Playlist problems

[ls103rb]

I couldn't find a definitive answer in EnzoTen's excellent post.

I can't get any playlist files to show on the s9. I've made .pls and .m3u files, they show when I'm connected to the pc, but nothing on the player. I'm not synching with any software, and don't want to while I'm still playing with new toy.

Thanks for any help.

BTW, there is no Dynamic Play List function, as I believe someone said - just the "favourites" function. Please correct me if wrong though!

[Juxxy]

As far as I'm aware the "favourites" and "bookmarks" functions are basically the same as the DPL. I guess Cowon renamed it to be more user friendly as DPL on the D2 was a little vague.

[ls103rb]

Originally Posted by Juxxy

As far as I'm aware the "favourites" and "bookmarks" functions are basically the same as the DPL. I guess Cowon renamed it to be more user friendly as DPL on the D2 was a little vague.

I never had a D2, and as much as I hated the x5 (joystick, earphone plug both broke and then it bricked, all in 5 weeks), it still had the best sound - I was going to wait before checking the s9 out, but found in a store and took a chance!But the favourites seems to be the same a dpl on the x5, so I'm sure you're right.

Does the D2 have a playlists folder in the GUI?

[ls103rb]

Big bump - sorry, but I'd really like to know if anyone else has had similar problems before I disappear for the holidays!

As always, many thanks.

[Claw]

S9 does not recognize m3u or pls files. You have to connect to the PC in MTP mode and use either media library software (like mediamonkey) to build playlists for you, or use Windows playlist functionality. Some of the discussion is here: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=37872

[kryptonite]

well, i had a struggle with making playlists and mediamonkey is of great help, u can make playlists on mediamonkey and sync one playlist at a time to s9, its surprisingly fast and very convenient.
What I suggest is use mp3 tag to tag your files, album art and all and then make playlists on mediamonkey and sync playlists one at a time…it works like a dream.

PS : you will need to change the USB mode to MTP before any syncing can take place( it also means that you cant drag and drop videos in this mode so you will have to change back to MSC for that, one unfortunate thing in doing that is that all playlists vanish and u will have to re-sync after changing back to MTP mode)

[ekb606]

Spread the WORD! The horror is over! Playlist Creator 3.6 let's you make playlists as easily as if you owned a 39 buck MP3 player from WalMart with lousy sound, terrible controls and an operating system that wasn't designed by morons.

Sorry, Cowon, but your programmers are retards, anybody that can't create a playlist capable player in 2009 should be teaching computer science to pre-schoolers.

In case, it took a long time, gigs worth of incompatible program downloads, eons of trial and error but I finally found Playlist Creator, freeware at that, and it seamlessly creates the extend m3u playlist files that Cowon incomprehensibly demands. (Winamp creates extended m3us, too, but they would never work with playlists over five songs long in my S9.)

Plug it in in MSC mode (it might work in any USB mode, but I was in MSC when I tried it) ... go to the music folder on the Cowon, add files to Playlist Creator, and save the Playlist as an m3u to the Cowon playlist folder. That does it, the playlist will show up in the music playlist folder and -- wonder of wonders, it will NOT be empty and it WILL play the files ... posting this in the heat of having it work so I don't know if the playlists will survive a lot of adding and deleting songs or whether the notorious Cowon disappearing playlist syndrome will strike, but so far its golden.

BTW ... I'm running Win 7 64, so if it works for me it should work for everyone this side of Win 95.

Thanks to everyone on this forum and especially Claw for making the S9 a usable piece of gear. There were about a dozen times in the first month that I almost bagged it up and sent it back to Newegg because so much of the interface and the stone-age menu after menu after menu dance routine is so stupid ... but you guys -- and the sound coming through my Shure 4's -- kept me hanging in.

Cowon should be ashamed of themselves for crippling such a great piece of hardware with Sputnik-era software -- why don't they just give it up and hire a first-rate freelance app writer to create something contemporary and competitive for it. Maybe Claw would like a job at the factor.

BTW, it's Thanksgiving night ... how appropriate ... thanks Playlist Creator.

[maitremiyamoto]

Thanks for the tips about making playlist but this is just ridiculous. I mostly bought an S9 because it was supposed to support flac, and because it plays video.

Little did I know, although I could perfectly use mediamonkey with my ipod, it doesn't work with the S9. Impossible to send the flac files to the S9. I have to convert my flac files into mp3 (on the fly, thanks god), just like I used to do with my old ipod. What's the point of having an S9 then?

Worst of all, there is this issue of not being able to send playlists to the S9, whether I send them as flac or convert them to mp3 on the fly. On this forum I learn that it's possible to use some special software that allows me to pick some songs from the S9 and make a playlist out of it. Thanks for the info but this is still a huge pain in the neck. It means I have to look in every folder on my hard drive for the songs I want later in my playlist, send them one by one to the S9, open the playlist creator software, look in each folder on the S9 for the songs I want before I can finally save the playlist on the S9. And that's supposed to be good news?

I never really like Apple but I am finally realizing that the concurrent brands have nothing to offer for people who don't want to spend hours figuring out how to do basic things (play a playlist!).

[newone]

Have you ever tried Claw's Wallpaper UI and the dynamic playlists?

[maitremiyamoto]

I didn't. Of course it's nice to be able to have more than only one playlist on the S9 thanks to Claw's UI. I just find the idea of making playlist on a mp3 player itself way too inconvenient and time-consuming. I can make a playlist of 20 songs chosen from my thousand + albums in 2-5 min using MM (and send it to my dear old mp3 player). I can also remove or add any song from my HD, change the order in a few clicks of a mouse and send it again to the player if I realize I am not happy with the playlist I made.

If I want to do it on the S9, I need to look for the file I want on my HD, send it to the S9, open the playlist I want to edit, look for the file I sent to the S9 using the impractical touchscreen before I can finally add said-song to the playlist. How many extra steps does that represent? I have nothing against the touchscreen but this kind of player cannot compete with a good old mouse and MM music file tree for going through my music quickly.

[sdss]

have you tried updating the firmware to 2.50.
i found the playlists actually started working properly after an update.


i agree with you - Cowon's playlist features are ridiculous. I've got playlists for each album but i just can't work out if it's possible to 'queue' albums to play one after another - e.g. select the next playlist in advance.

[EddieE]

I don't get why you don't just drag and drop your flac files into your music folder if your software has issues?

.. I really do not understand why anyone bothers with "synching" when the S9 has this functionality...

[EddieE]

Originally Posted by sdss

have you tried updating the firmware to 2.50.
i found the playlists actually started working properly after an update.


i agree with you - Cowon's playlist features are ridiculous. I've got playlists for each album but i just can't work out if it's possible to 'queue' albums to play one after another - e.g. select the next playlist in advance.

What do you mean you have playlists for each album?

You can queue albums to play one after the other by adding them to your favourites list while playing the favourites list...

[sdss]

Originally Posted by EddieE

What do you mean you have playlists for each album?

You can queue albums to play one after the other by adding them to your favourites list while playing the favourites list...

each album has a playlist - e.g. a m3u file.


You can only queue folders - which isn't necessarily the same as playlists or albums, and unless you installs Claw's UI cannot clear the favourites list without deleting each track individually which is just insane.

[Amberia]

Hi, I´m new here and also having problems with my playlists.
I started with my cowon with synchronising some of the playlists I have on Media Monkey. It worked, even if only the first time. Changes made in Media Monkey were not synchronised to the S9: I had to delete the playlists and the albums on the cowon before re-sync. That was not very nice but I could live with this, since I am not changing my playlists every week.
However, 5 days ago, all my playlists disappeared from the S9. I am not aware that I changed something in the configuration of the S9 for the last 3 weeks so I was a bit surprised.
Since I did not want to delete and re-sync about 3 GB of listed music sorted in a lot of folders, I tried ekb606´s way. It looked like a good way to do it. But, I am sorry to say, I does not work for me (I did try MSC and MTP and filing the playlists under playlist as well as root... no way). Thanks anyway.
I also tried Winamp: I get a maximum of 5 songs or an empty playlist!
I finally found something on the cowon america forum
http://www.jetaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15105
It is not too confortable, but it works for me and it is quite easy to use with windows explorer. Maybe it can be of some help to somebody else. Let´s see if the playlists stay there this time!!
If somebody finds THE solution, please post it !!
I cannot understand why cowon is so blatantly ignoring this playlist issue. This is ridiculous: nearly every 30 $ player can do better than that.