RollK2,
The 770 has a pause button, just use a short push on the "on/off" button on the top edge. To turn the player on or off, use the same button with longer push. Also, the key-pad self-locks each time the background light goes off. Until you unlock the keypad, you cannot accidentally change the track or volume, but you can still use the pause button to start/stop a song. The keypad is easily unlocked by pressing the + key, then the - key. + and - keys are also used to control the volume. I have set my background light to 10 seconds to reduce the chance of key pad lock when I am making selections. I'll admit the keypad does require some getting used to, but the touch pad is quite responsive. The sound quality of the 770 is very good; you have 2 choices for headphone out, but no true line-out. With the earphones I use (Ostry KC06 and Zero Audio Tenores), I have not needed an external amp. The volume level ranges from 0 to 60, and with the majority of tracks on my player, I get more than enough volume in the 25-35 range. The background of the 770 is very quiet.
In the "native state", folders in the 770 are stored in order of time they were entered into the player, just like the iHiFi 960. While others have come up with different ways to sort their files, I have just been using the Drivesort app. This is a simple program that will arrange your files alphabetically; you just open the "disk" (either internal memory or external microsd card) in your 770 that you want to sort, click on the sort key, then click on save key, and your files are now arranged alphabetically by artist. Once you have sorted files by artist, you can then open files under each artist and sort albums alphabetically (but I rarely do this). Drivesort is very easy to use and takes only a few minutes to sort out your files.
