>> with my iAUDIO M5, but only once I replaced the manufacturer's buggy 
>> firmware with RockBox - a slightly nontrivial undertaking.
> 
> Ah genius - RockBox works with my old iPod 4G and it seems like it will 
> actually let me just copy&paste (part of) my mp3 collection to it and 
> then play it.  I *hate* the way iTunes and iPod work by assuming all the 
> mp3 tags are present and correct.  Going to try this out tonight...

Heh. I just hated the way iAUDIO's own firmware kept crashing and 
SANDBLASTING MY EARS IN THE PROCESS! >_< Fortunately RockBox doesn't do 
that. (It also allows me to do totally pointless stuff like plot and 
zoom the Mandelbrot set while I'm listening to my music. Why you'd 
bother with a blue/purple LCD screen I'm not sure...)

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> Heh. I just hated the way iAUDIO's own firmware kept crashing and 
> SANDBLASTING MY EARS IN THE PROCESS! >_< Fortunately RockBox doesn't do 
> that.

I just want to navigate through my songs by the folder structure that I've 
carefully set up on my PC, not by a bunch of incorrectly set mp3 tags in the 
files.

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>> Heh. I just hated the way iAUDIO's own firmware kept crashing and 
>> SANDBLASTING MY EARS IN THE PROCESS! >_< Fortunately RockBox doesn't 
>> do that.
> 
> I just want to navigate through my songs by the folder structure that 
> I've carefully set up on my PC, not by a bunch of incorrectly set mp3 
> tags in the files.

Yeah, I can see how that would suck pretty hard...

The iAUDIO firmware works that way in the first place, but so does 
RockBox. (Annoyingly, by default RockBox only plays the files in the 
current folder, rather than moving to the next folder. But there's an 
option somewhere to change that. And I'm told you can configure custom 
playlists somehow if you want to...)

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> Yeah, I can see how that would suck pretty hard...

In particular I have a folder full of random songs that I like, I can find 
no way in iTunes/iPod to play this folder.  I thought maybe I could create a 
playlist, but no of course there is no way to select every file from a 
particular folder in order to create one.  The best hack I could come up 
with was to use a 3rd party program to give a certain comment to every mp3 
file in that folder, then tell iTunes to make a playlist of songs with that 
comment.

Also during my investigations I found that with the later versions of WinAmp 
you can make it automatically tag an mp3 by analysing the conent (and 
presumably sending it off somewhere).  It's worked on every song so far, you 
just select a bunch of songs within WinAmp, right click and choose "Send To: 
Autotag" and it does it!  I'm tempted to just select my entire mp3 
collection and leave it running overnight to make sure they are all correct 
;-)

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scott wrote:
>> Yeah, I can see how that would suck pretty hard...
> 
> In particular I have a folder full of random songs that I like, I can 
> find no way in iTunes/iPod to play this folder.  I thought maybe I could 
> create a playlist, but no of course there is no way to select every file 
> from a particular folder in order to create one.  The best hack I could 
> come up with was to use a 3rd party program to give a certain comment to 
> every mp3 file in that folder, then tell iTunes to make a playlist of 
> songs with that comment.
> 
> Also during my investigations I found that with the later versions of 
> WinAmp you can make it automatically tag an mp3 by analysing the conent 
> (and presumably sending it off somewhere).  It's worked on every song so 
> far, you just select a bunch of songs within WinAmp, right click and 
> choose "Send To: Autotag" and it does it!  I'm tempted to just select my 
> entire mp3 collection and leave it running overnight to make sure they 
> are all correct ;-)

All my files [which as Ogg Vorbis, not MP3] were created by me 
personally, by encoding the data from the original CDs. I use CDex. Put 
a disk in, type in all the details, hit a button, and it carefully puts 
files into folders and places correct metadata inside. (Assuming it's an 
album where everything is by the same artist. It can't handle 
compilations properly, but it's easy enough to add the correct data with 
WinAmp.)

Actually, that's a lie. My MP3 player *does* have just two MP3s on it 
(and they're probably both illegal): Microsoft Jinglebells and Ugly 
Girl. Go google them. ;-)

[Oh for the days when 10 CDs worth of data was considered "a lot". 
KOMPLETE 5 comples on 14 dual-layer DVDs, BITCHES!]

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Invisible wrote:
> Perhaps you misunderstand. The sound cuts out if the bitrate goes TOO 
> LOW. It never cuts out due to high bitrate.

I understand. Are you sure low-bitrate audio isn't harder to decode? Are you 
sure it's not cutting out when the high bitrate comes back?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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> Ah genius - RockBox works with my old iPod 4G and it seems like it will 
> actually let me just copy&paste (part of) my mp3 collection to it and then 
> play it.  I *hate* the way iTunes and iPod work by assuming all the mp3 
> tags are present and correct.  Going to try this out tonight...

OK so I tried this out, it was very easy to put on the iPod, literally run 
the .exe, choose the mp3 player and click install.  After a few minutes it 
was done and my iPod was alive again!

Only problem I noticed is that pressing "skip next" sometimes takes 2 or 3 
seconds to skip to the next track (I'm sure it was almost instant on the 
original firmware) - that's a bit annoying but maybe there are some settings 
to tweak...

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scott wrote:

> OK so I tried this out, it was very easy to put on the iPod, literally 
> run the .exe, choose the mp3 player and click install.  After a few 
> minutes it was done and my iPod was alive again!

I guess it varies by player. I had to copy a bunch of files to a 
specific location on the player and then reboot it while connected to 
the mains.

> Only problem I noticed is that pressing "skip next" sometimes takes 2 or 
> 3 seconds to skip to the next track (I'm sure it was almost instant on 
> the original firmware) - that's a bit annoying but maybe there are some 
> settings to tweak...

Yes, I notice this also. (Although on my player, the current track 
continues playing while it seeks to the next one. Even so, it seems to 
take a long time to seek...)

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>> Only problem I noticed is that pressing "skip next" sometimes takes 2 or 
>> 3 seconds to skip to the next track (I'm sure it was almost instant on 
>> the original firmware) - that's a bit annoying but maybe there are some 
>> settings to tweak...
>
> Yes, I notice this also. (Although on my player, the current track 
> continues playing while it seeks to the next one. Even so, it seems to 
> take a long time to seek...)

Yeh that's what mine does too, so you press the skip button and nothing at 
all happens for 2 seconds (you're then wondering if you actually pressed the 
button or not), then it starts the next track.  Maybe there's an option to 
stop the current track immediately when you press the button, or to 
pre-cache the next track or something.  Still, I've hardly read the 
documentation so looking forward to finding out what else it can do, there 
seems to be loads of options.

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scott wrote:
>>> Only problem I noticed is that pressing "skip next" sometimes takes 2 
>>> or 3 seconds to skip to the next track (I'm sure it was almost 
>>> instant on the original firmware) - that's a bit annoying but maybe 
>>> there are some settings to tweak...
>>
>> Yes, I notice this also. (Although on my player, the current track 
>> continues playing while it seeks to the next one. Even so, it seems to 
>> take a long time to seek...)
> 
> Yeh that's what mine does too, so you press the skip button and nothing 
> at all happens for 2 seconds (you're then wondering if you actually 
> pressed the button or not), then it starts the next track.  Maybe 
> there's an option to stop the current track immediately when you press 
> the button, or to pre-cache the next track or something.  Still, I've 
> hardly read the documentation so looking forward to finding out what 
> else it can do, there seems to be loads of options.

On mine, you can do stuff like adjust how long the backlight stays on 
after you press a button (so you can conserve battery power - or not), 
whether tracks cross-fade into each other, whether it advances to the 
next folder or loops or stops when it finishes all the tracks in the 
current folder, and so on. I believe you can also install themes...

(I don't know about your player, but mine has a moderately large purple 
LCD on it.)

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