New Cowon X7 owner... let's talk!

[Beckner]

Okay, so I got the Cowon X7 a few days ago and am currently finishing up loading 100+gb of music files to the device tonight. (Understandably this has taken a few days of work, deciding what does and doesn't go on the player... even at 160gb, I have like 300+gb of music on my external.)

I'm a former X5 owner, loved it literally to death, paid Cowon to replace the battery once, the motherboard another time, and then decided to let it go to the Great PMP Heaven when I dropped it a few feet on concrete (after almost 5 years of use) and heard the HD whirring senselessly on the inside. I've had to suffer (lol) at the hands of a borrowed iPod classic for the last year and a half. But now I'm back with Cowon... but I don't know just yet the Cowon X7 is worthy of the name, ya know?

I've already tinkered with the GUI a bit, installed I believe Cheetah from Kizune... but I'm confused... all of the links for other GUIs from Kizune now seem to link only to Cheetah. Can someone explain that to me? (Kizune, btw, if you read this, you are indeed a godsend. That start up GUI was pretty garish.)

And the other question I had/ was concerned about that I read elsewhere here (maybe) was issues with the device playing all songs on Random using Shuffle. Could someone explain what exactly the issue is? BC it seems to working fine for me, as I set up the directory as such, similar to how I had the X5:

HDD>Music>Beckner Music>"Name of Artists">"Album Titles">"Albums"

Obviously, the least intuitive folder above is the one called "Beckner Music," simply a folder that can be played on Random. Does this solve the trouble?

thanks,
looking forward to being an active member here,
Dave

[Beckner]

Also: what's the deal with "prev" and "next" on the touchscreen? It skips ahead a few seconds in the song... how do I get it to simply skip to the next track?

And I thought I read somewhere where you can change the Volume buttons on the side to skip tracks????

[Flay]

Hey,

I too am a former X5L owner and am very confused. I used a folder setup kinda similar to Beckner.
so my X5 HDD looked like:

Music\everything\ my music\artist\album\track
extra music\artist\album\track.

This worked perfectly, as I would select the folders in the browser and click 'play now' to create playlists essentially. Thus, i selected 'my music' if i wanted my fave tracks, 'extra music' to sample new things that I wasnt sure deserved 'my music' status, or just selected the 'everything' folder to play everything in a delightful shuffly mix.

Now with my X7, I have leaf and sense installed. so in the music player, there seems to be no way to select one of my main folders and play everything in it! :( If u try and click on a folder it just opens it and so on and on until u end up at the individual track files. And this was one of my favourite features of a Cowon. Is there still a way to do this, am I just missing it?

Also on sense, I can't see how to instantly return to the music list. So when it randomly picks the next song, I often think 'hmmm, yes i want this album but not this song'. On the X5, one button tap and voila, back in the browser at the currently playing album, can easily select the next song.
In sense, am i correct in saying u first must push the menu button at the top of the album art, and then use the fairly fiddly touchscreen to push a tiny list button in the top left?

Any advice, especially on how to play a folder, would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!

PS. Not bitching about Sense btw, Kizune. May only have had this thing for a day, but I can how much better ur UI's are already, so thanks for the effort u spend making them. Just want to get my head around it all!

[Beckner]

Flay, we might be the only ones here, both drowning in a sea of x5 mourning!

I think you just open the folder and tap the first song to play the entire contents.

Are you having similar issues with the "prev" and "Next" function? I can't seem to sort that one out, and it bugs me bc I swear at times I had it skipping to the next song like it should!

[Flay]

mine just skips song :/ Though if u have cheetah installed, yours may be different, so not sure how much help I can offer, sorry!

When u say tap the first song, how will it know what folder I want it to play the contents of, when that track is in 4 folders? eg. everything, my music, the artist, and the album.
And seeing as 'my music' and 'extra music' are both within the 'everything' folder, does that mean as default I have to just listen to everything, without being able to very easily just select all my fave songs, or all the albums in a specific artist folder etc. Its such a useful function! :'(

[Flay]

This seems to be a workaround,
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64510

but I'm going to be pissed if this is the only solution. Why on earth would they remove this function? Goddam it Cowon, why do u make it so hard to love ur products? In future, just make the X5 again each year, just adding more storage and battery and for gods sake stick with hardware buttons. And no, not a joystick thingy, straight up buttons....... *grumble grumble*

[Flay]

Also Beckner, just been reading thru the manual to try and see if there's a way to play folders (dont think there is. Am contemplating sending the thing back as a result, thats how annoyed by it I am! lol)

And whilst reading, I noticed there is an option to change the track seek from 'track' to a number of secs. Have u accidentally changed this option, so now its skipping x number of secs instead of a track?

see page 30: http://www.cowonglobal.com/download/file/manual/COWONX7/X7_manual_1.1_EN.pdf

[Beckner]

I play from the folders all the time. Click on the Folders and then pick the HDD, and browse from there.

[Beckner]

Also Beckner, just been reading thru the manual to try and see if there's a way to play folders (dont think there is. Am contemplating sending the thing back as a result, thats how annoyed by it I am! lol)

And whilst reading, I noticed there is an option to change the track seek from 'track' to a number of secs. Have u accidentally changed this option, so now its skipping x number of secs instead of a track?

see page 30: http://www.cowonglobal.com/download/file/manual/COWONX7/X7_manual_1.1_EN.pdf


AH HA! *smacks forehead* Thanks man! I figured it was something really simple.

[Flay]

;) no worries, glad I could help.

[Flay]

I play from the folders all the time. Click on the Folders and then pick the HDD, and browse from there.


So can u select ur 'beckner music' folder and play everything within it, or do u mean u use the browser to find the albums etc. in ur folder set up and select the tracks you want from there?
Because I used the browser, and I can select the HDD and see all my folders, but I still have to go through the sub-directories and select a specific track rather than being able to select a 'play folder' option :(

[Beckner]

There's no "play folder" option. I don't know how you would play your "my music" folder or the "extra music" folder on random on their own. Sucks.

But yeah, I don't use the tagging information/ database. I just browse the folders, and then play the first track of an album then listen to the whole thing. This works for random for the whole collection too. Just start a track, then switch to Shuffle and then you are good to go.

[dmiddleton006]

Hi. I've had my X7 for a few months now and have found the following workaround. I have a number of genres on my X7 some of which I would want to mix together (rock, hard rock, metal etc) and some I would not (metal, classical, jazz).

For genres I want to group together I have put them into a sub folder so for example I have /Music/Rock & Metal/Artist/Album with all similar Rock related genres in it. Within the Rock & Metal folder I have put an empty 1 second MP3 called intro.mp3.

This means that with shuffle on I can navigate by folder to /Music then tap and hold the Rock & Metal music to start a random shuffle of everything in that folder. This gives me the final option I need because all others single genre, artist and album are available through the normal tag menus.

Hope that helps.