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[benn600]

My Sandisk Sansa e270 with 6GB will be here in a few days or so and I am curious about how to easily setup a playlist which will automatically fill my player.

First, I want songs rated 5 and 4 songs with no exceptions.  I'm hopeful that I won't get more than what my player can hold, but it's possible.  Second, I am thinking that songs played more than 5 times should be added.  Finally, any extra space should be filled with 3-star rated songs and others played more than once.  As a last resort, randomly add songs.

At the moment, I am trying to quickly get a big number of songs rated, basically transfering my iTunes ratings but updating preferences as they may have changed.

As a general rule, what do you guys think of this:
5 stars: absolute favorites I can't live without
4 stars: wonderful songs that I will reserve for those moments when I am less demanding for a perfect song
3 stars: songs I generally like but do not necessarily need to keep with me
2 stars: songs I dislike and do not want to carry with me
1 star:  longer items which are not worthy of a rating.  Things such as thunderstorms, babbling brooks, etc., which are 30-60 minutes in length could automatically be copied and fill up lots of space.

My question is about certain holiday music.  For example, we have a very large christmas music collection and I like many songs very much.  I guess I could use my standard rating system and then remember to add a NOT genre=christmas criteria...that would work great.

Thanks!

[jgreen]

Ben--

#1, Thank you for not declaring that 1-5 ratings will never do, that only 1-10 can accurately codify your listening preferences.  I myself converted my 1-5 ratings to 1-10 and it turned out to be one of the silliest things I ever did, or at least it ranks in the top 5,000 this year.

Looking at your suggested plan confirms my current hypothesis:  we really only need three ratings for the music we like, the other two just describe how much we dislike something.  However, I think you ought to start out with 4 ratings fojr music you listen to, and reserve 1-star for music you don't want to listen to.  No sense rating stuff you won't listen to anyway. 

So here is my suggestion, and the rough % distribution of each level in my library.  I have to estimate because I'm away from my main library.

5--Absolute favorites I can't live without.  These songs tend to be of a very similar style/genre.  Without applying any rule, it ends up being 5% of my rated tracks or so, but not more than 10%.

4--Songs I love.  They may not be the bell-ringers that 5s are, or they may draw from genres that aren't necessarily always my favorite, or something.  15% to 20% of my rated tracks.

3--This is where I put songs that I like but not love.  A lot of the pop from the 70s ends up here, pleasant to listen to but I don't do looking for it.  30% of my rated tracks.

2--This is where I put most of the Aerosmith or ZZ top or Jimi tracks that I like ( but not love) but can only take once or twice a month.  Each time I listen to them I start out thinking, "Gee, why isn't this track a 3?"  But by the end of the song I'm tired of it and I change it back to a 2 again.  20% of my rated tracks.

1--You guessed it--20% to 30% of my library (maybe even closer to 40%) are tracks that I wished never existed.  At one point or another I paid good money for them, and that's the darnedest part.  So if you're building a library from scratch I recommend you stop buying CDs and rent your tracks first.  Try Napster or Performer Digital.

No Star--Make sure you don't rate songs you haven't actually listened to.  I had a lot of "longer items not worthy of a rating", concerts from etree.org, for example.  I finally went through a few of them and most of those are now 4- or 5-stars.  Imagine:  a 2-hour track that's worth a 5-star to me, and I was missing it all this time.

As for the number of plays, I definitely think this should alter a rating.  I occassionally upgrade 3s and 4s whose number of plays puts them solidly into the next level, and similarly I've downgraded museum items that I never seemed to play.  This can be educational:  I have a couple of tracks from the Carpenters (!) that started out as 2s and ended up as 5s.  Go figure. 

[benn600]

Unfortunately, that was helpful, but did not answer any of my question!  I got my Sansa in the mail today and keep messing everything up.  I decided to change the quality setting so I could fit more music after I got 180 songs copied!  Now, I seem to notice a lot of problems with synchronizing.  I'm going to start a new thread entitled, "Portable player sync troubles and issues"

I agree with much of what you said in your rating system and am trying to rate as much as I can at the moment.

My library before yesterday when I finished my new collection consisted of low quality mp3's and random findings on the internet.  I decided to upgrade to all FLAC and purchase everything I want on CD.  That cost me close to $1000--buying all used, of course, and getting me close to two hundred real, studio CDs to rip.  I now am only a few tracks under 7,000 and they are all real, from CDs that I currently own and hold at my house.  My old collection was nearing 8K but wasn't in very good condition by any stretch of the imagination.

Check the new thread out!