Alpine KCA-420i and limitations question....

[hmss007]

Hey all,

I've been lurking for a while and I have purchased an Alpine CDA-9851 and KCA-420i to be installed in the next few days.

But, I'm a bit confused on the 255 limit. I've read the manuals for both products and I have a question that I'm hoping can be answered here.

I have a 20GB iPod ClickWheel with about 1000 songs on it. I have one playlist that has 90% of the songs included (it is a dynamic playlist that excludes audiobooks, kid songs, etc.).

-- Can I select the playlist and have the head unit randomly play back all 800+ songs or will the playlist be limited to just 255 songs?

Thanks,
Eric

[lngbrdnpwdr]

sure you can select the play list with 800 songs for random, but the HU will actually only random the first 255 it "sees". So if you did that once and turned off your car when it happened to be on song 200, the next time you start the car and song 200 is playing and you select MIX again (MIX turns it's self off every time the car is shut off) your HU will "see" a different 255 songs, starting with song 200.

There is currently no way to random more than 255 songs at once while hooked to the HU, but you can always Shuffle that playlist before connecting your iPod to the HU, then turn on the MIX and that should provide 255 random songs from your playlist...

I could be wrong about all this, but from what I've read here and experienced with my 9833, 420, and 20GB iPod, that's what I believe to be the case.

Every bit of advice I read about this topic always includes this rule:

PLAYLISTS ARE THE BEST SOLUTION

Good luck!

[TheBum]

PLAYLISTS ARE THE BEST SOLUTION

Absolutely true. As I've mentioned previously in this forum, I have an app on my Mac that uses iTunes' AppleScript interface to generate random playlists from a given source playlist and I find it invaluable in shuffling my >1100-song library into bite-sized playlists. Just the other night, I created a set of random playlists, each a maximum of 2.5 hours long, and ended up with 28 playlists. The process took about 30 seconds. I'd hate to think how long it would take me doing it manually.

I think the Windows version of iTunes has an interface that allows control of iTunes functions from an external app, but I'd have no idea how to use it. If someone is interested in developing a Windows app that does the same thing as my Mac app, I'd be glad to provide the source code under that condition that the resulting Windows app be made freeware for the benefit of all.