I am confused on this. I can make Playlists for rock, pop, then put my rock albums like rush under rock and music under it, or how would you guys do it? I read the FAQ but want recommendations from people who use them!

The Search function of this BBS works really well for those kinds of questions, too. The FAQ is great, but you'll find more opinions on how to do things here. I think we've probably hashed over many of these kind of questions in the past.

I tried the search and can't find a thing about it.

I have mine /Genre/Artist/Album/## - Track on my PC and my empeg.

The glory of the empeg is that you don't have to pick one way. Try it every way and see which ones you end up using, and stick with them.

Personally, I keep a "By Artist" and a "By Album" playlist as my main ones. Them I have random mixes, audio books, and people playlists.

Personalized "people" playlists is the best way to convert a sekeptic, if you know what their taste in music is. They get in the car, you pick out their playlist and they're getting songs that only they like. I've got one friend who only likes whole albums, so her playlist is randomized albums, the other couple I've got are just tracks.

Matthew

The best way is fine, thanks for asking. As to "what" the best way is, I don't know. I organized such that the top level is artist, and the second level is album. Exception: compilations have a top level of "compilations", soundtracks of "soundtrack".

I have a second tree with the root being artist, the next layer being album, which means a Dr. Demento Compilation results in tracks in e.g. the Weird Al artist "directory", in a "subdirectory" named for the Dr. Demento album name.

I have mine setup like this:

"All Artists" (Contains everything)
..."ABC"
......Artists that start with A, B, or C
.........Albums
............Tracks
..."DEF"
..."GHI"
...(etc.)
"Electronic"
...All artists that fit into this genera
......Albums
.........Tracks
Genera 2
Genera 3
etc. etc.

(Sorry about the dots... Spaces and tabs didn't seem to work cool. Hope it's still understandable.)

Remember, the beauty of the empeg, is that you can tweak it however you want. And remember, the same track can be in several different playlists simultaneously, but there's only one copy of the track saved on the unit.

I highly recommend the "ABC", "DEF" thing if you have a big collection, because that way you don't have to scroll through as many artists to get to the one you want. Heck, for some people it doesn't hurt to have a separate playlist for each letter of the Alphabet.

For what its worth, I have mine as follows:

Alpha
-- A-C
-- D
.
.
.
-- R
-- S-U
-- V-Z
(with Artist/Album/Track underneath)

Artists
-- Artist#1
------Album#1
etc, for all artists

Genres
-- Genre1
etc, with Artist/Album/Track underneath

Lists
-- List1, etc
for "mood" lists, or "people" lists

Empty
an empty playlist to use when "starting over" when using Palantir to queue playlists. I "play" this playlist when I want to start with no running list and add from there.

Books
-- Artist/Book/Tracks
for audio books, seminars, etc.

As has been mentioned by others, the beauty is that tracks are potentially in multiple lists. I love the "Alpha" when using the player without the remote (which I usually do while in the car).

Jim

I thought that I had posted about this prevously, sorry if I mis-directed you. I remember now my post was on how to name and store your MP3's on your hard drive. Here is what I do on the player: use JEmplode's dynamic Soup Views. I have two soup views, and I record the way I create them in a text document so it's easy to tweak the settings. Here are my two views:

Artist and Source
Search: (genre != "Audio Books") and (genre != "Comedy")
Range - Artist: [,0-9,a-c,d-f,g-i,j-l,m-o,p-s,t-v,w-z
By Artist
By Source

Genre and Artist
By Genre
By Artist
By Source

I use the Artist and Source playlist to listen to all my music randomized, which is how I usually listen to my music. This playlist eliminates the genres Audio Books and Comedy which are spoken word. If I would like to include these in my randomized playlist, I can select the Genre and Artist soup and then the Comedy genre. This is what I do when I want to add in my Bud Light - Real Men Of Genius clips.

If I want to listen to mellow music, I can select the genres I want in the Genre and Artist soup. Any other thing I want to hear I usually use Palantir to queue it up. If I want to hear a whole album or an ad-hoc playlist, Palantir usually does that best for me rather than pecking away at the remote.

I have mine organized into a couple of basic sections. My "top" row looks something like

Albums
Jeff Radio
Angel Radio
Mood
Desert Island

Under "Albums" I have Genre->Artist->Album->Song in track order

Under "Jeff Radio"* I have "Rock", "Pop", "Christian" and "Worship" playlists, which are basically weighted so my favorite songs are emphasized in the given genre.

"Angel Radio" is my wife's favorites organized into "Country" & "Fast Country"

Under "Mood" I have "Instrumental", "Relax", and "Album Shuffle", the last of which really isn't a "mood" but it goes there anyway for lack of anywhere else. If played with the shuffle mode turned of it shuffles all of my decent, non-greatest hits albums and plays all of the tracks in order.

Finally “Desert Island” is an ever-changing list of my favorite ten albums so I have easy access to them.

Occasionally I’ll put newly uploaded tracks into a separate playlist at the root level called “new songs” too. I know there’s a shuffle mode for this, but I never get quite what I want that way. Gradually I let songs trickle out of this playlist as I get tired of them, and then eventually I just delete it.

Sorry if that's too much information, but this is what I've settled on after a year and a half of playing with this thing. I think the biggest controversy around here is whether to include a level for "genre". I couldn't image trying to click through all of my albums if I didn't have them separated, but to each his (or her) own.

*BTW “Radio” is used as my own personal joke to say that the empeg is basically the perfect “radio station”. All songs I like, no DJs, and now with cross fading!

"Angel Radio" is my wife's favorites organized into "Country" & "Fast Country"

I'm not going to make the "I like all kinds of music, both Country and Western" joke. I'm not.

Oh wait, I just did.

I did it the simplest way possible...i have broken up the alphabet into groups of 5

i.e. A-E
F-G
etc

Then under each group I have each letter
A
B
C
etc

then under each letter i have all of the artists listed by the first letter of the name

i.e. Aerosmith:A
Van Morrison: V

Then under each artist I have all of their albums or individual songs

as it is very subjective to determine what genre an artist or lbun is, it is equally objective to sort them by name


It really couldnt be easier!!!!

Ed

I like that idea. I have a variable sized "Alpha" list because there are more "S" artists than "Q", or whatever. Having a separate letter within a 5 letter group is a good idea.