Hi, everyone. Just picked up a Plenue D last week and I am really liking it. Great little device.
It took me some time to get playlists set up properly, though. I found some advice elsewhere in this thread, but it didn't...work the way I wanted my playlists to work. So poked around until I found something I like better, and I wanted to share it here in case someone else may find it useful.
I use MusicBee, so my instructions will be tailored to that program, but you should be able to map it to your favorite music manager, as long as it supports the proper playlist format (Extended M3U).
Okay, in MusicBee, you can access the settings for the Plenue D by clicking on the MusicBee title in the upper left-hand corner and selecting Edit>Preferences>Devices>Plenue D and clicking the Configure button. Or you can find it in the bottom of your Library Explorer panel under Devices (if you use the Library Explorer Panel). Using this method, you would select the Plenue D and click Settings. If you want to work with the SD card, you will find it listed according to the drive letter it shows up as under Preferences>Devices, or as Removable Disk (with a drive letter) under the Library Explorer.
Now, where it says music files:, set it to however you like all of your music organized. I use Music\<Artist>\<Album>\<Disc-Track#> - <Title> but really, set it however you like. Further down, where it says playlists path, set it to wherever you want your playlists stored. You can do Playlists\ if you like, but I don't like to create unnecessary folders, so I use Music\ so that they are stored in the root of my Music folder. Again, go with whatever scheme you like. Beneath that, you will find create a subfolder for each playlist and its tracks. Leave this box unchecked. For save as format choose M3U(#EXT) from the dropdown. path prefix for tracks should be set to a single backslash: \ Finally, use relative file paths is also unchecked.
If you use an sd card, make sure the settings for that drive are exactly the same.
Now you can transfer playlists to the device by right clicking the playlist and selecting Send to>Device>Plenue D (or Removable Drive--you can use either or both). The music files will be organized in the way that you have selected, no matter what list they are on. The playlists will go where you have selected as well. When finished, right click the Plenue D in the Library Explorer and select safely remove (or do this through your OS).
You can now select your playlists from the music selection toolbar on the Plenue D. While browsing, click the back arrow until you can't go back any further and the toolbar appears near the top of the window. The one that lets you browse by Folders, Artists, Albums, etc. Scroll all the way to the right and the last icon on the right will look like a piece of paper with a musical note. Select that. This is where your playlists will show up. They will all appear here together, no matter where you have stored them.
And that's it! One of the benefits of this method is that your files are only stored once on your device, no matter how many playlists they appear in. (I should amend this to say: if you have the same file listed in multiple playlists on one drive, that file will only be copied once to that drive. If you have playlists on both the internal storage and an sd card that reference the same file, that file will be copied once to each drive via this method. If this is a concern for you, you may want to keep all playlists on one drive or the other. I am not aware of any workaround which allows a single playlist to reference files on both drives. If anyone knows how the Plenue D internally references these different drives, a workaround may be possible; maybe not.)
Hope someone finds this useful. Many thanks to all for all the tips and advice. Hoping this will go some way toward giving back.