[click170]

> The Sansa line at one point had (or still has) the same audio chip as the iPod (Classic), is cheaper, and is super well reviewed. I think people interested in dedicated players have moved onto that.

This looks promising on the face of it but is missing a key killer-feature IMO. The reason I still use an iPod for my MP3s is for a specific feature in iTunes that I've not yet found elsewhere, I forget the name they use but I call them dynamic playlists.

Most of my playlists generate themselves based on DateAdded, LastPlayed, LastSkipped, Rating, Tags and other attributes. When I add a song I give it some tags and sync my iPod, and then it will over time and after a few syncs, end up in other playlists based on how often I play it and what rating I give it. It's a feature that I very much enjoy, and feels like a significant step up from manually managing playlists. I wish I had the same for my Movie library.

I've seriously been considering building my own gizmo with a Raspberry pi, an LCD screen and some scripts but that's rather unappealing aesthetically.

Has anyone got an equivalent to dynamic libraries + mp3 players working without iTunes? The crux seems to be that the mp3 player needs to keep a log of what's played and when and needs to support ratings, even if the player itself doesn't update the playlists until it's synced. I'm not even huge on sound quality or big on Apple products, it's just the features I like I can't find elsewhere.

[stryk]

MediaMonkey has a similar function for audio playlists. I have no idea how well this translates to mobile (or even if you CAN transfer it to mobile) -- but I know it works on PC for my MP3 library (which is stupidly huge)