Cowon J3 FAQ

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by McLaw19

Yup. Right after I typed my repsonse I went into "songs" and selected a track and the "random all" worked fine.

You're probably not realizing why this "worked fine", according to your own expectations.

If you browse by Library -> [Songs] what you're really doing is browsing your tags database using the "title" tag field... which essentially produces a playlist OF ALL OF YOUR MUSIC FILES (assuming all of your files contain tags and a valid "title" tag field value)!

In other words, [Songs] is essentially a complete list of every music file per its internal "title" tag field name. This is NOT a list of all external file names in all of your folders both on internal storage and external storage which you would see one folder at a time if you came down through Library -> [Folders]. Rather it IS a list of all internal "title" names inside the tags on all of your files, including all music files located on both internal and external storage.


NOTE: if you had a music file that did not have a tag in it, so that it did not have a "title" tag field value, then it would NOT show up in thie [Songs] list. Such is the nature of the tags database, and [Songs].

Same with any other tag field actually, so for example if you didn't have a "year" tag field value in a particular music file and you did a browse by Library -> [Years], you would NOT see that music file listed... because it did not produce an entry in the tags database for a year, because the "year" field is absent from its tag.


Ok, given that [Songs] really is a "playlist" of the complete collection of all of your music files (assuming you have tags in all files, and "title" entered properly in each tag), then the RANDOM-ALL setting is essentially "working", because the current playlist is in fact THE SUM TOTAL OF EVERY ONE OF YOUR MUSIC FILES!! So it looks to you like it's "working".

But I assure you, if you selected a smaller playlist other than [Songs] (which again, is really equivalent to "all music files"), then RANDOM-ALL would be only within that smaller playlist. And again, if any music file does not have a "title" tag field value, then you will NOT see it in the list of songs presented by [Songs].


Nevertheless, if you really did want RANDOM-ALL then Library -> [Songs] is (a) actually a clever workaround to the actual limitations of ALL normally working as documented only with [Folders], and (b) has the added benefit of including music files from both internal storage and external storage rather than being limited to just one or the other as [Folders] would be.

[CrowdAds]

[McLaw19]

Yes, that makes sense. I've started the "random" & "all" within smaller playlist and it works fine. I do like the option of having all the songs for "random" as well. I try to have all the "titles" populated for every song to have a chance of being selected. So far, so good. Thanks.