I9 questions, playlist, etc.

[GeneralDisarray]

Ok, got an i9 the other day, read a few of the threads
here but theres still a thing or two I'm curious about.

1. I notice the bottom half of the player gets quite warm when the screen is on for more than a minute or two, I'm assuming this is normal?

2. The whole "favorites" thing, I have a hard time believing in 2011, or 2009 whenever this was designed that they'd limit this to a single, 256-file playlist?
Is there no way to create additional favorites lists? Its like they limited this feature to 8k memory or something capping it at 256 files.

3. Playlists, real ones I mean, no way to create on the player itself correct?
And doesn't seem to support the more typical types, what software actually works (without manually typing out a thousand lines of code) to create a playlist that can be copied to the player and show up in the "Playlists" menu option. I meant they have "playlists" in there, but no way to create them?

4. Battery, I read the thread on that, seems logical enough, I only got about 3 hours out of it after the first full charge, course I was playing around with EQ settings alot so tons of UI activity probably impacted that.

5. Sorting. Any way to sort a folder other than alphabetical?


Other than the apparently non-existant playlist support and limited favorites menu, I really like this little player. It could stand to be a little bit heavier though, almost feels like is gonna slip out of my hand, maybe shoulda been closer to 60g than 40g or whatever it is.

The sound quality is righteous. Several of the preset EQ's sound good but I find setting them yourself is more fun, have tinkered around with it a fair bit now and think I got it set good, especially once I sorta realized that BBE and Mach3Bass should not be on together, they're just different algorithms of the same thing, same with 3D surround and MP Enhance, one or the other, not both.

I changed the EQ ranges slightly to match (at least to my ear) what I had on my old Creative Zen which had a really full rich sound, currently set as:
9 9 2 4 5
80 220 1.1k 4.1k 13k
nor nor nor wid wid
BBE 5
Mach3 off
3d surr off
MP Enh on
spec effs off

I could listen to this thing for days, and will, if the battery improves, hope it lasts, looks like fairly good build quality though.

[GeneralDisarray]

Good grief. Replying to myself here sort of but man, how can a company that can make such good hardware make such terrible firmware/software?

After an entire day of messing with different software still no luck on creating something as simple and basic as a playlist, aside from the single 256-file favorites menu, which is way too limited really when theres 1500+ songs on the thing

Tried Cowon's software, tried mp3tag, tried both MSC and MTP modes, nothing. The closest I got was to dump all the files into the Music folder on the Cowon, no subfolders or anything, and then create a playlist adding the files directly from the player, not the computer's hard drive, and then save the playlist in the Music folder.

But even this only worked very briefly, the playlist shows up, the songs are there, but once you're in it you're trapped in this endless loop of Now Playing and the menu that just dumps you back into playing the track.

When I finally did escape it, all the playlists I made were corrupted and all the characters in the playback had changed to korean. Sheesh.

There is zero playlist support on these things, unreal. My old 4GB creative zen from 2005 or something at least had rudimentary playlist support, you could make more than one, they could have any number of files in them, you could make them in software, or right on the player.

I guess the best you can do is just make a bunch of different folders and play everything in alphabetical order? Or break everything down into genres and artists, I hate that, I don't want to spend endless UI and battery browsing for each song. Weak.

[Marvin the Martian]

I'll never understand the obsession with playlists. I'm quite content with either...

a)listening to an album

b)shuffle artist

c)shuffle all

The rare occasion I want to make up a mix for a certain purpose, what some would use playlists for, I just load a bunch of stuff on a smaller capacity player and shuffle it. No need to agonize over playlist support or lack thereof.

[GeneralDisarray]

I guess its just the way I prefer to hear music, and given the volume of playlist related software out there (and players that support them) I'm betting I'm not alone.

Basically, I like to divide the collection I'm listening to into a few playlists, maybe 300-500 songs long, and manually sorted so I hear stuff in a comfortable, non-clashing order. In other words, there may be songs from many different artists, tracks selected off multiple albums and genres that flow together in what to me is a sensible order.

My issue with just playing an album is I often don't want to hear the whole album and don't want to have to endlessly hit "next" or browse back in giant folder trees.

My issue with shuffle is, since I listen to a fairly wide variety of music, I have no interest in hearing say, Harem Scarem (album oriented rock) and then Notorious B.I.G, that would be a bit much. I'd rather have Harem Scarem flow into Haywire, then maybe GN'R or something, I dunno, but not from there into hip hop, or like one minute you're listening to Journey and then it shuffles and WASP comes on with Blackie Lawless droning on about looking for what he'll never find.

So for me, its all about setting up an order that makes sense. Which isn't possible with shuffle, or straight alphabetical playback. Oh well.

Maybe they'll update the firmware to support proper playlist function someday, but given the number of years and number of Cowon players this seems to be an issue with, I'm a little worried. I'd switch to something else if wasn't for the $130 I just spent and the superb sound quality. Argh.

[GeneralDisarray]

Think I'll give up and try just wiping it and start over. Making a folder for each "playlist" and then put the files I want in the folders and just skirt around the alphabetical playback by numbering them in the order I want.

It'll be a major chore to manually re-number them all but at least I can maybe get the order I want, assuming of course that the cowon firmware can count reasonably intelligently. 001, 002, 003, etc.

I'll just switch from Artist.Album.Song.mp3 to 001.Artist.Song.mp3, 002.Artist.Song.mp3, maybe that'll work.

[Louis8ball]

Originally Posted by GeneralDisarray

I guess its just the way I prefer to hear music, and given the volume of playlist related software out there (and players that support them) I'm betting I'm not alone.

Basically, I like to divide the collection I'm listening to into a few playlists, maybe 300-500 songs long, and manually sorted so I hear stuff in a comfortable, non-clashing order. In other words, there may be songs from many different artists, tracks selected off multiple albums and genres that flow together in what to me is a sensible order.

My issue with just playing an album is I often don't want to hear the whole album and don't want to have to endlessly hit "next" or browse back in giant folder trees.

My issue with shuffle is, since I listen to a fairly wide variety of music, I have no interest in hearing say, Harem Scarem (album oriented rock) and then Notorious B.I.G, that would be a bit much. I'd rather have Harem Scarem flow into Haywire, then maybe GN'R or something, I dunno, but not from there into hip hop, or like one minute you're listening to Journey and then it shuffles and WASP comes on with Blackie Lawless droning on about looking for what he'll never find.

So for me, its all about setting up an order that makes sense. Which isn't possible with shuffle, or straight alphabetical playback. Oh well.

Maybe they'll update the firmware to support proper playlist function someday, but given the number of years and number of Cowon players this seems to be an issue with, I'm a little worried. I'd switch to something else if wasn't for the $130 I just spent and the superb sound quality. Argh.

Wow, I am SO glad to see I'm not the only one here who thinks and feels the way this person does about PLAYLISTS

As a matter of fact, I think I might even be a bit more neurotic than you, sir (GeneralDissaray), in that I like making particular playlists consisting of songs from just one single artist, say like Bob Dylan. For example a playlist that consists only of songs he might have recorded all for one album, even with the ones that might not have made the final cut, mixed in with the ones that did actually make the album cut at the time of the recording sessions.

Anyway, I guess you and I, sir (I'm assuming you are a male individual, however I apologize for assuming this prematurely in case you are not ), are 2 of a kind here at this forum. I don't think anyone else here understands this concept. These here are probably all people who just waste their time with using the shuffle function --- which is completely beyond my comprehension. If I was going to do that, I might as well just listen to the radio instead of my MP3 Player --- and I NEVER listen to the radio, because I hate having some random arbitrary person who I don't even know control what I listen to. Doing that just defeats the whole purpose of owning an MP3 Player, IMHO.

Anyway, enough about all of this. . .

I am also responding to this post because I, too, have become very frustrated trying to create playlists with the i9, to no avail. I am using MusicBee to manage my music library (I may have stated I was using iTunes in another thread, but am now experimenting with something else), and, although I can actually create playlists (using the MusicBee UI) within the i9, itself, however after doing so, and powering up the i9, and selecting the playlist (by name) that I just created using the MusicBee UI, all that happens when I hit the go button on the MP3 Player, is it displays the words, "Now Playing", and does not show the listing of songs that had tried putting into the playlist just moments before all of this.

I would appreciate it if anyone here might know how to fix this, please

Thanks

[BruceBanner]

I too am a playlist person. In fact its how i come to accept smaller flash players as being portable. I have 50-60gb collection on pc with various playlists. These playlists were often 'best of' songs, 4-5* ratings etc of each artist.
I then used a little know program called 'Amok Playlist Copy' which is a clever little programs. You add a playlist file (m3u) and what it can do is replicate/copy all the mp3 files to a new location (duplicate).
When doing this i kinda had a 'hard copy' of my playlists from my 60gb collection, what surprised me was the overall size was closer to 15gb.
So in short of my 50-60gb collection only a 5th or so did i REALLY like, and this is what is on my player.

BUT STILL, i like to group certain artists together depending on the mood I am in. My music taste can be quite erratic, i don't always want to shuffle all and go from techno>classical>metal>chilling tunes>jazz etc.

So i figured by restructuring my Folder section (in windows explorer) to being artist>album (instead of just albums) I can at least add entire artists to the favourites at a single push.

But i too have noticed the official 'Playlist' section on the i9 but have no idea how to utilise it. Anyone the brighter?

Edit: Just a thought, but i bet we have to have the i9 connected and use the official cowon jetaudio media player/library to build playlists. I will try now and get back to you.

[BruceBanner]

Found answer here (asianguy's method)

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

I'll never understand the obsession with playlists. I'm quite content with either...

a)listening to an album

b)shuffle artist

c)shuffle all

The rare occasion I want to make up a mix for a certain purpose, what some would use playlists for, I just load a bunch of stuff on a smaller capacity player and shuffle it. No need to agonize over playlist support or lack thereof.

While I'm fairly the same as you have described in my listening habits, mainly by album. I have created folders by genre for a few parties that I attended due to requests and I enjoyed listening to them. That said, I can see how some people like listening to playlists, just like listening to the radio ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪

[BruceBanner]

I find that if i whack 3 (fairly new) albums on the player (ie i have listened to them as intended via nonshuffle traditional track 1-10 etc) but now i just want to shuffle only the new stuff rather than listening to one album at a time (or even if i do want to listen to one album at a time but specify which album is next) then on the fly playlists are handy.

Then there are also times that my mood dictates what i want to listen to and artist x, y and z are what i wanna hear and nothing else, so again on the fly playlists are a must.
I can only do so many playlists (m3u) on the pc that predict what i want to do (like make a 'Party Mix' or 'Easy Listening' only, but in the end its nice to have a good playlist builder. This was one of the strongest aspects of rockbox imho, it works like an actual software media player does on a computer. I haven't come across a better design for an mp3 player than how rockbox does 'dynamic playlist'.