Adding disk (add item to FAQ)

3 days after I've received my 12GB Mk2 its full

Hey, Tee -- here's a radical idea. You've got 12 GB of music in your empeg, that's enough for more than a week of continuous 24-hour a day listening. Instead of worrying about how you're going to cram more music into it -- you could listen to the music you've got instead! (Juussst kidding...)

It's impressive that you could load that much music that quickly. Do you have your playlists set up the way you want them, and your ID3 tags and all that? I don't fully understand how they work, so am a bit concerned about that part of the job, although Tony assures me that once I actually get hands-on experience with the empeg and emplode it'll be pretty easy. I'll probably get to find out next week, maybe week after.

tanstaafl.

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

Like most of us he has probably had a few years to think about how he wanted his playlists and tweaked his tags. Moving the music to the player is the slow part, tweaking the playlists and order take only a minute of sync.

Alex Lear

My 12 gig Mark II was fully loaded the first day I had it. It came in over my lunch break and I started copying all of my playlists right before I headed back for work. My directory structure on my computer was already set up like I wanted my playlists. I then spent the next several days tweaking things like song title that were longer than the ID3 tag would allow, and fixing the songs that I had forgotten to tag.

If you've already got things laid out the way you want them on your computer, it doesn't take long at all to get things ready to go.

In reply to:

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My directory structure on my computer was already set up like I wanted my playlists.

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I'm curious how you set up your computer. Just what did you do? I'm wondering if what I did was the "right" way to organize the stuff on my computer. (Obviously, it's ultimately up to me how I do it.) Anyhow, I made folders for each group, then made subfolders for each album and placed the songs in there. Essentially, I used the options that Audiocatalyst give you for automatic directory structure. I also added all the ID3 tags, including artist, title, year, and genre. You guys sure preached enough about making certain that all the tags were filled out! THANKS! Speaking of which, empeg searches by artist and title currently, correct? It doesn't do anything with the others just yet, right? I believe the last thing I read was that it broke the limitation of the album and artist name, but that was all. Still the case?

Along the same lines, what types of playlists do people have? I'm trying to get some ideas as to how I could set things up.

Thanks.


George

Anyhow, I made folders for each group, then made subfolders for each album and placed the songs in there.

That's a great way to do it. A single drag-and-drop will then create your entire playlist structure in emplode, and you'll have a nice neat set of artist/album playlists.


Speaking of which, empeg searches by artist and title currently, correct? It doesn't do anything with the others just yet, right?

Currently, you can search on Artist, Title, Album, Year, and Genre. Right from the remote control. It's neat when you see it in action- the fuzzy-search has a great UI.


I believe the last thing I read was that it broke the limitation of the album and artist name, but that was all. Still the case?

I think what you mean is: The ID3 tag specification limits the fields to 30 characters in your MP3 files on your PC. (The ID3v2 spec is different, but that's a different subject that I won't get into right now.)

The Empeg uses your ID3 tags as its starting point. But it doesn't store its data in the ID3 tags. It stores the data in its database, which has no such limitation. So after the songs are in your empeg, you can name the artists and titles as long as you want.

In fact, the 30-character limit for ID3 tags exists in four places: Artist, Title, Album, and Comment. The Empeg's database has no limits on the length of any of these fields.

Is that what you mean?

One thing you might want to consider: Even though you can name the songs any length in emplode, the empeg's VFD display is limited in the number of characters you can see at one time. So even though I have to abbreviate some of my song/artist/album titles for the PC, I leave them that way after I move them to the empeg since I usually wouldn't see the extra letters anyway.

Along the same lines, what types of playlists do people have?

Since the playlists are totally free-form, and very easy to create/change, everyone will have different ways of putting together their playlists.

I started with a buch of artist/album playlists. Then I added a few "mood" playlists such as "Low key" and "Tony's Favorites", then added a "Test audio" and a "Demo" playlist. I have two special-purpose playlists as well: "LAN Party", which is mostly industrial and techno to keep my fellow gamers happy, and "Filks" in which I store songs that I'm working on Filk parodies for.

Some people arrange their playlists by genre. Others have more esoteric playlists, such as Chip who has an "80's stuff" playlist that you can see in his empeg demonstration video. Hugo has a playlst called "Teen" which is populated with N'sync, Britney Spears, and all that other stuff that'll rot your brain.

I still think it'd be cool to create a "both extremes" playlist that combines opposite ends of the spectrum, like Nine Inch Nails and Yanni, or Megadeath and James Taylor. That'd be interesting to shuffle-play.

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Tony Fabris