How to create M3U playlists for use on the X1, X3 and X5 from your computer

[Joe Bloggs]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like we still can't achieve this functionality below.

Use two sd cards (say 200GB each) and load music into each card in split functionality (your music library is greater than 200GB so you need to put half in each sd card). Add playlists with relative paths (doesn't specify drive letter). fiio can't play music from the playlist if it's on the other sd card.

I would think the firmware should be able to check both sd cards for the file path for a particular playlist very easily. It should be a simple 'if file exists->play; else->look on other card' type check. If fiio's firmware was open source, I'd go in and make the change myself to get this functionality.

I'd love to be wrong about this but so far, this is the only thing holding me back from buying a fiio. The other option is to wait for individual sd cards to grow past my music library size.

Hello jojojames,

Actually what you describe is possible but a bit complicated. The two card slots would be referred to by (e.g. the X5 2nd gen) as (say) TF1: and TF2: , you would have to add this manually to the beginning of the path since your computer would call those drives something else. I described the playlist making process the way I did to simplify matters.

Also, it's not like you can make a playlist containing thousands of songs spanning two cards and expect it to actually load... :eek: If you see yourself needing short playlists (like under 100 songs or so) that do span the two cards, then fine.

Best regards,
Joe

 

[russell finch]

I currently have a playlist on my X5 containing over 2500 songs across TF1 TF2 and OTG, it takes 20 seconds or so to open up, but works perfectly after that.
 
I use foobar to make 3 playlists (one for each drive) and then copy and paste out of those into new playlist file to make more manageable playlists.
 
I did once make one giant playlist containing every song I had (about 20,000 at the time), and it did actually load and play once, but it refused to work any other time. I reckon a 10,000 song playlist would work if you had the patience to wait a few minutes for it to open.

 

[jojojames]

Hello jojojames,

Actually what you describe is possible but a bit complicated. The two card slots would be referred to by (e.g. the X5 2nd gen) as (say) TF1: and TF2: , you would have to add this manually to the beginning of the path since your computer would call those drives something else. I described the playlist making process the way I did to simplify matters.

Also, it's not like you can make a playlist containing thousands of songs spanning two cards and expect it to actually load...

If you see yourself needing short playlists (like under 100 songs or so) that do span the two cards, then fine.

Best regards,
Joe

I think what I wanted possible was not have to do the above as it's an unnecessary time sink. See below, I don't believe loading thousands of songs in a playlist in a quick manner is wishful thinking.
 

 
I currently have a playlist on my X5 containing over 2500 songs across TF1 TF2 and OTG, it takes 20 seconds or so to open up, but works perfectly after that.
 
I use foobar to make 3 playlists (one for each drive) and then copy and paste out of those into new playlist file to make more manageable playlists.
 
I did once make one giant playlist containing every song I had (about 20,000 at the time), and it did actually load and play once, but it refused to work any other time. I reckon a 10,000 song playlist would work if you had the patience to wait a few minutes for it to open.

I don't understand why it would have to load the entire list of songs into memory. Iterating over a list of 10000 or even 1000000 is nothing for a computer to do.
 
Lazy load the songs as the user picks them or when it's next to load. It almost seems trivial to do this.
 
Ipod are definitely able to load thousands of songs in individual playlists. (I have around 20,000 in one playlist) so I find this a shaky limitation. It definitely seems like a flaw in the implementation on how playlists/songs are loaded than anything else.
 
I don't believe any of my comments are unfounded (I'm a software engineer) or impossible to do so. In fact, something like lazy loading (or checking available filesystems) should be extremely easy.
 
If the fiio software/firmware was open source, out of self interest, I would go in and see if I could make the changes myself.

 

[Lourens]

  I've update my X1's firmware into 1.5.
I exported a playlist from iTunes (Mac) into an M3U8 file then edited it based on the tips posted here and retained just 5 songs in the list for easy editing as seen below.
It is saved on the root.
I keep on getting a "File Not Found" message.
 
#EXTM3U
Crusin Albums/Cruisin' Opus III_ Sonnets/1-01 I Wish That I Was Making Love.mp3
Crusin Albums/Cruisin' Opus III_ Sonnets/1-02 Crazy Love.mp3
Crusin Albums/Cruisin' Opus III_ Sonnets/1-03 Greatest American Hero (Belive It Or Not).mp3
Crusin Albums/Cruisin' Opus III_ Sonnets/1-04 Promise Me A Carousel.mp3
Crusin Albums/Cruisin' Opus III_ Sonnets/1-05 Let's Make A Memory.mp3

 
It might be this, please correct me if I'm wrong but I think it is the direction of your "slash"(/). In my files as well as the post just above yours, we use a backslash, but your file contains forward slashes.
 
BTW love my X Player

 

[martinh32]

I've read lots recently about playlists and different ways to create them. I'm expecting my new x5ii to arrive tomorrow and I'm amazed there isn't an easy way now to achieve this without messing around. Does anyone know (using what ever management program) and easy way to get playlists on to the x5ii? If not it looks like my time with this may be short lived and it will be going back. 
This seems to be quite a simple thing to achieve Fiio, and something which in a DAP is a basic requirement.

 

[mikesale]

  I've read lots recently about playlists and different ways to create them. I'm expecting my new x5ii to arrive tomorrow and I'm amazed there isn't an easy way now to achieve this without messing around. Does anyone know (using what ever management program) and easy way to get playlists on to the x5ii? If not it looks like my time with this may be short lived and it will be going back. 
This seems to be quite a simple thing to achieve Fiio, and something which in a DAP is a basic requirement.

If you're on a Mac, Dapper (search in Mac App Store) is the best choice. I'll defer to others on Windows, but I have used JRiver's ability to copy files and playlists over to the X5II's cards and that worked "OK", but didn't do checks for long file names, etc. that Dapper does.

 

[martinh32]

Well my x5ii has arrived and I've tried JRiver (I have version 19) to create a playlist and after a little messing with the settings it works fine apart from:
 
.\Music\Brian May\Back to the Light\06 Driven by You.mp3
.\Music\BØRNS\Electric Love (Oliver Remix)\01 - Electric Love (Oliver Remix).mp3
.\Music\Caro Emerald\Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor\03 Riviera Life.mp3
 
 
The second file can't be read - I'm assuming it's something to do with the funny character. If anyone knows who to get around this it would be much appreciated.

 

[russell finch]

Just change the name of the folder to BORNS, and change the playlist accordingly. The playlists don't like unusual characters.

 

[martinh32]

Thanks, I can do that. Was just hoping for something that didn't need messing around with.

 

[mikesale]

Thanks, I can do that. Was just hoping for something that didn't need messing around with.

I've been down this path as well. My biggest frustration is that the fully path & files needs to be less then 255 characters in addition to some extended character (which is quite ironic IMHO given the device support Mandarin characters! but I also know from working in software that language support is painful)
 
What I've done: created scripts to cycle through and replace characters that seem to cause pain, and slowly been cycling through very long file names to shorter names (that really sucks).
 
You'll find that once you deal with the character incompatibilities you'll get the vast majority working fine.
 
Oh yes, one more thing: check the integrity of the actual MP3 file using testing tools, Musicscope or just transcode it and listen to verify that's not your issue.

 

[martinh32]

Thanks for the help - I shall have a look

 

[lknight]

After much research and experimentation with different apps, I found a breakthrough for elegantly transferring playlists already established in iTunes to the Fiio device.  I used TunesGo by Wondershare.
 
https://www.wondershare.com/tunesgo/
 
TunesGo imports the iTunes library and allows you to select from established iTunes playlists.  TunesGo automatically creates a "music" file on the drive/card and adds the M3U playlist file in the root.  When the transfer is complete, scroll the device to "Browse Files" and select a playlist and play the music files from that playlist.

 

[hydec01]

Everyone,
 
hi!
 
Before I spend a LOT of time on this:
 
I have an X5 (just upgraded to 2nd gen) using both card slots, each with about 7000+ songs.
 
the fact that files cannot have a drive letter, but must mirror the directory structure on the card AND go in root of an SD card has me nervous about the following:
 
Can I really make a single playlist (stored on only one card) that will apply to both card?  That is, can one list cover both cards, even the card that does not contain the list?
 
ALSO: is the only way to access a user-made list like this to browse files? At least with my gen 1 X5 (just got the gen 2), it was never able to browse files for me, do I suppose to my large library size...
 
Thanks!
 
UPDATE: sorry, I had missed the top post, which appears to suggest using TF1: and TF2: (as drive names) at the start of each file.
 
Has anyone tried this, and had it actually work?

 

[mikesale]

  Everyone,
 
hi!
 
Before I spend a LOT of time on this:
 
I have an X5 (just upgraded to 2nd gen) using both card slots, each with about 7000+ songs.
 
the fact that files cannot have a drive letter, but must mirror the directory structure on the card AND go in root of an SD card has me nervous about the following:
 
Can I really make a single playlist (stored on only one card) that will apply to both card?  That is, can one list cover both cards, even the card that does not contain the list?
 
ALSO: is the only way to access a user-made list like this to browse files? At least with my gen 1 X5 (just got the gen 2), it was never able to browse files for me, do I suppose to my large library size...
 
Thanks!
 
UPDATE: sorry, I had missed the top post, which appears to suggest using TF1: and TF2: (as drive names) at the start of each file.
 
Has anyone tried this, and had it actually work?

Yes it works, but all the other restrictions with length, etc. still apply.

 

[onyxwulf]

Thanks for all the information here. As a newbie and getting my first X1, this was really helpful. I can easily create my playlists, open up my UltraEdit (wrote a quick parser) and then have all my playlists available.

Thanks!