Ok, here's something that would really make the empeg UI a lot easier to navigate.

Most of the time I'm playing a root/near root playlist in random mode. Every so often a song comes up that I then decide I want to hear more of the album, or artist, or musical genre. I've set up my playlists in this form of structure.

It would be really helpful if there was a way of switching into the playlist menu structure at the point that this song appears in it's primary position. So, you could then navigate the playlist structure from this point, rather than having to start from the root via the menu system. You could then go up a level or two and select the playlist or super-playlist that the song appears in.

Having an easy key-press to do this from the front panel (rather than the remote) would be even better. To be honest, I'd prefer that holding down 'Down' did this, rather than switching visuals on and off. [Side note- any chance of user customization of the mapping of controls->functions?]

You can kind of do what I want by switching random off when playing the song and manually navigating with left and right, but then I am searching tracks in a depth-first tree order. I'd like to retain the randomness, but within a more constrained playlist than the root/sub-root playlist that is currently selected.

I'm not sure how this would work with virtual playlists, but it should probably select the primary playlist that the song appears in, rather than virtual, secondary playlists. I'm a little fuzzy here as I don't use them, so for me there is no playlist ambigutiy as each song only appears once in the playlist structure.

Every so often a song comes up that I then decide I want to hear more of the album, or artist, or musical genre.

Assuming that you're not picky about the exact song, you can do this right now. The "Tweak Order" functions allow you to insert more of the same album, or artist, or genre after the current song. Buttons 2,3,5,6, and 8 on the remote do this. Put the "now and next" screen up and watch what they do.

Of course, I understand the specific feature you're asking for, and I know this isn't that feature. I'm just giving you something to tide you over in case you didn't already know about it.

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Tony Fabris

Thanks Tony, I did already know about those. They look cool, but I don't really use them because:

1) My playlists define my categorization, not the Genre tag. I want to use any given level of the hierarchy, which varies by song and my mood, rather than a flat selection based on matching only one tag
2) I have to keep pressing the remote button, once per song to add, I want to press once to select the whole playlist
3) I don't want to have to use the remote in the car while I'm driving

It seems that it should be an easy addition to the UI, just an easier/more context-sensitive way of accessing the playlist menu structure

I agree, somewhat on the same note.

All of my CDs are set up as playlists(essentially a giant CD changer),but several other playlists have been created according to many different criteria. When shuffling the entire unit, and coming accross a particular song,I find myself wanting to hear the whole CD. It would be nice to access this playlist with a single keystoke.

This might be accomplished by assigning each song a "master playlist". When this song plays, a single keystroke gets you back to the master playlist,where upon you hit the same key again to play the entire playlist.

Tell me if I'm crazy or missing an easier way.

Mk2 #105 12g blue
Car install complete...waiting patiently...again(extra sled for boat)

All of my CDs are set up as playlists(essentially a giant CD changer),but several other playlists have been created according to many different criteria. When shuffling the entire unit, and coming accross a particular song,I find myself wanting to hear the whole CD. It would be nice to access this playlist with a single keystoke.

You can do this right now. Press the "0" key on the remote control to un-shuffle. It will un-shuffle right around your current song. When that song is done, it'll roll right into the rest of the album that the song came from.

Now here's the "but" part.

Right now there's a bug in this, where you can't control how it un-shuffles. Sometimes it'll unshuffle and drop you into the song's album, as desired. But sometimes it'll drop you into one of those "other" playlists (I have the same layout you have, so I know what you're talking about). I have discussed this problem with one of the programmers, and he seems to be committed to giving us a solution as soon as he can.

The solution I've suggested is as follows:

- In Emplode, order your playlists so that your "Albums" come first. Put your other mood/mixture playlists at the end of the sort order.

- Then, when the shuffle algorithm is engaged, it de-dupes the flattened playlist before shuffling. When this de-dupe is performed, it makes the dupes that came first in the list have the priority.

- When you un-shuffle, since the first dupe had priority, it should be one of the ones from your "album" playlists. So when you get dropped back into the un-shuffled playlist, your index point is within an album.

Although I haven't heard from Empeg on this subject for weeks, they sounded quite interested in making it work when I spoke to them about it.

Hello... Mike... John... any word on this?

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Tony Fabris