My old Blaupunkt Bremen has a nice feature. Just like the Empeg it has three banks where you can store your favourite radio stations. The fourth bank is a special one, used for travelling. This bank can be filled with one touch of a button, filling it with the six strongest stations currently receivable, ordered by signal strength. If RDS TA is on, only stations carrying TA are stored.

This is a real nice feature if you are travelling abroad.

Another nice feature the Bremen has, is that - while playing cassettes - it will automatically retune to a station carrying TA if the RDS signal from the current tuned station is lost.

I hate the idea of "banks" what is the deal with that? I want *playlists* of radio stations. I want the *same* interface as picking tunes as picking stations. *banks* are so old school.

Calvin

More complaint threads on the tuner bank concept, or at least appeals for the option to change it...

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=wishlist&Number=45103

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=bigs&Number=38767

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=wishlist&Number=40881

I'm amazed that that never occurred to me before.

It'd also be nice to be able to set Radio presets (in whatever form they take) from within emplode.

It'd also be very cool to be able to mix radio presets in with the playlists, so we wouldn't have to manually switch back and forth between radio and mp3 modes.

I'm pushing for playlist like organization structures. Let's not take the limited concept of a "bank" and apply bandaids all over it (like connecting one bank to another bank in a daisy chain). That's just stupid!

Emplode is an excellent interface for organizing this sort of thing. Have the empeg scan all the stations, and then use emplode to organize them. Put stations by playlist (news radio, rock, classical, ...) annotate time slots to the stations so you can label particular radio shows and programs. I want to be able to down "down down down" while in tuner mode and select *all* stations and be able to click "next next next" until i find what i want. If I feel like listening to news, i select the news radio station playlists and flip through until I get what i want. If the Cartalk time slot comes up, I want it to auto-tune to that program. Come on people, let's think outside the box and do away with silly limitations like banks.

Calvin

While we're at it, why bother having a separate Tuner Mode? I mean, I guess I can see how it would be useful for it still to be there (for scanning around in new areas or whatever), but why not just have tuner presets mixed in with the mp3s? I can come up with a couple possible problems, but they should be avoidable.

Eh.. Call me old fashioned but I like the idea of a separate tuner mode. I wouldn't want my tuner presets mixed in with playlists, personally. I can't think of what value it really adds combining the two. Plus my Hijack IR translations would get all messed up.

Hi.

I wouldn't to mix tuner mode with mp3 mode. I can see no use for that (but I could see the use for "if player is on, automatically switch to tuner mode, station ID X at HH:MM, switch back to previous mode/station at HH:MM"), but I see one HUGE problem with mixing mp3s with stations:
How the hell is a "station" ever going to end within a playlist? Do you want it to automatically detect when a song is over (that never really worked well for me on AUX, how could it work on FM/AM with one song crossfaded into comments into other songs?), or do you want to define a maximum playtime of mm:ss or both?

cu,
sven

PS: If you didn't notice: April fool's day is over.

I actually did think about it. But a playlist contains tunes. Tunes contain attributes. The tuner mode differs in that a playlist contains radio stations. Radio stations contain attributes and programs. Programs contain tunes. The tunes are not predictable, though the programs are. So that difference alone entitles the tuner mode to be separate. However, the paradigm for organizing and selecting music *works* already, so let's apply that to the tuner.

Some of the playlist attributes I'm thinking of are "autotune" so you can set up a playlist called "Traveling" so it can use RDS or scanning to retune to the strongest stations. Another attribute might be "synchronize time" so that you can select a specific station that has an accurate clock to sync to. Another option might be "tune to this station at X date/time" on a regular basis. Further capabilities might include recording stations and so on.

Calvin

Wow. What a bunch of naysayers.

My idea was this: I find it annoying that I have to menu all over the place to find the tuner mode (I don't really like using the remote), and then I have to play with the tuner in a different manner than the player. Tony suggested having a similar UI for the tuner. My thought was that it would make a lot more sense to just go ahead and have the ability to put tuner presets in with the mp3 files. (I realize I'm just reiterating. Wait for it.)

The problems you all list stem from the fact that you're thinking about the tuner presets as if they were tunes. I'm just suggesting that there doesn't need to be a separate more that you have to go to. In other words, to make my idea fit with the current UI, when you select a tuner preset from the Playlists menu, it would automatically switch to tuner mode and change the station to the one selected. But instead of changing the ``default'' menu item, it would still contain the same things it did before, mp3 playlists and tuner presets. If you wanted to listen to another radio station, then you could select another preset from the playlists menu or you could use the left and right button or whatever to tune as you would now. But if you selected an mp3 or mp3 playlist from the ``Playlists'' menu, it would automatically switch back to player mode and start playing it.

The major problem would be with including a tuner preset in a playlist, since there would be no way for it to end to go to the next song. I would suggest that that doesn't really make sense and should be disallowed. Another way would be to be able to define a length of time that it should play. (That would be more versatile, since it could possibly be useful to someone somewhere, and the rest of us could just set that timer to infinity and make sure not to place tuner presets in mp3 playlists.) (Actually, now that I think of it, in that paradigm you could set a default timer length in the playlist definition, and a playlist of radio stations could serve as a scan function. That way you could have a rock scanner, a jazz scanner, a country scanner, etc.)

An alternate suggestion that's very similar would be to have a ``Playlists'' menu as we have now and a ``Radio'' menu next to it, both of which would be available all the time, probably with the default being the one that's currently active. Otherwise, it would work the same as I suggested above, but the mp3s and tuner presets would be segregated. And you could long press on the ``Playlists'' or ``Radio'' menu items to just switch to that mode, if you wanted, for some reason.

My whole thought is that there's no reason for such an advanced system to force you to switch to a particular mode. It should be able to figure it out on its own.