Wow, that's a lot of questions. All good questions, somehow we need to work this into a FAQ. Anyway, here we go...

If I am using Emplode and I delete some "tune" by selecting it and hitting the DEL key, is the actual MP3 file removed from the HD on the empeg?

Yes, if it's the last instance of that tune in your playlists, then it also deletes the file.

If that file is referenced by more than one playlist what happens?

The file stays, until you delete the last instance of it. Only when you delete the last reference does the file itself get deleted.

How can I make sure it gets cleanly deleted?

Delete it from all playlists in which it appears. In version 1.1, the "search" feature will help you locate all references to a given tune.

Is there a way to determine if there are any orphan MP3's using up space on the Empeg HD?

Yes, they will appear in "Unattached Items". If your "Unattached Items" is empty, then you don't have any orphans. Usually orphans will only occur if something goes wrong during a synch.

If I have a particular "tune", and its ID3 label says the song title is "ABC", by artist "XYZ"... And then I drag and drop another MP3 from my PC onto Emplode that has the same tune and artist names...what happens?

Emplode dutifully adds a second copy of the song. This is for good reason- it could be a different recording of the song, a concert version, an acoustic version, a dance mix, anything. Emplode doesn't attempt to de-dupe based on the tags, because tags can be wrong or they might not have enough data to clearly indicate if the file is/isn't unique. It doesn't try to process the binary audio data for comparison because that's a big can of worms- what happens if you wanted the file ripped with two different encoders for comparison?

If you really want a second copy of the same song in two playlists, make a copy of the song within emplode and it'll make a second reference to that song without making a physical copy of the MP3 file. But you already knew that.

What uniquely identifies songs?

At the software level, the FIDs on the empeg hard disk uniquely identify each song. If you export the database to a CSV in emplode, you can see the FIDs and see how they work.

For your own personal use, you can deliberately name different versions of a song differently so that you can uniquely identify them when scrolling through the search results. For example, I have probably four different versions of Rush's "Closer to the Heart", and I identify each one with a unique song name so I know which one I'm selecting.

is it always assumed that I'm either deleting by selecting tunes and hitting the delete key...or adding new ones...and if they happen to have the same names in the ID3 tags...then so be it?

Correct. That's a good description of how it works.

So when I edit these values in Emplode and do a sync, do the actual ID3 tags of the actual MP3 files on the Empeg get updated, or is just the Empeg database updated?

The tags are only read by emplode at the moment you drop them onto emplode. After that, the tags are never touched or changed. Everything is in the empeg's database, and that's the only thing that's edited. The only use for the MP3 tags is to fill out the initial entries when you first add them. The player software and Emplode do all their work from the database and they ignore the tags.

Near the end of the sync when the emplode dialog says something like "Updating database", what is happening?

I don't know the technical details, but I think it's making sure all the records are updated and that the database is optimized. If you think about my answer to your previous question, it makes sense that the empeg would need to churn a bit when entries are added or deleted from the database, right?

I would really like to use FTP to download all my final MP3's back to my PC with the new ID3 tag information.

Unfortunately, that's not possible because the tags are untouched. Remember that the Empeg folks deliberately avoid giving us FTP capability by default and can't support that kind of activity.

The best procedure is to get your tags in order before you send them to the Empeg. This is something that everyone keeps stressing over and over again here on the BBS.

Also, anyone have any good suggestions for good ID3 tag editors...

I'll let some other folks answer that one, as I don't have much experience with tag editors. The only thing to watch out for is to make sure that the tag editor is V2-aware so you don't run into the "badV2-goodV1" bug.

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Tony Fabris