Hello,
I just recently switched from a 6151 to the 5800. While the phone is great, the music player is driving me nuts because I am one of those people that don't like a device telling them how to organize things.
I like to have all my music files neatly sorted into folders according to genre and personal preference. I also like to keep the files on both my computer and on my phone synced up. When I add new music files, I simply drop them into the appropriate directory and I'm done. That worked perfectly fine on the 6151 because the music player let you chose the directories you wanted to listen to.
While it is possible to keep the directory structure on the memory card, the 5800 music player on the other hand dumps everything into one big library and it is basically impossible to keep track of the songs (the supported categories are useless to me). I don't want to have to create playlists for each directory because then I have to maintain them separately as well (and it is a bitch to get started when you have 1500 songs). I also would have to update all the ID3 tags first because I put more focus on the file names.
So, my questions are: is it possible to force the music player to not mix and mash my songs into one library? Are there alternative players that support selecting directories like the 6151 player? Any other suggestions from you guys that would help me improve my listening experience?
Thanks,
Claude
ClaudeK wrote:Hello,I just recently switched from a 6151 to the 5800. While the phone is great, the music player is driving me nuts because I am one of those people that don't like a device telling them how to organize things.
I like to have all my music files neatly sorted into folders according to genre and personal preference. I also like to keep the files on both my computer and on my phone synced up. When I add new music files, I simply drop them into the appropriate directory and I'm done. That worked perfectly fine on the 6151 because the music player let you chose the directories you wanted to listen to.
While it is possible to keep the directory structure on the memory card, the 5800 music player on the other hand dumps everything into one big library and it is basically impossible to keep track of the songs (the supported categories are useless to me). I don't want to have to create playlists for each directory because then I have to maintain them separately as well (and it is a bitch to get started when you have 1500 songs). I also would have to update all the ID3 tags first because I put more focus on the file names.
So, my questions are: is it possible to force the music player to not mix and mash my songs into one library? Are there alternative players that support selecting directories like the 6151 player? Any other suggestions from you guys that would help me improve my listening experience?
Thanks,
Claude
I'm new to Symbian (the 5800 is my first), so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I have been sorting out the music player and similar kinds of things are important to me. I have no idea what the 6151 was like, so I may miss some aspects of what you need.
The trouble with the Music Player is that it really isn't a music library program, as you pointed out. It will show you all songs or it will show you everything in a tag category (albums, artist, genre, etc.) It doesn't read the "ratings" (I think that's what you mean by preference?) category.
What I have figured out is to use MediaMonkey to organize my music using playlists and then sync with the 5800 (Use Media Transfer mode iwhen you connect the 5800). You can actually customize the folder structure and ask it to organize it using tag variables. It will also create playlists in the music players playlist folder. It is really a great program and it knows what the 5800 is right out of the box.
Hope this helps. Works great for me.
Get this freeware Ultra fast playlist maker
http://www.oddgravity.de/app-opc.php
create your own playlists in your pc, drag those folders and make a playlist, one by one.
transfer all of the playlist files to your phone and they will work as you want them!!
Believe me i have the same problem you do, and this is the best solution right now! 😃
Playlist Maker 3 is a good alternative, I used to use it with my TX for Pocket Tunes. What I like about MediaMonkey is that it eliminates a few steps. But then, I don't keep a music library on the device, I move playlists and music over at the same time. I have playlists of varying lengths. One of my longer ones is 2.3 Gb of songs. They come from all different folders from my 16Gb music library. I rarely listen to whole albums, but that would be easy to do with just the native Music Player.
Either is a good solution. 😊 Advantages and disadvantages will depend on how you work with your files.
Thanks for the advice guys! I will have a look at these playlist maker programs. Perhaps I have to start relying on using playlists afterall 😊
Rats. Ran into a problem with Media Monkey. It seems to mess up the tags when it copies over the music, throwing out the artist and album art information during the transfer. It does get the playlist order right and it doesn't affect the files on the computer, but I'm way too OC to tolerate this.
I'll post back if I figure out the problem. 🙄