I'd like the ability to have a toggle flag, similar to marking tracks, so that when you hit a button on the remote it marks the track as a favourite (with a little 'F', of course).

You can then choose the Favourites playlist which will play only tracks marked as favourites. I know I could do this once I get home, but there's something about listening to the collection at random, deciding that you really like a new track, and adding it to the favourites list right then.

A.

I played all 10000 songs on my player and "marked" tracks which later got a wendy flag for this.

Your mileage may vary.

I think a better solution for this is a ratings system which would let you rate the songs 1-10 using the numbers on the remote. Then you could have custom shuffle modes which play only your "favorites" (say, 8 or higher) or any range you wish. Or another one that plays songs rated at 10 more often than songs rated at 5, etc. Much more flexible than "this song is my favorite, this song isn't."

And, as Derrick says, you can pretty much do what you want with Wendy flags.

This would actually be good. The stream I had for myself at work was supposed to get a weighted shuffle based on something like this but I never got around to actually doing it.

Yeah, it's been talked about before..

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=wishlist&Number=24132

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=wishlist&Number=60237

And Peter at one point (back in the day when empegcar development was more active) said some kind of rating system would make it into a future release. I suspect this kind of feature is something that has fallen into the category of "we'd like to do it, if we had the time" though.

The scary thing is I just checked some logs from an instant message system we have where I work, and I find that it was 4 days before the earlier of these that I was last working on this:
(shadow@ANDREW.CMU.EDU) (share&enjoy) [12-Jan-2001, 18:08]

there has to be a better way to do weighted random selection than one involving looking at all the entries in a table and walking over weights until we've passed a random number between 0 and the total of all weights


Of course it's not really the same problem, since in that case it's basically trying to build around the relational database I already had, which basically changes what the solution set will be.

I like where you're going with the weighted shuffle idea. It would be great to have a shuffle that took how much you like a song into account. I think this is what "Plays" was supposed to be, but I don't think that would work as accurately as this new shuffle would.

I'm thinking of a shuffle that would still be random, but could also consider a weighting system (say 1-10) into consideration. So, when it went to grab the next song in the playlist, it would still be random, but would be more likely to pull a song with weight of 8 then a song with weight 3.

You could also have another shuffle mode where you say "Play all songs with weight 3 or more" or maybe "weight 7 or more". There's times where I only want to hear my absolute favorites, but times where I want to hear songs that I really like, just not necessarily my absolute favorites. So, having a way to set the threshold, perhaps by just pressing the number on the remote, would be great.

There's times where I only want to hear my absolute favorites, but times where I want to hear songs that I really like, just not necessarily my absolute favorites.

I have playlists for that... "Top 10"; "Favorites"; and "Favorite Favorites"

The first playlist has (surprise!) 10 songs in it. The second one has about 160 songs; the third one has 41 songs.

I move songs into and out of these playlists as the mood hits me -- any time I re-synch, I take a look at those playlists and see if anything should change.

tanstaafl.

Everything you've mentioned has been suggested in the other threads... And the guys know it's been requested... Sadly, I find myself questioning whether features like this have a chance given the pace of development since the EOL.

I've already suggested this or something very close to it in this thread. My idea actually leaves it open to multiple selections from a user defined menu, but the idea is still the same. You could use it for "marking" tracks to appear in special playlists including favorites but not limited to just that. "F" may be for favorites, but "C" may be for cruizing tunes, and "S" might be for tunes that get you pumped-up before going snowboarding. You guys get the picture, while your listening, it would be very convienient to mark a song with a special code, easily altered/changed at a later time without trying to remember why you marked it in the first place. This would also be helpful for giving "marked" tags to songs for other reasons (re-rip, has pops, duplicate on player, etc...). Basically a totally flexible way to mark tracks instead of just marked or not marked.

Oooo, I like that idea.