Long pauses when start playing from playlist

Hi.

I just got a M6. It had the Dane Elec Firmware on it, so I updated to the latest official FW (2.004.6 to have the FM Tuner). Everything fine so far. I put music and playlists on it, but when I select a Song from a Playlist (Music=>Playlists=>[name]) there is a very long pause (~1 Minute) where actually happens nothing. The player doesnt react to input, only the screen slowly fades. After the minute the player reacts again and runs every command I did in that time (= reacts to the buttons pressed e.g.). After that the music starts playing. Any solution to this? The playlist contained about 100 MP3. Is this a common issue? If yes I am going to RMA the player, I dont want to wait a minute until I can listen to my music.

btw, is there an easier way to order the music? I was used to have several folders (for every artist one e.g.) on my old MP3-Player. But the M6 just puts up all music unsorted together. Any way to make him behave like the old player?

yes thats how it is but u dont have to use playlists. I dont use it, i use the browser. If you are going to use the playlists then dont put more than 20 songs in one.

The M6 does put them sorted on the player. If it isn't sorted for you, that means that your songs don't have proper tagging information for them when you upload them through MTP mode. If you use MSC mode, then you should copy them on normally. It supports multiple sorting modes, browse over music menu. However if your songs aren't tagged properly, it won't really be able to sort them. Tagging can be done with multiple tools, do a search on google and use whatever seems nice to you.
And yes, you should avoid using playlists indeed. (When you click on using a playlist, the M6 loads all tag information for the songs right then. That's why it "freezes".) You should read some tipps and tricks about using the player, for example, you can press play when hilighting a band or artist in the appropriate browsing mode and then it plays that. I think that makes using playlists often not needed.
Good luck sorting things out

Originally Posted by Speeder

The M6 does put them sorted on the player. If it isn't sorted for you, that means that your songs don't have proper tagging information for them when you upload them through MTP mode. If you use MSC mode, then you should copy them on normally. It supports multiple sorting modes, browse over music menu. However if your songs aren't tagged properly, it won't really be able to sort them. Tagging can be done with multiple tools, do a search on google and use whatever seems nice to you.
And yes, you should avoid using playlists indeed. (When you click on using a playlist, the M6 loads all tag information for the songs right then. That's why it "freezes".) You should read some tipps and tricks about using the player, for example, you can press play when hilighting a band or artist in the appropriate browsing mode and then it plays that. I think that makes using playlists often not needed.
Good luck sorting things out

With "unsorted" I didn't mean completly screwed, he just behaves like all music is in one Folder (sorted by Artist - Title) of course

But it works very well with the Browser system, thanks

Yeah, guess this Player has some unusual quirks. Another problem I have, is that he pauses/stops playing after 2 or 3 tracks. But only at one special artist =/

Btw, I read about some problems (stuttering) with MP3 encoded with old versions of the LAME-Encoder, is this still problematic? I honestly wouldnt mind to re-encode many of my MP3s, since they are quite old and only with 128 kbits encoded.

I've sold a lot of M6's and almost ALL problems with playback, including stuttering, freezing, etc. are due to encoding issues. It doesn't matter if it's MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc. if it's isn't playing a particular song, artist, whatever, re-encode the song(s) and it almost always solves the problems.

My suggestion is to play a song you like and while it's playing select the playlist. That way you can listen to a song while the playlist is loading.

I only got my M6 yesterday and I have dane-elec's firmware on it. I'm thinking of not changing the firmware because it works fine as it is and not risk any problems that might occur (I don't care about radio at the moment).

My longest playlist is 100 songs and it takes 20 seconds to load. It's a very simple m3u playlist I created myself in a text editor with 1 song on each line and no extra comments. Maybe this makes it faster than yours? I also find this easier than any other method for generating playlists that I've found. Once a playlist is loaded even if you turn the power off you don't have to load it again, and if I load a 100 track playlist it's going to be some time before I want to load another one, so for long playlists I don't mind waiting 20 seconds or more

btw, is there an easier way to order the music? I was used to have several folders (for every artist one e.g.) on my old MP3-Player. But the M6 just puts up all music unsorted together. Any way to make him behave like the old player?

On my computer I currently have a different folder for each catagory of music. But now I've got my M6 I'm thinking of creating a different M3U playlist for each catagory instead and organise my music that way, it would make no difference in the long run. You can easily convert playlists to work on your computer and on your player by using the search and replace function in a text editor to change the file paths.