Gateway DMP-X20.. one design "flaw" (IMO)
For the most part, I am happy with this new player. However, I found one concern that may affect people's decision to purchase it.
Albums do not play in the track order that they are tagged. After selecting an Album to listen to, you will find that all the tracks are listed alphabetically.
This may sound at first like a minor issue, but really, its quite important to play many kinds of albums in the order that they appear on the CD. I didn't comment on this at first because I assumed there was some way to change it from Alphabetical listings over to correct album order. But there is not.
Many albums need to play in sequential order as listed on the CD. This includes stand up comedy, booktapes, live concerts, theatre, Trance/Techno mixes, etc...
If you are familiar with the ID3 tags in each MP3 file, you know this is where the information about Artist, Album, Title, Genre, etc is stored. It also stores its sequential Track # as it appears on the original album.
On my other MP3 players, after selecting an album to play, it will play the included tracks in the correct album order. They do this natively. After you transfer albums to the player, there is no additional work you need to do to listen to a track in correct order. (Assuming the track #s are correctly tagged)
Here is an example of how the iPod handles this. After selecting an Artist, you can choose All Tracks (alphabetical) or you can choose from a list of albums. Selecting an Album brings up a track listing in the correct order. The Nomad OS and Rio OS handle it simliarly.
There is a work-around solution for the Gateway. You can make a playlist for each album, but that is a time-consuming and unneccesary step.
Having to use playlists for each album reduces the usefullness of having an ID3-tag database, since playlists aren't nested under an Artist's album and track listing. For example, normally people browse by first looking through the list of Artists, selecting one, then a list of his albums and tracks comes up. They pick and album and it should play in order. A problem with having to use playlists (to hear albums in the right order), is that playlists don't show up under an Artist's list of albums and tracks. Even if you have a playlist called "Thriller", it won't show up under the Artist "Michael Jackson"... instead you have to go to the Main Menu, choose Playlists, and then browse through just the playlists that are loaded.
I am surprised, and dissapointed at this "oversight" .. Gateway made so many other improvements, how could they have missed this? Many of my own albums are live bootlegs that will not play in the correct order unless I go back and rename the tracks with a number before the song title (creating alphanumeric order), or make a playlist. I don't want to do either - and I don't have to on my other players. This is a basic feature on Apple, Creative, Rio players.
Gateway should produce a downloadable firmware update, to allow albums to play in the order as they are tagged.
I will have to mention this in my upcoming review. I've brought this up on some other message forums and people are saying that this is an issue that would probably deter them from purchase, until Gateway address it. Most folks just don't want to mess with making a playlist for every album.
I will be contacting Gateway about it shortly, see what they have to say.
Otherwise, loving the DMP-X20. :)
Austin
