I would like to be able to spin the rotary knob in order to quickly move though large playlists. For example, while playing a really large playlist you might decide you want to skip ahead about 10 or 20 tracks. Currently, this requires pressing the right button many times which is very slow and tedious. It would be much quicker if you could spin the knob and for each click it would advance one track. This would be consistent with how you can currently use the knob to quickly browse through the playlist names in the menus.

Err, in what state do you want to put the player in to skip tracks? Currently it is used for sound adjustment (volume, balance etc). You would need to put it in a particular state to skip through tracks. It would be handy occationally but on the whole I wouldn't use it too much.
If you pause the player before skipping a whole bunch of tracks it moves through them faster as it doesn't have to cache them as you go.

What state to put the player in to skip tracks? There's a variety of ways this could be accomplished: The option could be placed as one of the items the volume/balance/fader menu when you tap the knob multiple times. Or it could switch into that state when you hold the knob down for several seconds-- I like that idea best! It would really be no different than the idea of spinning the knob to select a radio frequency.

My biggest dislike about the player is the difficulty of navigating the playlist menus while driving. It's simply not safe to navigate those menus while driving, yet I find myself doing just that all the time. The solution I've come up with is to build big playlists. You can navigate thru a big playlist easily enough without having to look down at the screen too much. However, sometimes this takes MANY button pushes over and over and pausing before moving forward doesn't help mch at all.

I am really hopeful that voice recognition will help solve this problem-- making it easier to select different stuff while you're driving.

If you want to talk about seldom used features, I would say having a balance control quickly availble is such a feature. Does anyone here actually adjust their balance on a regular basis?!?

If you want to talk about seldom used features, I would say having a balance control quickly availble is such a feature. Does anyone here actually adjust their balance on a regular basis?!?

If your system is set up properly, and you aren't listening to incorrectly produced music, then there should be no reason to adjust the balance in your system. And there's certainly even less reason to ever adjust the fader. It should be left at 0 where it belongs if you are using external amplification (all adjustments done at the amplifiers and other external hardware and then just left alone.

Am I the only that's still curious how useful voice recognition is going to be with the music pounding?

One request which I'd love to see is the ability to scroll through playlists vertically. A lot easier to see the songs because you can actually fit multiple complete titles on multiple rows, instead of wasting most of the screen real-estate. Of course fitting that in smoothly with the current UI is what good design skill is all about. :)

Bruno