Creating Playlists

[Eric Warren]

Dear Brennan Community…

My fiancée and I recently purchased a Brennan B2 so we could retire two maxed-out 60MB iPods, rip 600+ CDs in lossless resolution, and create new playlists that combine our music collections.

The original iTunes was great, but recent upgrades were terrible (I use an old version), and now I understand Apple doesn’t support iTunes at all—another reason to jump ship to Brennan.

I work day-to-day on a Mac platform but I’m not super tech-savvy in back-end hardware and software. This was a concern regarding purchasing a B2, but a few days ago I hooked up our B2 with ethernet and began ripping CDs. So far so good… about 100 are in the can.

Here’s my primary concern:

I love creating playlists—and from what I can tell, the B2's control over playlists is quite rudimentary. It’s easy enough to drag an entire ARTIST or ALBUM or a single TRACK into a playlist. But if I want to pull only a select few songs from an ARTIST or ALBUM, those songs appear to only have the TRACK names without reference to the ALBUM or ARTIST.

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Example #1:

Let’s say I want to create a REGGAE playlist. It would include the usual bands. Select artists like Sinead O'Conner have made excellent reggae albums. Bands like The Rolling Stones and Lenny Kravitz have great reggae tracks, too. So my preliminary REGGAE playlist on the B2 looks like this (alphabetically):

ARTIST: Bob Marley and the Wailers
TRACK: Cherry Oh Baby
TRACK: Eleutheria
TRACK: Feel On Baby
ARTIST: Peter Tosh
TRACK: Send It To Me
ARTIST: Steel Pulse
ALBUM: Throw Down Your Arms

Whereas in iTunes, the data has a clear hierarchy via ARTIST > ALBUM > TRACK. I usually view by ARTIST so the same playlist would appear like this:

Bob Marley and the Wailers
• Songs of Freedom CD1
  - All the tracks
• Songs of Freedom CD2
  - All the tracks
• Songs of Freedom CD3
  - All the tracks
• Songs of Freedom CD4
  - All the tracks

Lenny Kravitz
• Are You Gonna Go My Way?
  - Eleutheria

Peter Tosh
• Legalize It
  - All the tracks
• Bush Doctor
  - All the tracks

Sinead O'Connor
• Throw Down Your Arms
  - All the tracks

Steel Pulse
• True Democracy
  - All the tracks
• Mass Manipulation
  - All the tracks

The Rolling Stones
• Black and Blue
  - Cherry Oh Baby
• Emotional Rescue
  - Send It To Me
• Undercover
  - Feel On Baby

In a genre specific playlist like REGGAE or TANGO this is probably okay.

However...

Example #2:

I create plenty of playlists that are about a certain vibe or mood.

So, a band like The Rolling Stones who have songs in the Rock, Blues, Alt-Country, Reggae, Disco, and Punk genres will have TRACKS all over the place without the ARTIST or ALBUM data available within various playlists.

And, when creating an eclectic playlist called “RELAX” I would select downtempo tracks from many disparate bands in the Soul, Soft Rock, Folk, Alt-Country, Trip-Hop, etc. genres. I wouldn't necessarily pull an entire ALBUM by Lucinda Williams or Dire Straits or Morcheeba into the “RELAX” playlist, so it would end up being loads of TRACKS without any ARTIST or ALBUM data at all.

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Here are my questions:

1. Is it possible to make playlists on the B2 with a clear data hierarchy of ARTIST > ALBUM > TRACK within the playlist?

2. iTunes allows me to turn TURN OFF a track without deleting it from the hard drive. Is that not an option with the B2?

3. No where do I see the original recording date of an ALBUM or TRACK. Music geeks like this. Also unavailable on the B2?

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Apologies if I’m missing something obvious. I don’t want to keep ripping CDs if there’s a setting (or something) that needs to be changed.

Thanks in advance!

—Eric Warren

[PMB]

Hi Eric,

Playlists on the B2 are simply lists of titles, saved as text, that tell the B2 what to play next.

1. The web UI, under Playlists, only shows the Artist, Album or Track name i.e. one level. Clicking on any of these does display the 
Artist and Album info in the Artist panel (top right hand side) with Tracks shown below right. When a Playlist is playing this info is also displayed in the 'Now Playing' panel (top left hand side).

2. A 'Do not Play' marker has been suggested before and is on our Wish List.

3. The title information does not include the date. You would need to manually edit the Album title to include this.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Eric Warren]

Thanks Paul... you confirmed what I'm seeing. 

I wish the playlist data was more robust. We are pausing the rip at +/-100 CDs to experiment with playlist and see if the system will serve our needs. I remain hopeful it will, and appreciate the prompt reply. 

Eric

[PMB]

Hi Eric,

I also meant to include this screenshot to illustrate what I was saying.

Paul

Brennan Support.