There seem to be one or two problems with the new Search By Title/Artist in beta8. First, it seems I'm unable to enter a blank (space) character. I tried pressing 1, but this seems to not match anything - or am I missing something here? If not, may I suggest you use 1 to match any special characters, like blanks, apostrophes, exclamation marks, hyphens, braces etc. I have a lot of songs starting with "A " (A Hard Day's Night, A Fine Romance, A Kind Of Magic etc), and currently I can't enter more than the first letter. This takes me to the next point: I found out (and I like this) that a leading "A " or "The " in the song title or artist name are ignored, so I can find "A Fine Romance" by pressing 346 ("f" "i" "n") on the remote. However while the "A" is ignored in the search, it's still highlighted in the result list. I think the highlighting should start with "f" here as well. Next - and most important - point is that when I search for songs starting with "A", the ones starting with "A " (that is "A<blank>") don't show in the result list. This may be related to the feature of ignoring the leading "A ", but I still want to be able to find my songs there. It does work with song names with a leading "The ", though - these songs are found when searching for "T".

Another problem: Whenever the empeg stops playing (because, for example, it finished playing the results of my last search), the Search By ... menu just disappears. It really shouldn't, because I think this is quite a common operation - you search for a song name, listen to it, and shortly before it ends you start searching for the next thing you want to hear - only to have the menu disappear in the middle of your search...

If these problems are corrected, and the user interface becomes a little more consistent, then this feature will be really great!

Oh, and while I'm at it... I have a feature request for the empeg folks: Ignoring "The " is nice for english songs and artists. If you have the time and space, could you add the same for some major foreign languages? German, for example... smile. You could ignore "Der " and "Die " and "Das " at the beginning. Would make finding "Die Fantastischen Vier" easier, and also prove that the empeg team is truely thinking globally... :-)

Daniel

First, it seems I'm unable to enter a blank (space) character.

Spaces (and special characters) are completely ignored when matching. For example, I can match "Dazed, Beautiful and Bruised" by pressing 3203323 etc.

I think the highlighting should start with "f" here as well.

I agree. I'll put it on the wishlist.

Whenever the empeg stops playing (because, for example, it finished playing the results of my last search), the Search By ... menu just disappears.

This appears to be a bug.

Oh, and while I'm at it... I have a feature request for the empeg folks: Ignoring "The " is nice for english songs and artists. If you have the time and space, could you add the same for some major foreign languages? German, for example... smile. You could ignore "Der " and "Die " and "Das " at the beginning. Would make finding "Die Fantastischen Vier" easier, and also prove that the empeg team is truely thinking globally... :-)

Good point. We'll have to add this, maybe we could have entries in the config file. Mind you, I might want to skip "Le" from "Le Voyage de Pénélope" even if I speak English. :-)


--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Mike,

thanks for the quick answer. Then only one problem remains: not all tracks and playlists are found. I just did some more testing and found that e.g. "A Kind Of Magic" (playlist) and "A Kind Of A Kind Of Magic" (songs) are neither found when searching for "a" nor when searching for "kin". A bug or a user error?

One more bug I just found (sorry...) Go to the "Search By Title" screen using the remote. Now, use the diamond keys on the empeg itself to select any playlist and start playing it. The display will still show the Search By Title screen, but the remote and the empeg keys behave as if the normal screen (when no menu is active) was displayed. I had to go to the "Search By Title" menu again (pressing DIRECT OK three times) to get control back.

Cheers
Daniel

One more bug I just found (sorry...) Go to the "Search By Title" screen using the remote. Now, use the diamond keys on the empeg itself to select any playlist and start playing it. The display will still show the Search By Title screen, but the remote and the empeg keys behave as if the normal screen (when no menu is active) was displayed. I had to go to the "Search By Title" menu again (pressing DIRECT OK three times) to get control back.
You also hit similar problems if you switch source when the title/artist/genre screens are active (but not on PIN/year).



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