Some questions in this journey I have for the perfect mp3 player.

[qqqxz]

As the title says, I'm on the hunt for the perfect mp3 player.  Poweramp has shown up a bit, and since I use an android, and have some devices laying around, PA has become an eligible candidate.  Blah blah blah.

 

What I'm looking for is something to replace my ipod touch.  I was wondering if PA offers some of these options:

 

1. Mainly, the ability to make the volume buttons change songs:  I drive mostly when using the mp3 player, and I don't want to go through a touch screen to change a song.  Just hit the volume up or down button to advance or back track.

 

2. A ratings feature which syncs with something like itunes or media monkey:  I like to refine my collection from time to time and in order to do that, I like to give a song a star to delete when it's syncing with the library.  Apple handled this with little flaws. Does PA offer the same thing?  Something relatively simple where I just tap the album art, and the 5 stars pops up?

 

3. Syncing: Can I just plug in my device, and sync it up to my library, so whatever I added to my library is added to my device.  And say when I'm in my library, if I delete all those one star songs, would it delete it from the device too?

 

4. A shuffle system that isn't garbage:  Shuffling on some mp3 players is disgusting with some larger libraries.  I liked that apple would make a shuffle playlist and if you continued that playlist, it would only play a song once until a new shuffle was started.  Does PA do something like this?  Is PA's shuffling better?

 

5. This is minor, and most likely depends on the hardware, but would the player stop if I pull out the aux cable?

 

Thanks

[andrewilley]

1. Not internally, but there are lots of small apps around that can add this function to your device.

2. Ratings are kept internally to PA, and not synced with external file contents (at present anyway, working with file-based ratings is a regularly requested feature).

3. PA is not a file management app. If you copy (or sync) new music files into your music folder(s) PA will auto-scan and add those new songs into its internal Library though so you can see and play the new songs (deleted files are also removed from the Library). It depends on what you mean by the phrase "my library" really, PA has its own Library which is completely separate from the Android system one.

4. Shuffle is shuffle, not sure what you mean? If you mean will the same song get played more than once during a single shuffled session then no it won't, the whole shuffled list will be played once before it starts again (even if you exit the app and come back to it later). But as soon as you re-shuffle then you stand an equal chance of a song that you've heard recently getting played again.

5. Yes, unplugging the headphone cable can be set to pause playback.

You have a trial period to give it a go anyway, with no feature limitations.

Andre