What is File/tree Browsing

[rskbug]

hi
i will be buying my first dap.

iaudio uses file/tree/folder type instead of the id tag type of browsing.

1.whats exactly is this folder browsing.
2.which one is better.
3. can i put all my songs in one single folder or is there a limit to the no of songs a folder can hold ?


from
rahul k.

[korinengell]

wow...ummm...I guess I'll take this one.

1. File/folder browsing is exactly what you do with windows explorer. For example you open your main mp3 folder and it may have a bunch of folders each of a different band. If you open up the folder of a band it may have a bunch of other folders in there of what albums they have prduced. If you open up an album file then you normally have all of the actual mp3 files in there. This is also why it is called tree browsing because you have one main folder (tree trunk) then a few sub folders say for perhaps music genre (fat-ass tree banches) then the band folders (normal tree branches) then the albums (twigs I guess you could liken it to). The only difference is the way you navigate through the folders and files is not by mouse it is by a little joystick on the DAP.

2. That is entirely up for you to decide. I expect that if you have all you mp3s in one folder you are used to ID3 tag browsing.

3. Sure but you will have an awefully hard time navigating through them all if you have a lot of mp3s unless you have named all the files by something like:
Artist - Album - Track Number - Tack Title.
The problem with this is that mp3's only support file name length of....68 characters or something (can anyone else help me out here?), which is quite easy to exceed. And the X5 may not be able to play them. Which is actually a good question for the people who do have X5's. Can it play tracks with extra long file names?

[Fido]

It would be able to play the file, just not display the entire name, and that was with the M3, I don't know if they raised the limit.
And if you did put all your files in one folder you'd have to spend a long time moving up and down the file list to get to a song you want.

[bradavon]

I imagine there is a limit to the amount of files you can put in each folder. There is a limit to the amount of files you can put on the X5 in total (10,000 I think???).

[zaphanathpaneah]

10,000 does not seem right though. 10,000 by 3.5mb per song will give you over 30gb. This will exceed the 20gb model. The limit must be device or model specific. As for character size....windows has a limit of 255 (i believe) file name length in NTFS (File system used on NT, Win2K, WinXP) If you are using linux or mac this may be different.

[zaphanathpaneah]

The way tree browsing sounds, it would take some time initially to set up on your player but should work fine.
Does anyone know if we can create folders on the fly with out a PC? Like, recorded interviews over fm radio and want to catagorize them on the fly. I guess that would fall under folder mangment and edits on the fly and I don't think I saw any post on this. Hmmm....Anyone who has a player can confirm this?

[defago]

now that ntfs and name has come up in discussion- Wouldn't the X5 be fat32? most DAPs are so they can move between mac/pc. This opens up a whole new realm of naming and size issues (2.some gig limit on fat32).

jd

[zaphanathpaneah]

That is true but where are you going to name the mp3 file? You name it on your windows pc where it will exist first before you transfer to your DAP.

[bradavon]

FAT32's limit is something stupid like 2 terrabytes. I imagine the cluster size would be huge on this. NTFS is much better but not supported by non-Windows PCs or lower than NT.

Who uses lower than Windows 2000 anyway? Having said that I believe there are many versions of NTFS.

10,000 does not seem right though. 10,000 by 3.5mb per song will give you over 30gb. This will exceed the 20gb model.
I wondered the same when I read it.

[Fido]

I guess people will start to switch when computers commonly get anywhere near 2 terra bytes.

[chino9334]

The 10 000 files I think is a limit for all the players (they have the same firmware). I have heard of people that have expanded their HD on players like iRiver because now you can get up to 30gb on a single plate (some time ago you could only get to 20gb).

[bradavon]

And did they run into any trouble?

10,000 seems pretty low, doesn't it?

[Bull Moose]

Okay, this may be dumb, but ever since I've joined iaudiophile and File Tree comes up, someone says that it is managed by Window Explorer. Is Windows Media Player the same thing? Thanks

[Fido]

Windows explorer is what you use to browse normal files (my computer basically).

[jw0613]

my personal opinion but i think id3 tag browsing is much easier if u got lots of music.. for ex. i organized the files on M3, but I forget where I put a certain song.. Also, finding songs are more difficult if u forget the artist name..
on the other hand, renaming id3 tags ain't fun..

[Fido]

I have a good memory for what songs belong to who, but I don't see how an id3 database would help.

[bradavon]

Is Windows Media Player the same thing? Thanks
No WMP is a media player. I don't believe the X5 will be supported in that.

[mp3xx-x5]

I asked SunTec if the X5 is compatible with WMP and they said it is and that it will soon be compatible with Plays for Sure. Maybe I should have asked Cowon.

[bradavon]

Does "Play for Sure" really matter? It's not like these DAPs aren't compatible with XP etc . . .

[Fido]

It matters if you like to get ripped off.

[Mikeguy]

Will be interesting to see what file no. limit the 60 gb model has. 10,000 is too low for 60 gb of storage, even using a higher bitrate encoding (such as 192 kpbs).

[bradavon]

It matters if you like to get ripped off.
???