[dreilly1]

The main reason why I didn't use iTunes 1 was the lack of EQ. A secondary reason was the lack of ability to import playlists, since I have a playlist for each one of my albums, and like listening to the songs on the albums in order. (I ripped these in Linux, and I'm sharing that drive with my Macs via Netatalk).

Now that iTunes 2 has EQ, (and OS X 10.1 can see Netatalk volumes), I have been revisiting iTunes. And after playing with it for a little while, I found a solution for my Album Track order problem, even though you still can't "import" playlists into iTunes. (Perhaps this works with iTunes 1 as well, I don't know). Maybe all of you knew about this already and I'm just stupid, but I'll share it with you anyway.

One of the things that iTunes gets from the CDDB database is the Track Number. (I suppose it doesn't need CDDB for this information, though.) Once a CD is ripped and in your library, you can add "Track Number" to your View Preferences, and now you're able to see track numbers for all your songs.
(If, like in my case, you have a large number of files already ripped without the additional data, you can add these parameters after the fact. Or, you can take the opportunity to re-rip the files at a higher bit rate!)

Use this in conjunction with the "browse" view, which lets you view songs sorted by Artist and Album Title. Select an album, and sort the songs that are listed according to Track Number, and you have all the songs of the album listed in the proper order.

Now you don't even need to make a playlist to listen to all the songs on a particular album! This made iTunes infinitely more useful to me. I just wish Apple had made it more clear how to do this in the help documentation.

[bugs]

If you select the track column, items will be arranged by those values.

If you select the first column, however, you get the default sorting- which may be different. While the first column is selected you may drag each song to the place you want it to be played. Any order you like regardless of track number or anything else. I think iTunes remembers if you have selected this column and set your preferred sequence.

Lots of subtle planning went into the interface. If you click the column heading again, the order will be reversed. If you click on the track number column and then the album name column, you will have the tracks in the correct order within each album which are also alphabetized. Never use the library- put the music you want to hear in a temporary folder which shows the columns that interest you while playing.

Tonight I finished downloading the music from my iDisk (must be a hundred complete songs and many partial ones [what's that about?]). My library lists 25 days worth of MP3s. Looking there makes me dizzy.

[TheDoctor]

25 days?!?! Wow! How much space does that take up?

[bugs]

Originally posted by TheDoctor:
<STRONG>25 days?!?! Wow! How much space does that take up?</STRONG>

It's mostly classical music & audio books. iTunes says it's 4275 songs, 26 GB. All backed up on CD-ROMs. I hope to hear it all some day but most of it will have to wait.

[oscar]

All iTunes related threads belong in the multimedia forum.

Thread transfered

[ 11-10-2001: Message edited by: oscar ]