If I have a playlist and I'm listening to the last track and I press the next track button (on the front panel), it displays the ``End of Playlist'' message and pauses, as if I've finished listening to the last track. Earlier versions of the software skipped to the first track of the playlist and kept playing. That seems like a better thing to do to me. It doesn't seem like pressing next track should ever pause when the player's currently playing. These playlists are not marked to repeat -- I haven't yet tested it with a repeating playlist.

Uhh... Repeat is not only a playlist attribute, but also a mode on the player... Are you sure repeat is on? You should see an "r" or "R" on the Track info screen...

yeah, I just saw this now that you pointed it out. This will be annoying when playing albums because I am used to the way a CD player works. . . I guess I could always have the player in repeat mode

-Jeff

Repeat is not on. I thought that was clear. My point is that the player should never pause because I've asked it to go the next track. This used to work in the way that I think is more reasonable, but has changed, I think, since 2.0b7.

The ability to manually switch "repeat" on and off was added in the 2.0 betas.

What's happening is that you simply haven't turned Repeat on. You are correct in that this is new to the 2.0 software. Fortunately, you can turn on repeat, and it will remember its state across power-pulls. My player has Repeat turned on and it hasn't been turned off in a long long time. So I don't have the problem.

Just turn on repeat.

Ah, my bad. That's what I get for responding to messages after taking Percocet.

I don't want repeat turned on. I understand that if I turn repeat on this will not happen, but it is my point that no button that I push should cause the player to pause except the pause button. If I press the next track button, the player should assume that I want to continue listening to music, otherwise I would have pressed the pause button. While I understand the logic from a programmer's point of view, it is the wrong thing to do from a UI point of view.

Oh, OK.

In that case, I agree. If it's at "end of playlist", and I press Next, it should start playing the playlist again. I totally agree with that statement. In fact, I thought it worked this way until recently when another person was reporting a bug in this area.

It's just that, I never have Repeat turned off so I never see "end of playlist".

Nope. I still don't think you quite understand. (Actually, I disagree with you about what you just said if it's the same point you were making in an earlier thread.) Let me give a concrete example:

1. Play a playlist that has, for the sake of argument, 11 tracks
2. Set the player to not repeat
3. If it plays all the way through the last track, it should pause with the ``End of Playlist'' message -- that's fine and what I expect
4. If it's on track 10 and I press the right button, it skips to track 11 (obviously, but just to point it out to make clear)
5. If it's playing track 11, and I press the the right/next button before it gets to the end, it pauses and displays ``End of Playlist''

That last part is what I think is wrong. If I pressed next while a song was playing, I cannot think of a situation where what I really wanted to do was pause. The thing is that it's not at the end of the playlist. I explicitly asked it to skip past the end of the playlist.

The point I'm trying to make is that nothing should make the player pause (or unpause) except for pressing the pause/unpause button. End of playlist on a non-repeat playlist should the only exception, because it should actually stop there, but there's no facility for stopping, and play and unpause at that point have the same function anyway.

Ah, I see. You want the "I have repeat deliberately turned off" thing to be temporarily overridden when you skip past the end of the playlist.

Yes and no. I don't have repeat deliberately turned off, depending on what exactly you mean by deliberately. I have never touched the repeat options on the empeg, so all of my playlists are set to not repeat, and the front panel repeat is set to ``Off'', but not because I deliberately set it that way. It's just the default.

Also note that this function changed between b7 and b11, I believe (I'd test it, but b7 is gone). So I'm reporting it as a bug, since it was not mentioned as a new (mis-)feature.

Bitt's right, the behaviour has changed. Though I'm not sure if it changed between b3 and b7 or b7 and b11. Add my vote to correct/change whatever needs to be changed to get back the previous (more friendly) behaviour. It used to mimick a CD. At end of list it stops by itself. If you press the NEXT button, it will never stop, but will just keep cycling through the tracks in your list.

I can see that someone might want to use this new "feature" to stop playback, but it's not as intuitive as just pressing the pause (or up) button.

I've used the Next button to purposefully start the list over without needing to fiddle with repeat. I've never used repeat on any CD player and I hadn't planned on starting with the empeg. Though I will admit I had never used Random with any CD player and I use it all the time on the empeg. Different beasts though.

Bruno

Hi.

In my opinion, the behaviour 2.0b11 is showing is exactly what I would expect. All my CD players used to stop at the end of the CD (wether I got there by playing the last track or by skipping over it was irrelevant) unless I had REPEAT switched on.
Even from the UI point of view, I think the current behaviour is correct: If I skip over a track, I might (and usually do) not want it to automatically start over again, but I want it to show me that I reached the end of the playlist. If I then want to start over, I can press NEXT again.

cu,
sven

But if you press next again, it skips to track 2 and stays paused.

Hi.

But if you press next again, it skips to track 2 and stays paused.

If this is true (I can't check at the moment), then this is a bug. Pressing next at the "end of ´playlist" state should start playing track 1 if the "end of playlist" state was reached in while not paused. More complete overview of what I would expect:

If playing the last track ends, the player should stay in the "end of playlist" mode but not switch "pause" on (resp. "play" off). -> Pressing next again starts playing the first track of the current playlist.

If "next" is pressed while the last track plays, the same should happen.

If paused and skipping to the end of a playlist, "end of playlist" state should be reached, while still paused. So pressing "next" would switch to the first track of the playlist, still paused.

cu,
sven

But it appears to me that there is no such thing as the ``end-of-playlist state''. It's actually only paused at the beginning of the playlist and happens to have a message on-screen. I assume this based on the fact that if you power cycle the empeg at this point, it no longer has the ``end of playlist'' message, but is only paused at the beginning of the playlist, and the fact that you can see the track info (if you're in that mode) of the first track beneath the ``end of playlist'' message when it pops up.

Sven's suggestion makes enough sense, but I imagine that it would require a lot of work to get the player to support a new, separate state.

I see that there is some dissention as to what the appropriate thing to do in this case is. It may make sense to make it a config.ini tunable.

To reiterate my points once again, the only thing that should pause (or unpause) the player is the user pressing the pause or unpause/play button. The sole exception to this should be when the player hits an end-of-playlist state and repeat is off, and then only because that state is implemented as a pause (it should really be a stop, but the player doesn't have that feature). If I press ``next track'', it should go to the next track, regardless of whether there's an end-of-playlist marker between where I am and where I want to be. I didn't ask the player to go to the next track or end-of-playlist marker; I asked it to go to the next track. Period.

On a more concrete note, no one seems to have complained about the previous way this worked, including those of you who are saying it should stay the way it is now.

Lemme see if I grok this.

I have shuffle mode on (least recently played), no repeat mode. Next, I press down three times and shuffle the whole enchilada. I'm now on playlist entry 1, and it's playing. I let it go for 5 seconds. I go back one track. It cues up at 0:00 on entry 1 and starts playing again.

This time I let it go for 1 second. Again I go back one track. This time it cues up at 0:00 on the last entry (not the first) and starts playing. The difference is probably intended behavior, yes/no?

Now I go forward one track. It cues up PAUSED at 0:00 on entry 1 plus "End of playlist" is displayed. Only I'm really at the start of the playlist, not the end.

However, I initiated the repeat, not the player. For that reason, perhaps this could be intended behavior as well.

Some subtle shades of usability at work here, methinks. You see that throughout the player UI. I dunno, right now I kinda like it. But if it's not your thing ... hmm, maybe there's a way to make it user-modifiable.