I think the Empeg player is the best mobile mp3 player on the market today. I want to buy one but what's stopping me right now is what I perceive as incomplete playback flexibility. On my PC I use MusicMatch to organize my mp3s and I would like the equivalent playback flexibility on the Empeg.

Let me illustrate what I want by a real example. Currently in MusicMatch I organize my mp3s by album, artist, title, genre and tempo. MusicMatch has an AutoDJ function which lets me specify conditions on these fields after which it will randomly play songs that fit my criteria. For instance I could select all songs in which genre=rock and tempo=fast. Or I could select all songs in which genre=dance or reggae and tempo=fast or moderate. Of course due to the limitations of ID3 the empeg will not support tags such as tempo but this can be accomplished by nested playlists. Therefore on the empeg car I should be able to choose one or more (nested) playlists and have all songs that match the criteria be played. Note that the choice should drilldown not only through the nested playlists but also to the ID3 tags.

When I start up my Empeg then I should be able to specify something like the following:
Fast/Rock
Moderate/Rock
Fast/Reggae
Moderate/Alanis Morrisette

After this choice I should be able to hit play and then hear randomly selected tracks matching the above criteria.

I am not going to presume to specify how the above behaviour should be implemented. However any solution that gives the above playback functionality would be acceptable

Regards
Lester

Of course due to the limitations of ID3 the empeg will not support tags such as tempo but this can be accomplished by nested playlists

Yes, it can. Currently playlist selection is actually limited to 'this is what you picked at the last sync'. The limitations of the ID3 prohibit searches beyond the current field set and compared to music match this is a problem.

It would be possible to have your songs all grouped into playlists depending on style/genre/mood etc. but this might be more irritating just doing the navigation!

stay in touch 'cause I'm sure that this is something that the programmers will be revising.

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Murray

You can organise your tracks manually into playlists, based upon whatever criteria you want (tracks can exist in multiple lists). You can also build dynamic lists based upon artist, genre, title, album or yeah - but not combinations of the above.

The ultimate flexible approach is to dynamically build playlists based upon a combination of criteria - we call this a Wendy Filter (you'll have to dig through our very early news bulletins to find out why) and it's expected to make a release in the not-too-distant future.

By the way, imho, playback flexibility with the car player is rather good even without the Wendy Filter.

Rob

I think the Empeg player is the best mobile mp3 player on the market today. I want to buy one but what's stopping me right now is what I perceive as incomplete playback flexibility.

That's too bad, because that's just a perception. The unit's nested playlists are very flexible and easy to use. Creating customized playlists is so easy that you don't really need complex filtering options. I, too, was confused about how the playlists worked until I actually owned an Empeg. Now I'm very happy with the way it works.

If you're holding off a purchase because of a perceived lack of a feature, that's too bad, because you're missing out on owning an excellent car MP3 player.

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Tony Fabris

I've read the documentation on Emplode and creating playlists is indeed easy but tedious. Emplode doesn't support custom tags like tempo, mood , etc (which for instance my PC MP3 player, MusicMatch does). The only way (correct me if I'm wrong) to accomplish the same playback flexibility as MusicMatch is to create custom playlists. Creating playlists is a manual process of choosing, on a per song basis, which playlist(s) it belongs to. To put this in perspective realize that I have over 4000 mp3 files (more than 25 gb of music). I don't have the time or inclination to build custom playlists to organise this. This is especially since it is all already organised using MusicMatch on my PC.

What would be great is:
1) Support in Emplode for m3u playlists. This would allow me to export playlists from MusicMatch using its filtering functionality and quickly assign tracks en masse to Emplode playlists. This reduces per song categorisation to per playlist categorisation which is infinitely easier

2) Support for playlist combinations on playback. I should be able to choose what combination of playlists I want the Empeg to randomly choose songs from on playback.

These two features would immensely enhance the playback and categorisation experience for me.

Regards
Lester

I've read the documentation on Emplode and creating playlists is indeed easy but tedious.

Actually, it's not tedious at all. There's a difference between reading about how it works and actually doing it. Trust me, it's a lot simpler and less tedious than you might think after just reading about it. Admittedly, my collection of music is only about 1/4 the size of yours, and your definition of tedium might be more strict than mine.

The toughest and most tedious part of organizing an MP3 collection is getting all the tag data right, and it sounds like you've already done that. Dragging and dropping the files isn't that big of a deal when you actually sit down to do it.

Support in Emplode for m3u playlists. This would allow me to export playlists from MusicMatch using its filtering functionality and quickly assign tracks en masse to Emplode playlists.

This is a good idea, and I agree that it would make it easier to transfer your playlists to the Empeg. However, there's a technological hurdle that would need to be overcome: The songs stored on the Empeg don't go by the Windows file names, whereas the M3U files use the Windows filenames. This would be fine on first-upload, but what if you want to add a new playlist without adding any new files? The Empeg doesn't remember the windows file locations (on purpose) and would have to dupe the songs a second time to add the new playlist. There would be ways to overcome this, but the coding wouldn't be trivial. I think that an emplode implementation of the WendyFilter (whenever they get 'round to it) would be a more elegant solution.

Support for playlist combinations on playback. I should be able to choose what combination of playlists I want the Empeg to randomly choose songs from on playback.

Well, you can already do this by nesting playlists in Emplode, just not "on-the-fly". Remember that this is intended to be a car player: complex filtering choices aren't something you're going to want to do while you're driving. "Sorry, officer. I was trying to combine Britney Spears tracks with East L.A. techno from 1993, and I didn't see the tanker full of gasoline."

I honestly thought as you did before I owned an Empeg: I thought I'd want all sorts of filtering options for the thing. But now that I'm actually using it on a daily basis, I end up just shuffling one of the same few playlists (one of which is the root "everything on the hard disk" playlist) or picking a specific album.

It's funny how some people can be satisfied with a 6-disk sequential CD changer, but when presented with the amazing option of what's essentially an unlimited-capacity CD changer, suddenly it's not feature-complete...

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Tony Fabris

Good points. With regard to the M3U feature, I am most concerned with the issue of the first upload. That's where most of the work is required. M3U playlist utilisation for the first upload would save tons of time. For subsequent uploads I would use the "standard" Emplode procedure (manual track assignment). Once I've established the base playlist organisation using M3U files I expect that changes to the playlist configuration would be relatively painless. I would only be either rearranging the playlists or adding new tracks from recently purchased CDs. This is relatively low volume work.

So if the M3U is only valid for the first upload, that would be fine.

Regards
Lester

If you really like musicmatch, perhaps you could mount a pc in your car with a small lcd screen and a keyboard. Then you could filter to your hearts content.

Sean

Of course due to the limitations of ID3 the empeg will not support tags such as tempo but this can be accomplished by nested playlists

I feel I have to point out that this is most definitely _not_ due to a limitation of ID3. ID3v2 has tags for beats per minute, equalization, relative volume adjustment, synchronized text, synchronized tempo codes; basically, any information you'd ever want to attach to a piece of music (see www.id3.org for more info). The problem is, nobody _implements_ ID3v2 correctly, so you never hear about these tags being used. :(

If the authors of the encoders and players which are out there would just use the features which are already part of ID3v2, instead of making people play with "custom tags" and such, everybody's music collections would be a lot happier.

I know that Emplode understands ID3v2 now (internally, at least :) - perhaps, in the future, the Empeg people could support the use of some of the more useful, less well-known ID3 tags (though I imagine it won't be a terribly high priority).

-Dan Zimmerman


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Daniel M. Zimmerman
Caltech Computer Science
dmz@its.caltech.edu

The problem is, nobody _implements_ ID3v2 correctly, so you never hear about these tags being used.

It would probably be more accurate to say that nobody completely implements all of the ID3v2 spec.

ID3v2 is such an all-encompassing spec that it's unlikely that anyone would ever implement it fully. Fortunately, it's designed so that it can be only partially implemented if the developer so desires. Such a partial implementation isn't incorrect, it's just less than complete.

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Tony Fabris

It would probably be more accurate to say that nobody completely implements all of the ID3v2 spec.

True enough (though there are actually a surprising number of ID3v2 implementations which are incorrect, in the sense that they either don't deal well with all valid ID3v2 tags, or that they actually create invalid ID3v2 tags). The point I was trying to get across, though, was that people shouldn't be looking around for weird proprietary solutions to the types of problems mentioned in the original "Playback Flexibility" post, when a perfectly good standardized solution is already right there waiting to be used. :)


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Daniel M. Zimmerman
Caltech Computer Science
dmz@its.caltech.edu

Well, I would really like to see at least relative volume ID3v2 tag shoehorned into 1.0 release. I also hope that facility to back the playlists up on PC will be there (as promised).

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
#5196