Okay, I just got an iPod (yes, I hit puberty late in life, too) and I’m having trouble figuring out what seems like the most basic of functions.
For example: Why, when I go to “Genre”, does it list my titles by performing artists?? I own a ton of musical theatre soundtracks… When I know I want to hear a musical but I don’t know which one, by God I want to be able to browse through my musical titles to choose one. I shouldn’t need to know that Karen Ziemba was in the 1997 Broadway revival of Chicago and choose it that way.
Also, and this applies to “regular” albums too, when there isn’t supposed to be a break in between songs (in other words, the artist deliberately segues into the next song), I’m still getting a moment of pause before the next song starts. When I listen to an album (as opposed to shuffle), by God I want to hear the album the way the artist intended it!
I’d love to know if there’s a way to fix these things, as well as any random tips that would make my iPodding more enjoyable. Thanks!
For the genre issue - the “tags” on the files are apparently set up wrong. If you’re ripping CDs into iTunes, the Gracenote / CDDB link almost always gets everything right. If you’ve imported existing files, there’s no predicting how well they were done. You can select a batch of tracks (say that Chicago soundtrack) and change the Genre category.
The CDDB info is only as good as what’s been fed into it. I can think offhand that their coding for the Moulin Rouge soundtracks is a bit goofy, for example. Not horrible, but just odd enough to be annoying.
Skips between songs - I’m not looking at iTunes right now as I’m at work, but there’s a function to rip sequential tracks in one shot. This is different from a similar function to join existing tracks, wich makes them behave as a single file, but still with whatever dead spots are at their ends.
I don’t know about the genre thing, but there is no how, no way to make the songs play without a small break between tracks on the iPod. I was actually just reading about that this morning in Macworld magazine. If gotpasswords is correct and there’s a way to rip a whole CD as one file, you’d have to do that. But then you couldn’t listen to individual tracks, correct?
In iTunes there is a crossfade playback option (Edit > Preferences > Playback) that allows you to set the delay between tracks to between 0 and 12 seconds. However, the documentation does not say whether this works only in iTunes or for playback on disconnected iPods as well. It’s worth a try.
As I recall, the crossfade option is purely iTunes only. The iPod still has the gap between tracks, making it somewhat irritating. I still miss mine though. This switching of CDs in my car is just too much calorie burnin’ for me.
For things like operas that are invariably listend to in one solid chunk, I ripped the entire CD as one MP3 and called it a day. For things like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, I did both entire-CD rips and normal track-by-track rips. It’s not like I didn’t have disk space…
You can set up a playlist in iTunes and copy all the titles in that genre to the new playlist then sort the playlist to whatever order you want. Your iPod will pick up the playlist and whatever order its set to the next time it’s connected.
That isn’t an iPod complaint, it’s a musicals complaint: the only genre I’ve encountered where the usual artist/album preference is switched.
You may have misunderstood (unless I misunderstand you): the artists aren’t showing up instead of the genres, it’s just that within each genre the music is listed by artist. For musicals, it would be more helpful to see the music by album.
That’s the closest work-around I can come up with, too – but it still won’t list them by album/musical.
Hmm… Okay, so it looks like there’s no way around the space in between songs (short of ripping the entire CD as one song, which I’d rather not do), but what about the other issue?
Allow me to clarify: It really has nothing to do with the Gracenote information; all my soundtracks (correctly) come up as “Soundtrack”. The issue is that when I know I want to listen to a Soundtrack, and I go to “Genre”, all the CDs under Soundtrack are listed by the actors’ names, rather than the title of the CD. What I’m looking for is a way to have them come up by title when I search by Genre.
Go to “Genre”, select “Musicals” or “Soundtracks” or whatever genre you want, thent it lists everything in alphabetical order by the performers name. But try selecting “All” (should be at the very top of the list) then you’ll get a list of all the albums in the “soundtrack” genre in alphabetical order.
(If you press “All” again you’ll get a list of all the tracks in the “soundtrack” genre, again in alphabetical order)
Aaaaannnnddddd there you have it, folks. That right there is the exact reason I called this thread “iPod for Dummies” (meaning myself). Thanks scr4! Of course that worked, and it works for all other genres too, in case anyone’s wondering.
I’d still like to hear ideas about the gap between songs though, and open the floor to any random, cool ways to tweak the iPod.
Well, scr4 and shefDave posted the actual “fix” while I was typing this up, but in looking up a question of my own I discovered another workaround. And since it’s already typed up, I’m gonna post it anyway.
There is a “Compliations” option in the Settings menu that you have to turn on in order for it to show up in the Music menu. Once it’s enabled, it lists albums of songs that you have designated as belonging to a compilation (that designation gets set in iTunes). If you don’t think you’ll use the “Compilations” option for other compilations, go through your music collection and only set that designation for songs that are from musicals. Then, when you select Music > Compilations, you will see a list of all of your musicals (by album).
But the real fix is much simpler.
Sorry, by “list” I meant “display.” So you can sort the list by album title, but it will still only display by song title. My bad.
Of course, some albums are just wonky - my Phantom of the Opera recording is listed under Albums as ‘Original Cast Recording’, with no mention of the musical title. Of course, it is the only musical I have on my iPod, so it isn’t that bad. But you could just sort by Album.
