Hierarchical Play List

Please please please please add this soon! I don't know about anyone else, but I now have enough music that it takes forever to scroll to the playlist I want! I've stopped adding music because it takes so long to scroll. With that one feature added I would be happy with the current software. 30 cds worth of music makes for a long list, and that's only using about 2 gigs.
Sheetzam S/N 73, 10gig, Blue.

Scrolling through the playlists was a *lot* quicker in the very early betas before the "slide the text sideways" scrolling was implemented, i.e. when the menu just jumped from item to item rather than sliding. The sliding does look fancy, but at least in my opinion it makes the menus too slow.

I think Hugo and Mike said they'd make the sliding behaviour configurable, but I'd guess it's not very high priority.

Cheers,

Mark.

I know the feeling! I kid you not, Hugo, if this ONE feature of being able to find a song easily gets implemented, consider my purchase of a 28Gb unit a done deal. I'm all set to shell out the money for this thing, but I have no intentions of loading up 28 gigs worth of music and spending 30 minutes to find that one song.

Heck, I'll give you my credit card number and all that information now and once that feature is implemented, process my order. Can ya tell that I really want this thing???

All sarcasm aside, is there any idea as to when it will be easy to find a particular song?

George

I believe Mike almost has "Play by PIN" finished - this will allow the selection of a specific song or playlist according to a PIN that you specify with emplode.

Erm... not wishing to offend anyone of course... but "Play by PIN" !!!! That sounds about as useful as a chocolate teapot... how on earth are people going to remeber the PIN numbers for the song they want when the unit has lets say upwards of 800 tracks on it...


- Given two theories.... pick the one that sounds funniest -

First, let me say that I'd much rather have the name change as you type in the name (auto fill), as Hugo mentioned before. But, if that's too far off, then play by pin is adequate... so long as it's implemented correctly. I'm no expert on just how to do things like this, but I can think of a way to make it somewhat usable and a little user friendly. If the PIN# is generated using a logical numbering system, it could work. Let's say you have a PIN# of 024107602003. I realize that's a long #, but it makes sense considering the number of songs you can have. To break that down, using my own (pathetic?) reasoning, this is what it looks like:

0241 - Artist number (alphabetically listed)
076 - Album number (alphabetically listed)
02 - CD number (for multi-CD albums)
003 - Track number

I used extra digits since it would be a lot of rework to add a single digit to the PINs later on, so it's long for a reason. You could cut out the 02 if you use each CD in a multi-CD album as a seperate album, thereby reducing the PIN by two digits, though. Using this methodology, you could very easily print out an alphabetical list of your entire music collection and be able to find a song VERY easily. Considering you can have upwards of 5000 songs on the player, an alphabetical list would be a logical thing to keep with you. There's no way you'd be able to remember what song 3582 is. There's also no way you'd be able to remember the PINs for 5000 songs. If you can, you're in the wrong field! A printed out listing of each PIN# makes sense to me. I don't know exactly what the Empeg people have in mind, but this would be acceptable by me until they can get the "auto fill" typing in.

Anyone else have an idea on how to find a song? I'm sure everyone, including Empeg would like to hear them. I wonder what they have in mind, too!

George

I think you've probably sussed what the problem is; the empeg can simply store so many tracks. I have trouble with a 6-disc changer remembering disc order or even what's in there. Dealing with an 80-disc changer would be almost impossible (anyone played with the Pioneer 50-disc mega changer yet? They're getting desperate!).

Although I think your hierarchical numbering is reasonable, there's a couple of practical problems.

1) This could only really be practical operated from the remote; what happens when you leave it at home?

2) Typing a 10 digit number on the remote whilst driving would be a problem. I am only now (after several days on the road) getting used to using it, but pressing individual keys on the pad is difficult without looking at the remote itself. It has no locator pip on the centre digit which makes locating a key by feel almost impossible; if you look at the remote, you either take your eyes off the road or hold the remote up into your line of sight, whereupon it stops working. Unless you have a repeater installed....

I have been trying to bounce off the windscreen, then off the rear window and back to the unit. My neighbours are wondering why I have bits of tinfoil stuck to the windows of the car....

In the end, I think that if the truly hierarchical menu structure is implemented, this will no longer be an issue, although I have yet to be convinced. I must admit, of all the things I could wish for on the empeg, having the menus work properly for playlists is definitely my *number 1* favourite choice above everything else. That wasn't too subtle, was it Mike? ;^)

> Anyone else have an idea on how to find a song? I'm sure everyone,
> including Empeg would like to hear them. I wonder what they have in mind, too!

Give the IR controller alphabetic sequences as well as numeric on the keys
and you use it like a telephone? 1-800-SIMPLY-RED :)

Anyway, I have other ideas for this. My Pilot can send Consumer IR as well
as IRDA and it's got a touch sensitive screen...

Paul

>Anyway, I have other ideas for this. My Pilot can send Consumer IR as well
>as IRDA and it's got a touch sensitive screen...

This is HOT and a great idea - store the complete playlist on an PPilot and control the empeg from there. Think about the possibilities.... all that searching...think about that, you are at work and wonder what to listen to on your way home, so you take the pilot with the database on it, set up your playlist, than transmit it to the empeg when getting in the care...great! Jo

The PIN will be a number that you specify yourself, so you can use it how you like. I'm not sure if it'll like leading zeros though..

This isn't a cop out by the way, we're still working on the more sophisticated retrieval methods!

Rob

What an EXCELLENT idea - I am currently using a Palm V and its searching is very very fast. What do the empeg guys think?

Frankly, this should be priority A-Number-One, over everything else. No more visuals, no radio, no nothing until the playlists are *finished* and *working*.

I *hate* the current "all lumped together" playlist set-up. It makes the unit *unusuable*.

Hey Paul, what about an instant poll for which feature should have priority,
say out of a list of 5 choices (with playlist hierarchy in there somewhere)?