Ok, searched around the FAQ and forum and read the other current posts on sorting and syncing music, but I haven't found an answer to my question yet.

I have all of my mp3s in one folder and they are all named like "Artist - Title.mp3" and when I send them to the player they do not stay in alphabetical order. I made playlists on my Rio for each artist, but like today when I added a new cd of songs to the folder for that artist, the songs did not sort alphabetically, but rather the new ones went after all of the older ones that were in oder. So the list was like this:

Playlist:
A <--old songs
B
C
D
A <--new songs
B
C
D

I would like to have these songs automatically resort so they are all in order, and I found a way to do that in emplode, but you have to manually do it for each folder by right-clicking and choosing the sort options. Is there a way to automatically sort everything by alphabet?

Most people actually complain when the songs end up in alphabetical order. Ususally they want them in album order, not alphabetical order.

Did you read this FAQ entry? It gives some insights into how the sorting works.

Well the thing is I don't really care what album they come off of, because I just know where they will be on the list in alpha order, like in winamp, they are all sorted by artist and then name, which makes it easy for me to find stuff. I don't really care or want to remember what album any song comes off of.

I still don't get how I am supposed to make emplode always sort my files alphabetically, without having to select each artist's playlist and then goto the sort properties. I hate not having things in order!

You put ALL your mp3's in one folder??! Yikes!

No, not on the Rio, just on my computer. I only have about 500 songs, so it's not a big deal, and I don't need to manage them too much anyway. Besides, what does it matter since they all go on the same playlist in Winamp? I use one large playlist and it works great.

On the Rio, however, I have each artist in a separate playlist, which makes it very easy to find the artist and jump right to a song.

I knew you were refering to your computer and that's what shocked me! You could put them in folders and just drag the root folder into Winamp and save that playlist too... It would also make it easier to sync your RioCar and PC collection.

There is certainly no one "right way" to organize your music and that is what is so great about the emplode software. One of my favorite features is that you can have a song appear in 1000 playlists, but it only takes the space of one song on the player! cool!

Yes I know that's all good, but with all of the features it does have, it does NOT have the simple ability to automatically sort the songs in each playlist alphabetically, I have to manually set it for each folder each time I upload a song to my Rio and I think that's just ridiculous. Sorting by alphabet is like the most basic way to sort stuff and neither emplode nor JEmplode has that feature.

Well, to be honest, you're the first person to have ever wanted your songs alphabetical in one huge list. Usually, people want to organize them in separate album-based groups.

I know you only have 500 songs, but I think your problem might stem from the fact that the songs are not properly organized on your PC's hard disk and/or their tags are not properly filled out.

Get things organized properly on your hard disk, get them into proper folders, put them into a proper playlist structure, and you'll no longer need them to be sorted alphabetically on the player.

There are a couple of FAQ entries on the subject of how to organize an MP3 collection properly...

What does JEmplode's "Set Playlist Order" menu item do? I assumed that it would freeze the displayed order into a playlist order. So you could select the Title header to show tunes in alpha order, then select the "Set Playlist Order" menu item from the playlist's pop-up menu, and get what you want.

Except that when I tried it (in 2.0b3) it crashed my player during the sync... Dunno if that still happens (and I'm about to go for lunch, so no time to try it just now).

emplode has the same thing, I think his complaint is that he has to pick a option making it a manual process, instead of it just knowing that he wants it to be alpha-sort

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Well, to be honest, you're the first person to have ever wanted your songs alphabetical in one huge list. Usually, people want to organize them in separate album-based groups.

I know you only have 500 songs, but I think your problem might stem from the fact that the songs are not properly organized on your PC's hard disk and/or their tags are not properly filled out.

Get things organized properly on your hard disk, get them into proper folders, put them into a proper playlist structure, and you'll no longer need them to be sorted alphabetically on the player.

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I still don't know if you understand how I have my files setup. I am very meticulous in the naming and tagging of all of my songs, so I know all of the information on them is correct.

On the Rio I don't want to have my songs "alphabetically in one huge list". The way I have it now is each artist has one folder. Even then, the most songs I have in one folder is probably 20. I don't understand how having each artist in a separate folder on my hard drive will help me sort songs on the Rio. No matter what, when I add songs into emplode they just add on to the end of the last song that was on there already.

The trouble is that inside of each artist's folder, the songs do not stay organized when I add more. I'll try to make another example of the way I have my stuff setup:

             -Root

                 -Deftones                   <---- Artist

                         -Birthmark          <---- Song

                         -Change

                 

                  -Poison The Well

                         -12-23-93

                         -Mid Air Love Message

                         -Nerdy

                         -Botchla            <----New, not in order

                         -Lazarro            <----^

Now as you can see, the new songs I have just added in to the playlist did not automatically sort into alpha order. That.... um, sucks. But personally I think I have my songs organized pretty neatly. I don't want to have my songs in order they way they are on the CD because I don't like every song on the CD so I don't keep them, cause that'd be pointless. So then the numbers would be screwy, and I also have a lot of local bands and demo/unreleased songs that I want to have in some kind of order, but not in a separate playlist.

I see. You want the songs under artists, not albums under artists like everyone else does.

I have a hunch you will get that, in fact, EXACTLY that, when they implement soup views on the player. That's the way the Rio Receiver plays unshuffled soup views right now.

Funny thing is, it's the NUMBER ONE thing people COMPLAIN about on the Rio Receiver. The very first thing they say is "Why does this piece of crap play all the songs alphabetically! It should play them in album order!"

I think the only solution for the empeg team would be to implement both: A soup view of artists/songs, and a soup view of artists/albums/songs, and have one be alphabetical and the other be album-order.

I guess I thought I MUST have misunderstood you... but now it appears that I understood all along.

You have to understand that most people rip whole albums and want to preserve the play order from those CD's. So, being that emplode respects that, this feature certainly doesn't suck for the other 3,999 owners out there. If it DID organize alphabetically, then we would have to fix every single album that we import.

All you have to do, after each set of newly (I'm assuming downloaded) songs, is simply select any one of the tracks ("Nerdy" in your example) and then click the "Sort Button" (the "up and down arrow" icon with "A-Z" next to it) and then select "by Title". Boom, 2 clicks and you are all set. Mere seconds and your files are sorted alphabetically.

Considering that most users rip CD's that they own and then intend to preserve the album track order (and have 1000's of song) I think that this functionality doesn't "suck".

For everyone else who likes to keep their full albums in CD order, if they used the format "Artist - Album - Track # - Name.mp3" (or something similar) then if emplode DID by default do alphabetical sorting, the albums and songs would be in order wouldn't they?

It just seems to me, since Winamp plays my songs in perfect alpha order, when I rip new CDs with track #s in them they stay in the order they would have been on the CD.

Let me know if I'm wrong here.

no...it's not alphabetical by FILE NAME, file name means absolutely nothing to emplode other then where the file came from, it is never stored that way on the empeg, so old files would still not be interwoven with new entries...
I don't see why right clicking and choosing sort order when you add new songs to a playlist is so hard? You act like it's impossible...it's like three or four extra mouse clicks total!!!

one click (select any track in the playlist)
another click (the sort button)
a roll of the wheel mouse (scroll up to "Title")
a final click (ok)

thanks for the play-by-play...
I encode my songs so they are stored Artist - Title.mp3 so evertime I load a new albumn I do that to make it in track order...I personally don't think that's a problem...I also do a few other things, like set the year and genre which don't generally carry over to my satisfaction...and I like doing it to make sure things are exactly how I like them...

The only reason I complain about this is that I have to click on EACH artist's playlist and change alphabetical sort EVERY time I add more songs. The alpha setting will not stay as default, it goes back to sort by position. And if sort by position can be default why not sort by alphabet?

do you really add this many new songs to seperate Artists this often? I mean, once you get your songs setup you should only have to worry about it when you get a new cd...
and if you are just talking about displaying, have you clicked on the column heading to get it to display properly?
It sorts by position because even if you set the order, all it does is change that position field to the right one. Then sort by position again.
I'm just trying to imagine how you're using your empeg in a way that you have to do this so often that it becomes cumbersome...doesn't make sense to me...

First off, I add a song or two about every two days, and second, I am not worried about the display in emplode in the columns. It's the way that the songs end up when you upload them to the Rio. Basically when you first create a playlist everying you put on there in the first sync will be in alpha order (at least that's how mine did it), but when you add some new songs to that same folder the next day they start to organize by order that you put them on the rio. In emplode you can sort the lists anyway you want, but there's some extra steps to actually change the sort order on the Rio. And I have to change the sort order for each artist's playlist everytime I add a song.

This probably seems more complicated than it is. I'd almost have to show you in person I think. Oh well... maybe the soup views system will help me. I hope they are in fact working on that right now.

So, you actually listen to these songs in alphabetical order?

The alpha setting will not stay as default, it goes back to sort by position. And if sort by position can be default why not sort by alphabet?

This is a good idea, as it makes importing-in-two-goes more similar to importing-in-one-go. Probably an even better idea would be "sort by id3 track number field if present, title if not". (I think, damone, that would make it work in a way that pleases both you and tfabris).

The only issue would be importing extra songs into a playlist that's hitherto been carefully ordered. Perhaps playlists should have an "auto-sort" flag, that's on by default but gets automatically turned off when the play order is manually changed?

Peter

I think that there's a certain degree of confusion here. Playlists are _always_ sorted by position.

The "Set Playlist Order" button in emplode simply makes sure that the position ordering agrees with whichever field you select. It's a one-shot deal: the positions are altered, and that's it. What's wanted is a way of automatically pressing that button when you import files, for each of the playlists that they were imported into.

The question boils down to: What to do to a playlist once tracks have been added to it?

emplode currently imports tracks in filename order. It's unlikely to be changed.

The correct answer, as I keep saying (though not in this thread), is proper scripting in emplode. In this way, you can define a routine (in VBScript or whatever) that is called whenever a new item is added to a playlist.

You'd implement this routine to reorder the playlist however you'd prefer. Obviously, we'd provide a default implementation that ordered by track number or filename. You might even be able to define this function on a per-playlist basis. Wouldn't that be fun?

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So, you actually listen to these songs in alphabetical order?

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Yes, I do. I like it that way because it's very easy for me to also find the next track, because I'll know approximately how many button pushes it'll take to get to it.

I have to say that you're the only person I've ever heard who does that.

that's what I was trying to explain but i couldn't say it right...always in postion, just because your position matches trck doesn't mean it's in track order...it's still in position...I think this is the type of thing that is easier to understand if you've actually been programming before and you can see exactly why it's done that way...
and I still don't think it's so hard to select the set playlist order everytime you add songs...it sounds to me from his last message that he adds songs and then syncs then sees that it's different and assumes it didn't put them in right...if you watch when you add new stuff, you can see it make it the next position number...

How strange - if you want to get to a track alphabetically, the search function works very well.
I personally would get very confused doing it alphabetically as it goes against my years of conditioning that songs come on albums. So I, like most folks, do an Artist - Album kind of arrangement. As I never buy things in the right order I'm not so worried about ordering by year (although I still set the tag for it)

In general, I use a play all tracks shuffled by least recently played and just skip if I don't feel like listening to the current track right now. To find a specific track or artist is a matter of 5 or 10 seconds (although usually I forget to insert and need to press 3 downs after the track finishes)