Introducing basic randomness into the Minidisc listening experience (using iTunes)

[doctorfrog]

Hi all. I recently purchased a used NetMD player on ebay, and was a bit disappointed with the inflexibility of SonicStage in comparison to other music managers/players like Winamp, iTunes, and Musikcube. I tend to listen to a random selection of music, and don't really enjoy manually picking songs to transfer to my player. So, I found a simple way to put random music onto a Minidisc using a fuller-featured program, iTunes. Though bloated and a bit kludgy, iTunes is a great music manager.

The steps involved are pretty simple:

1. Create a random playlist of appropriate size using iTunes.

2. Drag-n-drop the tracks from the iTunes playlist into a new playlist in SonicStage.

3. Transfer the new random tracks to your Minidisc, and enjoy!

I wrote up a more detailed article on this method on my blog. You can read it here. And if you visit my blog, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

frog

note: The blog is hosted by blogsome.com. I wrote this article for fun and receive no money for the ads that blogsome hosts along with my blog.

[KrazyIvan]

Well why didn't I think of that? I did not think SS would allow drag 'n drop functionality like that.

[Syrius]

You can drag and drop a playlist into SS allright. It's not that hard.

[KrazyIvan]

The problem I have with this is that I have almost no music on my computer.

[raintheory]

The problem I have with this is that I have almost no music on my computer.

This could pose a slight problem when trying to transfer music...

[zerodB]

What ever happened to the good old shuffle+repeat function?

[doctorfrog]

What ever happened to the good old shuffle+repeat function?

Well, shuffling 2-3 CDs on a NetMD minidisc ain't as fun as being able to generate a shuffle from among the 200 CDs in my collection. ;-) I suspect that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

And, KrazyIvan, check out epitonic.com and comfortstand.com for some decent free music, and lots of it.

Edited November 6, 2005 by doctorfrog

[mmp64]

Hi all. I recently purchased a used NetMD player on ebay, and was a bit disappointed with the inflexibility of SonicStage in comparison to other music managers/players like Winamp, iTunes, and Musikcube. I tend to listen to a random selection of music, and don't really enjoy manually picking songs to transfer to my player. So, I found a simple way to put random music onto a Minidisc using a fuller-featured program, iTunes. Though bloated and a bit kludgy, iTunes is a great music manager.

The steps involved are pretty simple:

1. Create a random playlist of appropriate size using iTunes.

2. Drag-n-drop the tracks from the iTunes playlist into a new playlist in SonicStage.

3. Transfer the new random tracks to your Minidisc, and enjoy!

I wrote up a more detailed article on this method on my blog. You can read it here. And if you visit my blog, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

frog

note: The blog is hosted by blogsome.com. I wrote this article for fun and receive no money for the ads that blogsome hosts along with my blog.

You'll be happy to know that SonicStage 3.3 has a "Dynamic Playlist" feature which, though somewhat lame in comparison to the competition, allows you to create artist and genre-based playlists of specified lenthgs, track numbers, etc. etc.

[KrazyIvan]

Thanks for the suggestions doctorfrog. The reason I don't have music on my computer is because I copy CD's from CD deck to MD deck. I really did not have the hard drive space to spare on music. I just upgraded though. I found a few places that have some good stuff. I downloaded close to 600 megs last night.

[Paula]

Um, I've been a bit out of the loop... but, I thought you couldn't take iTunes stuff and put in on the MD player so easily because of the file format incompatiblity. Am I missing something? I thought you had to burn a CD using iTunes and then re-rip, or record in real time using the optical cord etc.

Someone bring me up to speed!

Thanks.

Also - the blog link says to import the SOny Music into iTunes. How do you do it? iTunes doesn't seem to support the .omg files. At least nothing happens when I go that route.

Edited December 30, 2005 by Paula