Love the Z2 - and love it even more now that it's bypassed

Anyway, my only "gripe" with it so far has been with iPod control. While the interface is easy enough to use, it is slow compared to Alpine's (though Alpine's isn't perfect either) or compared to using the iPod natively. I have almost 8,000 songs on my iPod, so yes, it can take quite a bit of time to find the artists in the middle of the alphabet.

Are there any little "tricks" I'm missing? The manual didn't cover much as far as operation. Is there a way to jump to a specific letter without scrolling scrolling scrolling?

I have used some work-arounds that have helped... I've made smart playlists for each letter of the alphabet (artist begins with "A" for example). Problem with that is that it lists the SONGS, not the artists so you have to KNOW what song belongs with who. I usually find it faster to go to that particular playlist, begining playing the first song, and then just hit the track forward button until I find the artist I want. Track forward is actually faster than scrolling.

I also made smart playlists with some of my favorites artists and genres.

I'd love to hear any other tips, if there are any, that I haven't thought of... for those of you with large iPod libraries, what do ya do?

BTW, ultimately, with a little patience it really isn't a HUGE deal. I went looking for an artist in the middle of the alphabet (Matt Nathanson) and even with my big library it took me about 2 minutes (yes, I timed myself)... 2 minutes isn't really a huge chunck of my life... it just FEELS like a long time when you're scrolling scrolling scrolling while driving.

Thanks!

The best "trick" is to clip the little blue wire in your ipod adaptor and it will give you control of the ipod from the ipod instead of the Z2, but continue to charge it

impressive. im tempted to try this

BTW, ultimately, with a little patience it really isn't a HUGE deal. I went looking for an artist in the middle of the alphabet (Matt Nathanson) and even with my big library it took me about 2 minutes (yes, I timed myself)... 2 minutes isn't really a huge chunck of my life... it just FEELS like a long time when you're scrolling scrolling scrolling while driving.

Thanks!

you're absolutely right and actually yeah when you really want to hear something you'll hunt it down. but that's a very long time, and you have to keep looking back at the screen to do all this. there should be a way to select a letter or a range of letters.

another big design lameness: whenever you're browsing for songs (let's say by albums) and exit the album you've selected, the parent menu then returns to the very first screen, the top of the current list you're browsing. so woe be to you if you change your mind or chose the wrong album, because you have to start all over from "A" or the equivalent.

these kind of things just point to shoddy project budgeting and planning. obviously someone at Pioneer had to work a little while designing all this, but in the end, wasn't paid enough or wasn't alloted enough time to do it right. kinda sad.

Wht: Yeah... uh... clipping the little blue wire... well, I really don't want to be fooling with the iPod while driving, though it WOULD be good for when there's more than just me in the car. I'll be going back to my installer for the steering wheel controls, so maybe I'll ask him to do that.

Matt: Yeah there really should be a way to select a letter range... that's how Alpine does it. It's not perfect, but it's definitely faster. That's sort of what I've done with creating Smart Playlists, and it does help. Make a playlist folder in your iTunes (so it doesn't clutter up the left side list) and in that folder build smart playlists. Each one should be set to "Artists starting with A" -- then I NAME the playlist somehting like Z-A... named that way, all starting with Z, so they're all together in my playlist menu on the iPod. I have Z-A, Z-B, etc. and then some of the less common ones get combined... like Z-XYZ. Like I said, the biggest downside with that is when you go into the playlist itself you don't get artist names... you'll have to know what songs go with who. But it does work better than scroll³ scroll³ scroll³ LOL. I was able to find a song by Outcast yesterday in about 20 seconds.

Also, I find when you go into one of your playlists, or anywhere songs are playing, it's MUCH faster to go through each track just using the hardware track forward button. You can hit it very fast and get through the songs... much faster than scrolling.

It irks me that the plist button doesn't work at all. That would be a great way for Pioneer to solve some of this. They could make the plist button jump to the next letter in the alphabet when you're doing a search by artist or song. They could make the plist button jump to the next playlist when you're already listening to a defined playlist, or the next artist when you're listening to a particular artist. Could work the same with Album too.

Making some of these mistakes they've made tells me not only did they not dedicate enough resources to it in development, but the people who designed it has little experience with an actual iPod! LOL