Filter
Top Products
Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005
© Copyright Stuart Healy www.aztrogon.com Page 7 of 25
Before I got very far into the project, I looked at the Dell DJ features to see how they would fit with the
way I wanted to work in the field. What I required was to be able to get to a particular species as quickly
as possible after I turned on the player. I wanted to see a list of bird families which could then be selected
to display a list of birds in that family.
The music library menu of the DJ allows tracks to be selected by several categories, also known as “tags”.
I chose to use the “Artist” tag to define bird families (as well as the actual artist for music tracks). Since
the DJ lists tracks alphabetically within each category, I needed a method of separating family names of
bird tracks from artist names of music tracks so that I didn’t see “Polka Mania” listed next to “Pigeons
and Doves” (I listen to Polka all the time<g>).
I solved this problem by prefixing bird family names by an arbitrary sequence number. This kills two
birds with the same stone -- since numbers sort before letters, bird family names appear before artists
names; and the number sequence ensures that family names are displayed in taxonomic order. The
absolute values of the numbers are unimportant, it’s just the sequence that matters. A reference list is in
the CD Index.
Although Musicmatch supports an extensive list of tags, the Dell DJ only provides a few basic tags (and
most other MP3 players will likely have a similar design). Consequently, I only considered the basic tags
in deciding how to organize my libraries. The tags that I use are “Genre“, “Artist” and “Album”.
As mentioned earlier, I use “Genre” to separate libraries. Although this is really more for convenience
when working in Musicmatch, it also allows me to separately list all bird tracks or all music tracks on the
player. I use the “Album” category only for music tracks and for the “Raw Birds” library. In addition to
using “Artist” to define bird families, I use Playlists to define species lists for specific locations and for
client target lists. I might eventually use this feature to define lists of species by habitat type (when I get a
spare minute perhaps).