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[Scronch]

I just wanted to ask if either of these things are being worked into this or future versions:

Clubbing - Being able to say that filename1.mp3 and filename2.mp3 must always be played back-to-back, i.e. smartlists are to treat them as one file for sorting purposes.  This is extremely useful not only for tracks from one album that flow together, but also for songs you just want together--for example, Sprung Monkey - Coconut followed by Harry Nilsson - Coconut.

Local Density - I'm using this term to describe control of the relative number occurrences of an artist, or genre, or category, within some confines, such as one smartlist, or each 2 hour period of a smartlist.  MJ8 gives the capability to set the relative percentages by genre (or by category or artist, I think).  What about subsequent re-sorts to ensure simple things like (a) with the exception of clubbing, no two songs from the same artist shall appear within XX minutes of one another, (b) for longer smartlists, the relative percentages will be honored (as much as is possible in a discrete world) within each YY minute period.  And so forth.

I think these would be valuable additions to MJ.  Smartlists, like all pseudo-random processes, have a way of randomly sorting songs into an order that doesn't seem very random.

Scronch

[Matt]

Scronch,

Those are both cool ideas, but an intuitive interface to make the whole system slick and understandable has eluded us.

There's some breaking point where a super-smartlist takes more time to build than just assembling the resulting playlist.  Not sure where that point is, or how close we already are.

Anyway, hopefully version 9 will improve on 8's new smartlist system.  Both of your suggestions would be logical extensions.  Just hope you'll be there to beta test that time...

Thanks and take care.

-Matt

[Scronch]

The problem with manually sorting a playlist is that you lose the great advantages of having everything on a computer.  Once you've gone through all the work to sort the list, keeping the Pop songs away from one another, trying to bury the Country tunes (egads!) in between good songs, and so forth, you have invested a lot of time.  That means you don't want to re-do all that work all the time.  So you end up playing the same list over and over.  And then you get that dreaded 1980's cassette party tape thing--you know that "The Motorcylce Song" is going to follow "Hey Joe" every time, and sure enough, it does, and soon you jump out a high-rise window and your estate sues JRiver for damages.  Back to reality now, I find that shuffled smartlists generally need hand-tuning, which just takes too long.  And so the whole smartlist philosophy suffers.  I understand that a "local density" interface might be challenging, but it could be done--wizards could help newbies until they learn the settings.  Clubbing is pretty straightforward.  I'm told some other programs do it (I wouldn't know, because I only use MJ < paste gold star here > ).  If you keep clubbing and local density in mind for a future release, then my time here has not been wasted.  Regarding my involvement in a beta, I'll need to get yet another computer, because I can't risk our production PC's (which is all of them...).  Thanks.

Scronch

[Scronch]

I forgot to comment on this (other than in roundabout fashion):

>There's some breaking point where a super-smartlist takes more time to
>build than just assembling the resulting playlist.

The improvements I am discussing address playing order, not content directly.
Once made, the super-smartlist can be re-sorted ad infinitum, and the clubbing
and local density rules will be met with each shuffle.

"Giving it a rest now",
Scronch