Hello, all!
 
I understand most of the x5's basic functions, however, the playlist "guide" from Joe (http://www.head-fi.org/t/730300/fiio-x5-firmware-2-20-download-and-discussion#post_10790368) does not work. He's not specific about where the file path should begin or what it should look like. I understand that you have to add "#EXTM3U" at the top of the playlist. And I thought I understood the part about leaving the drive out of the path, but so far none of the paths that I've tried are working. When I've tested the playlists on the device itself, it has always said the files could not be found.
 
A specific example of this would be nice and appreciated very much.
 
NOTE: I realize you can create them on the device, but I have several playlists typed out from previous devices that I'd rather modify for the X5.
 
Thanks.
 
**UPDATE**
 
I finally figured out what my issue was. I was getting windows mixed up and reading the wrong paths. Even if I was reading the right ones, the .m3u files still wouldn't have played because I was dropping them into a Playlists folder. Whoops! Now that this embarrassing stuff is behind me...
 
Here's how I create playlists for the X5.
 
First, I use Mediamonkey as my media library. I drag files from there to my X5. On my computer, my folder structure is Artist\Album\# - Song Title. When creating a playlist for the X5 an artist title must be added between the track # and song title. The playlist format for the X5 ends up being the following...
 
#EXTM3U
Music\Artist - Album\01 Artist - Song Title.flac
 
Here's a fuller way of looking at it...
 
#EXTM3U
Music\Frank Sinatra - Best of the Best\22 Frank Sinatra - My Way.flac
Music\Merle Travis - Back Home\01 Merle Travis - Nine Pound Hammer.flac
Music\Neil Young - Zuma\08 Neil Young - Cortez the Killer.flac
 
After I cobble a playlist together with Notepad, I save it as an M3U file then drag 'n' drop it to the same directory that the X5's Music folder is located. My playlists are listed under Browse Files and card 1 (since I only have 1 at the moment) and titled the same as the M3U files.

I realize this is double posting, but this issue should not exist and I'd appreciate any feedback to help solve it.
 
The issue is that something is preventing a track from playing on a playlist that I created by the method above. However, that track will play through the X5's drive in Mediamonkey, and I can also play that same track elsewhere on the X5. It's only on the playlist that the track will not play. It says the file can not be found. Every other track will play properly.
 
Now, I also added more tracks from the album the offending track is from to try and narrow the issue down, but the other tracks work fine when added to the playlist. I even reripped the album, retagged, etc. then entered the location back into the playlist and it still will not work. Finally, there are no extra spaces, no special characters. Seriously. I have checked everything multiple times.
 
I'm finally to the boiling point and fed up. What would cause this? It's very annoying and is one of many issues making me regret my recent X5 purchase.
 
Any thoughts from anyone? I know many of you are very intelligent and knowledgeable regarding some of these things.
 
I'd appreciate it.
 
Thanks

riverofstars said:

  I realize this is double posting, but this issue should not exist and I'd appreciate any feedback to help solve it.
 
The issue is that something is preventing a track from playing on a playlist that I created by the method above. However, that track will play through the X5's drive in Mediamonkey, and I can also play that same track elsewhere on the X5. It's only on the playlist that the track will not play. It says the file can not be found. Every other track will play properly.
 
Now, I also added more tracks from the album the offending track is from to try and narrow the issue down, but the other tracks work fine when added to the playlist. I even reripped the album, retagged, etc. then entered the location back into the playlist and it still will not work. Finally, there are no extra spaces, no special characters. Seriously. I have checked everything multiple times.
 
I'm finally to the boiling point and fed up. What would cause this? It's very annoying and is one of many issues making me regret my recent X5 purchase.
 
Any thoughts from anyone? I know many of you are very intelligent and knowledgeable regarding some of these things.
 
I'd appreciate it.
 
Thanks

Click to expand...

Did you end up returning it?  In my case, I ended up switching to M3U8 playlists because I have a bunch of "Witch House" genre tracks that use all kinds of fun characters in them (like V▲LH▲LL + M‡яc▲ll▲ for instance) where the directories would have the characters correctly entered, but the M3U (non-Unicode) playlists would have question marks in place of all the non-ANSI characters.  Also, it *appears* that there might be some issues with certain file sizes uses for album art when embedded, although I didn't run into that.  What I have run into is it appears a few tracks might have certain errors where there's a Layer I or Layer II check, and MP3Gain might have had an issue with updating the header.  I'm still going through that, but it's possible that the file is corrupt or simply being perceived as invalid by the player.  Can you rip the file again, or maybe try a quick transcode/container edit and see if that fixes it?

riverofstars said:

  I realize this is double posting, but this issue should not exist and I'd appreciate any feedback to help solve it.
 
The issue is that something is preventing a track from playing on a playlist that I created by the method above. However, that track will play through the X5's drive in Mediamonkey, and I can also play that same track elsewhere on the X5. It's only on the playlist that the track will not play. It says the file can not be found. Every other track will play properly.
 
Now, I also added more tracks from the album the offending track is from to try and narrow the issue down, but the other tracks work fine when added to the playlist. I even reripped the album, retagged, etc. then entered the location back into the playlist and it still will not work. Finally, there are no extra spaces, no special characters. Seriously. I have checked everything multiple times.
 
I'm finally to the boiling point and fed up. What would cause this? It's very annoying and is one of many issues making me regret my recent X5 purchase.
 
Any thoughts from anyone? I know many of you are very intelligent and knowledgeable regarding some of these things.
 
I'd appreciate it.
 
Thanks

Click to expand...

 
Check the length of the playlist entry.  It seems that anything longer than 128 characters won't work.
 
Edit:  128 characters is fine, as is 129.  Not sure about 130, but 131 won't work!   I'd just assumed 128 since it's a power of 2

I've been searching the Web for about an hour now and I'm absolutely baffled as to how to import a playlist on the X1 I just got (I assume functionality would be the same as the X5).
 
They're .m3u files. There are no drive extensions; each entry in the playlist is Music/Artist/Album/00 Song.wma. I have the #EXTM3U tag at the beginning. None of the entries are anywhere near 128 characters or include any unusual characters. When I go to "Browse Files" -> "Dance Mix," the songs show up in the list, but I get a "Playback failed, file not found" message for each one of them. Needless to say, they play perfectly fine when I go through the folders and select the individual songs. I primarily listen in the car, so being able to shuffle playlists is a must. I'm guessing I'm missing a step or something but I'm following the guides I've come across step by step, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong exactly.
 
I love the ease and functionality of this device otherwise, but this is driving me crazy...

anthontherun said:

  I've been searching the Web for about an hour now and I'm absolutely baffled as to how to import a playlist on the X1 I just got (I assume functionality would be the same as the X5).
 
They're .m3u files. There are no drive extensions; each entry in the playlist is Music/Artist/Album/00 Song.wma. I have the #EXTM3U tag at the beginning. None of the entries are anywhere near 128 characters or include any unusual characters. When I go to "Browse Files" -> "Dance Mix," the songs show up in the list, but I get a "Playback failed, file not found" message for each one of them. Needless to say, they play perfectly fine when I go through the folders and select the individual songs. I primarily listen in the car, so being able to shuffle playlists is a must. I'm guessing I'm missing a step or something but I'm following the guides I've come across step by step, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong exactly.
 
I love the ease and functionality of this device otherwise, but this is driving me crazy...

Click to expand...

You might need a ../ in front of each file. If your playlist is in the directory "above" Music what you have should work, but if it is in a directory "next" to Music, then you need the ../ to tell it to go up one level from the playlist first. BTW, on my X3 \ works better than /. You might want to change those / to \ (as well as the one I'm suggesting adding).
 
E.g
 
..\Music\Artist\Album\00 Song.wma

tjw321 said:

  You might need a ../ in front of each file. If your playlist is in the directory "above" Music what you have should work, but if it is in a directory "next" to Music, then you need the ../ to tell it to go up one level from the playlist first. BTW, on my X3 \ works better than /. You might want to change those / to \ (as well as the one I'm suggesting adding).
 
E.g
 
..\Music\Artist\Album\00 Song.wma

Click to expand...

 
My bad; it actually was \ but I'm just used to typing / ! Either way, I think I figured it out...or rather, I tried it again and it works now. I don't think I did anything differently, but maybe I had a typo or something in there initially. Thank you though!
 
Another question: I have two separate playlists for the car, my usual big mix and an additional one with all the embarrassing stuff I can only play when I'm alone (don't want those Mariah Carey songs popping up when anyone else is around, obviously). On my Zune I was able to have the two playlists play in conjunction. Is there a way to do that on FiiO? Not a big deal either way, since I can easily have my big mix and then a combined one with everything together.

Sorry for the double post--things have been working well so far, although has there been a fix/solution to the problem of tracks in .m3u playlists with unusual characters not playing? I could manually change each one, but that'd be kind of pain.

anthontherun said:

  Sorry for the double post--things have been working well so far, although has there been a fix/solution to the problem of tracks in .m3u playlists with unusual characters not playing? I could manually change each one, but that'd be kind of pain.

Click to expand...

It was a pain, but that's what I did.

You can also do a search/replace on the path string to add "tf1:" (card slot one) or "tf2:" (card slot ) similar to a windows drive letter.  Thus avoiding the whole relative path issue.  I had a lot of problems getting relative pathing to work and ended up doing this.  It has the added benefit of allowing you to relocate your playlists on the card at some future time without breaking the relative path link.  Plus you should be able to merge songs from both cards into one playlist.  Something like this:
 
tf1:\Music\Artist\Title\filename.m4a
 
I'm adding this here because I found this thread in a search of playlist discussions.