J3 Playlists / Explain Please (Newbie)

[Spades68]

This thread is simple or extremely complicated, I'm not sure due to lack of information on the subject.

I know that the J3 has a "favorites" list that allows you to create a playlist on the go;
^
1.) What I'd like to know is how easy is it to create that playlist? (I realize this is subjective, but feel free to respond however you feel about it.)

A.) Does this playlist stay together if you turn off the player?
B.) Can you save this playlist? (doubtfully because that means it'd have a playlist on the go feature)

1.) If yes, can I create multiple playlists or only just one with the favorites feature?

2.) Every keeps talking about the J3 supporting playlists that you just can't edit on the device itself. Is this true?

A.) How many songs can be in this "unchangeable" playlist?
B.) Can this playlist be shuffled?
C.) How many playlists can I have?
D.) Can I combine multiple playlists on the go? (ex. - I have 2 bands and they both have a playlist titled "Best Songs" and I want to combine both)

1.) If yes, is this done with the favorites list?

3.) Bonus question about the J3. Are the tags "Genre, Mood, Tempo, BPM" moved over to the J3 device? If yes, can I search by those tags (on the J3 device) to find the music I want?

Thanks in advance, hope I was clear enough, if not please tell me what information you need and I'll provide it. Keep in mind I've never owned an Mp3, DAP, PMP, ect... in my life I'm just trying to make the most educated purchase I can, so when I hold the device in my hands, I wont be in for any surprises.

[happyguy]

On question #3, of the tags you mentioned, only "genre" appears to be selectable on the J3. When Genre is selected from the Browser menu, all of the genres in files currently on the player are shown, in my case mostly "electronica", "rock" and "new wave". Once I have selected a genre from the list, when I shuffle, the J3 plays only the songs in that genre.

So, sub-genres with your moods encoded in the genre tag would be one way to play only songs for a particular mood. One other way might be to put songs with a particular mood tag in their own folder on the J3 and shuffling on just that folder.

The Favorites list seems limited to one list. It is easy enough to add and remove songs from the Favorites list, and it persists even if the player is shut off. I don't see any way to save it to another location.

[Spades68]

Originally Posted by happyguy

On question #3, So, sub-genres with your moods encoded in the genre tag would be one way to play only songs for a particular mood. One other way might be to put songs with a particular mood tag in their own folder on the J3 and shuffling on just that folder.

Thanks for the reply, and appreciate the advice with the sub-genres trick. If you don't mind me asking since you brought up the sub-genres thing, how will it display my search?

For example - I have 2 genres labeled "New Wave; Happy; Compelling" and "New Wave; Sad".

If I search "Happy; New Wave" (I'm wondering if order matters, so don't skip out on that in your response) Will it display all the "New Wave's" or only the ones matching closest to the criteria of my search? If its really specific, does that mean I wont see the track that is labeled "Happy" but also has the label "Compelling"? I'm really hoping its a smart search and will display everything that has both of the 2 criteria I searched and w/e tags that accompany those 2 genre labels combined.

Might I inquire about how I go about searching as well? Is it a keyboard pad that appears and allows me to type what I want, or is it drop down? Also how many genres can I include in my search?

[happyguy]

Here's the strange answer. I tried making tags like "New Wave; Happy; Compelling" and "New Wave; Sad". First, foobar2000 changed them to "New Wave, Happy, Compelling" and "New Wave, Sad", but that's not the strange part. The J3 ignored these tags completely. It didn't file them under New Wave, it didn't file them anywhere under the genre list.

The J3 will apparently only acknowledge a specific set of widely-accepted tags. So far I have been able to get Ambient, Blues, Electronic, New wave, Other (the literal tag "Other"), Rock, Unknown (a blank genre tag), and Weird recognized. I would imagine others like Folk, Country and Jazz are acceptable, but I don't have any songs with those tags.

I tried some less-common tags like "Awesome" and "Happy", and they were ignored. The songs appear in the Songs list, but nowhere under the Genre menu. Tags made up of an accepted genre with another word added were ignored, too, for example "Rock Biscuit" and "Ambient Heck".

Searching through a long list is done with a drop-down keyboard that looks like this:

qwert
asdfg
zxcv

yuiop
hjkl
bnm

It probably wouldn't ever be necessary to search through the genre list, since it will be very short, but searching for a word in a song title would be more sensible, and works well.

[Spades68]

Originally Posted by happyguy

Here's the strange answer. I tried making tags like "New Wave; Happy; Compelling" and "New Wave; Sad". First, foobar2000 changed them to "New Wave, Happy, Compelling" and "New Wave, Sad", but that's not the strange part. The J3 ignored these tags completely. It didn't file them under New Wave, it didn't file them anywhere under the genre list.

It probably wouldn't ever be necessary to search through the genre list, since it will be very short, but searching for a word in a song title would be more sensible, and works well.

I don't think I could of sighed any harder after reading this. HUUUUUUUUUUHAAAAAAAAAHHH (sigh), well happyguy or flazok what would you recommend for me wanting to use "mood tags"?

Is it possible to put them anywhere?

Hey community, I got a whole mess of questions in the original thread topic above that haven't been answered, so take a look up at the top and if you know the answers

[happyguy]

I was thinking you could decide that, for example, Punk = angry, Country = depressed, Folk = relationship misery, Jazz = stoned, etc. By redefining genre tags you don't use to symbolize various moods, you could get the functionality you're looking for. If you already have a Mood tag on your songs, you could sort by that in your tagger to quickly change the genres to your chosen substitutes. Be sure to copy the actual genres into a new user-defined tag so you don't lose them.

Folder browsing instead of using genres for this purpose is more likely to be the right answer, though.