it back and forth. This allows them to properly cache the music. But with large playlists, this shuffle operation can be time-intensive, so they only do the shuffling when you select a new playlist.

So what happens when you hit that single-button to activate shuffle play? Because the Empeg has playlists, it's a more complicated question than it is with a CD player. Do you want the unit to stop playing the current song while it reshuffles the playlist? Or do you want it to just re-activate the last shuffled version of that playlist? What if you turn shuffle off? Suppose you turn off shuffle, and it's playing a song that exists in more than one sub-playlist of the current playlist? How does the Empeg know which playlist to continue sequentially?

The thing about those questions is that they all have different answers depending on the user.

My personal preference would be:

- When you activate shuffle, immediately stop playing the current song, reshuffle the current playlist, and begin playing the first song from that shuffled list.

- When you deactivate shuffle, do not stop playing the current song. When the current song is over, play the next song in the current playlist. If the song exists in more than one sub-playlist of the current playlist, test the other "next" songs to see if they are from the same album/artist. If so, pick that one, because it's probably the next song on the album and I turned off shuffle so that I could hear the rest of the album unshuffled.

See, that way, I could shuffle-play the whole unit (the "root" playlist), but when it plays a certain song from a certain album, I could turn off shuffle-play and it would then continue to play the rest of that album.

Notice, though, that that's a complex piece of behavior, and it's only my preference. Someone else would want it to behave differently. Not an easy problem for the programmers to solve, eh?


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

i.e. a custom playmode

You could have tags which tell your playmode whether a track
should always have a particular track directly afterwards (when
the two tracks are actually part of a larger work, for instance).

You could have other tags that the playmode uses to decide that it
should never play track B without playing track A first (you might
want also this for different movements of the same work).

Of course, a playmode is free to ignore such tags if it wants.

> Not an easy problem for the programmers to solve, eh?

I personally believe it is an impossible problem. I guarantee that if
complex things like this start getting implemented, users are going
to come with new ones much faster than they can be coded.

Richard.

some of your suggestions wouldn't work for contieous mix/techno cd's...
- When you activate shuffle, immediately stop playing the current song, reshuffle the current playlist, and begin playing the first song from that shuffled list.

Why not shuffle in the background, or when the next song is over so that you don't interrupt the current song?


- When you deactivate shuffle, do not stop playing the current song. When the current song is over, play the next song in the current playlist. If the song exists in more than one sub-playlist of the current playlist, test the other "next" songs to see if they are from the same album/artist. If so, pick that one, because it's probably the next song on the album and I turned off shuffle so that I could hear the rest of the album unshuffled.


how about giving you a menu of playlists to play if there's more then one? for techno cd's, every song on a cd is by a different artist.. if it pops up in more then one, then you could just choose which one...

On that note, it's be nice to play different songs from the same author w/ another play option as well..

Notice, though, that that's a complex piece of behavior, and it's only my preference. Someone else would want it to behave differently. Not an easy problem for the programmers to solve, eh?

Yep - which is why having the option to choose the behavior would be nice; and having the option to have scripts would be nice as well...
-mark


...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

As I have really only a hazy idea of how these nested, hierarchical playlists work (remember, all my empeg knowledge is vicarious through this bbs) I don't know if this makes any difference or not.... but give some consideration to how differently you'll be able to manage your playlists on the Mark II with voice activation.

If I can say "Mozart. Shuffle" and immediately get a random playing of all of my Mozart, or maybe "Beethoven. Concerto. Piano" and have all my Beethoven piano concertos play in sequence.... then I don't think I'll be too concerned about most of the points and subtleties you raise here. See the thread "Mark II Voice Capabilities" and Rob's reply (shown below) and you'll understand why I am excited about this. Rob said:

The operation you detailed is indeed the kind of thing we hope to achieve with the empeg voice recognition system. It will be possible to
train the system to recognise proper nouns (essential for selecting music!) using Windows/Linux/Mac software, which will probably become
integrated with emplode. It is likely that specific links between words and playlists/tracks/genre/artists/etc will be something that the user
decides upon.

Am I deluded in thinking that this will simplify my process of music selection?

tanstaafl.


"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Well, one-button shuffle is kind of useless at this time since it doesn't do anything useful until you select a new playlist.

In my opinion, one-button shuffle is far from useless, even with the current way the empeg works with playlists. As it is now, you have to hit at least 5-6 extra buttons (actually probably more, but I don't have my empeg here to get an exact count) to move over to "Shuffle", select it to turn it on/off, and then move back to playlists to select music. This is time that I'm looking down at my empeg to see what submenu I'm on, and not at the road. It would be *much* easier to be able to hit the numeric key "1" on the keypad while the music is playing, have a little message pop up that says "Shuffle Off", or "Shuffle On", and just resume playing music as if you had selected "Shuffle" from the submenus. That way, my work is cut down to 1 button press rather than 5+, thus I get to keep my eyes on the road. This is why I think this feature is not useless at all. Anything that keeps my eyes on the road rather than on my empeg is a definite improvement in the UI.

Now, with response to your other ideas about the way randomized playlists should work when the shuffle is turned off mid-playlist, I agree, some work needs to be done on it, but everyone is going to have a different way they think it should work.

Seems to me the most logical way would be as you described, with on deactivation of the shuffle, it search the playlist you last chose for the song that is currently playing, then play the songs after it as if you had selected that original playlist on non-shuffle and just skipped tracks until you reached where you are at now.

(O|||||O)