douglasb

Do any MP3 players allow you to create your own playlists which you can either play start to finish or play in random order?

I don't know a whole lot about MP3 players, but I know that random play is a feature that they all have. I suspect that I don't want totally random play, but would like to be more selective.

For example (and to compare storing music on the player to a PC hard drive......)

If I organized stored albums like C:\Sixties\Beatles\Rubber Soul, C:\Sixties\Beatles\Revolver, C:\Sixties\Beatles\White, C:\Sixties\Stones\Let It Bleed, C:\Sixties\Creedence Clearwater Revival\Green River, can I select random play at each level?

To complicate things, lets say that I also had the recent Beatles CD stored as C:\Noughties\Beatles\Love. Could I select "Artist=Beatles - Random Play" and have the device play Beatles tracks from all Beatles content?

Now, what if I wanted to random play a selection that doesn't neatly fit the \Era\Artist\Album model? Can I create my own playlists that combine whichever tracks that I want irrespective of how they are stored?

Dracoro

Can do something like that with an iPod. You can set random on and then it will randomise with in the folder you are in. So if you are in the Beatles-Revolver and play then it will random all the tracks in that album. If you select beatles and select All tracks it will random all beatles tracks. You can do the same within playlists, so create a playlist of selected tracks and it will randomise through them.

douglasb

Thanks Dracoro.

I have very limited knowledge of MP3 players, but the idea of having the tracks of my music collection that I actually want to listen to on a regular basis available easily appeals.

My brother-in-law has an iPod but I noticed that his "random play" selection only played a random selection from everything he had recorded on it. It sounds like this is more of an issue with how he has organised the tracks rather than a limitation with the iPod (ie. he's put everything in one big folder rather than using sub-folders).

Based on that experience I reckoned that creating playlists of my choice of tracks might be a better option. If an iPod will allow playlists combining tracks from whatever folders, then that might be the answer.

Now, does anyone have thoughts on iPod versus other MP3 players that support playlists?

douglasb

Tjanks Dave. I'm not too worried about random in a playlist, but I just wondered if multiple playlists are a standard feature of MP3 players. It sounds like they are.