I usually don't double-post but since the one below may have gotten lost in the main thread and is more relevant to this one:
- though the extension is .pls, they are NOT actual standard-compliant PLS files, as a matter when I dropped in a standard one generated by Clementine and hand-edited to use the AK100's correct paths, it showed all the meta-info in the file as garbage and the actual items didn't work either. Before anyone thinks Clementine didn't generate a correct file, I looked up the syntax and checked it when hand-editing the file.
- so what are they? Basically a text file containing a list of file locations (that you can rename to something more descriptive than Playlist1 etc.), and NOTHING else. Example:
/mnt/SD0/Pop/Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can - 2010/03 - Rambling Man.flac
/mnt/SD0/Pop/Shea Seger - Shea Seger - 2010/07 - Used To.mp3
/nand3/Music/Pop/Melody Gardot - The Absence - 2012/08 - Goodbye.flac
/mnt/SD1/Classical/Michael Stern and Kansas City Symphony - Britten's Orchestra - 2009/01 - The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.flac
/mnt/SD1/Jazz/Bill Evans Trio - Waltz For Debby - 1961/01 - My Foolish Heart.flac
The part in bold points to the respective storage area (SD0 = SD1 in the UI = bottom slot; SD1 = SD2 in the UI = top slot; nand3/Music/ = default internal path) Everything else depends ON YOU, so no tagging software or script is going to know automatically which one of the three to pick. And exported .m3u lists actually include the path to your computer's folder/file hierarchy. Again, it's very difficult for a software to know where the cutoff point for path replacement is depending on how deep the folders are nested... And on top of that, at least in my case, sometimes my song/album names do not always correspond to the actual filenames due to naming conventions and filesystem compliance (special characters etc.)
Also, one file I generated on the Mac with the correct text didn't work anyway. I assume it's the text encoding, I ended up copy-pasta-ing it into an existing AK100 file and then it was OK.
So the takeaway is:
- You might as well type, copy & paste your playlist into an empty .pls file using any text editor (you can open m3u files as well, even if not by the default file association).
- Or just recreate them on the AK100 itself, and rename & re-arrange them in the text-editor as needed.
This sucks of course for large playlists, but really that's what databases are for, to remove dependencies on file location esp. using absolute paths... Otherwise you would need to use a music management software that knows 1) where the files are on your computer 2) which of the 3 locations on the AK100 you dragged them to, then generate a matching playlist. Maybe the iRiver 4 software does that, but other generic ones will have trouble since they usually expect only 1 DAP storage location at best. I have a new appreciation for iTunes (at least on the Mac), warts and all...
