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AIC-100i RAND and DISC RAND buttons

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by pwelch, Nov 20, 2005.

  1. pwelch

    pwelch New Member

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    I recently installed the AIC-100i from VAIS and it works great but I am having trouble understanding how the RAND and DISC RAND buttons are supposed to work. It is my understanding that the RAND button, when enabled, will shuffle songs within a playlist and the DISC RAND button, when enabled, will shuffle between playlists. When I select either one of these buttons and a song ends, it always just appears to go to the next song (ie., track 1 to track 2, track 2 to track 3, etc.) And when I select DISC RAND, it stays on the same playlist and does not "shuffle" to another playlist as I would expect. I would have thought that when I press the DISC RAND button, I would effectively turn on "shuffle" mode on the iPod where each song that plays could be from a random playlist and then a random song in that playlist.

    Also, with these buttons enabled, should pressing the up and/or down track on the steering wheel cause the "random" function to kick in or does clicking up/down on the steering wheel always cause the iPod to go to the next/previous track no matter whether the RAND buttons are selected or not?

    Can anyone tell me how these buttons are supposed to function with the AIC-100i? I'm beginning to think my random functions do not work. Thanks.
     
    #1 pwelch, Nov 20, 2005
  2. BobR

    BobR Member

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    How many songs do you have in your playlist and what firmware is on the AIC-100i?

    Having more then 99 tracks in a playlist will cause it to act unpredictably.

    Bob
     
    #2 BobR, Nov 20, 2005
  3. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    the steering wheel controls work like so..

    push briefly, goes to next song on list.

    push and hold, goes to next playlist.

    as far as the MFD... dont know, use mine in simple mode only because my playlists do not conform and too lazy to change. besides i dont really select music most of the time anyway. i put it on random play and it randomly plays one of the 3400 songs i have in my largest playlist which is basically a master list of everything on the ipod. i do have categories but half are over the 99 limit...too lazy, i admit it. just glad the AIC enables you to do it either way.
     
    #3 DaveinOlyWA, Nov 20, 2005
  4. Cris Lombardi

    Cris Lombardi New Member

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    In answer to your quest about RAND and DISC RAND, when you're in RAND and you push the up/down button, it should advance to a random track on the same playlist. when in DISC RAND mode, the next playlist will be selected at random only after all the tracks in the current playlist are played, or you press and hold the up/down button. if it doesn't work this way for you, then your VAIS box isn't working correctly.
    FWIW, some of my playlists are over 99 tracks and that hasn't caused any problems for me.
     
    #4 Cris Lombardi, Nov 20, 2005
  5. pwelch

    pwelch New Member

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    Interesting. None of my playlists have over 99 songs so that shouldn't cause any problems. After reading the post above, I observed more closely the behavior of my up/down buttons on the steering wheel. Here's how they function for me. Up/down go to next/previous track as expected. Holding down each button for a short duration skips to next/previous playlist as expected.

    Now, when I enable the RAND function, the up/down buttons do randomly select a track in the playlist but what seems odd to me is that the track numbers still appear sequentially. In other words, the first random track selected shows up as track 1, the next random song shows up as track 2 and so on.

    As for the DISC RAND button, as far as I can tell, this button does nothing (at least on the unit I have). When I enable it, and skip through each song in the playlist, one by one, it always just goes to the next playlist after the last song in the current playlist. When I hold down the up/down button for a short duration, it still always goes to the next/previous playlist, never to a random one.

    These aren't showstoppers for me. I love the AIC-100i and don't plan on taking it back just because of not being able to use the DISC RAND function. I was just curious how they were supposed to work since it wasn't what I expected/anticipated.
     
    #5 pwelch, Nov 25, 2005
  6. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    actually i use simple mode and from previous experience with ipod, you are not seeing sequential information. what you see is a the status of the playlist saying "1 of 1159" meaning you have listened to one of the songs. each time you change playlists if you go back, there will be a new #1 because it is only displaying the status of the shuffled list.
     
    #6 DaveinOlyWA, Nov 25, 2005
  7. jaybee

    jaybee Junior Member

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    I have my entire collection in a single playlist and then I just listen to that playlist in RAND. It'll display the text info until I reach the 100th song at which point it'll keep displaying text, just not anything related to what's playing. To solve this, I "refresh" the unit by pushing the following buttons in this sequence:
    DISC RAND
    RAND
    DISC RAND
    RAND
    and I'm back in business.

    While I operate almost exclusively in RAND, occasionally I'll hear a song by a particular artist and think, "Hey, wouldn't more Lawrence Welk hit the spot right about now?". Choosing DISC RAND at that point ensures that his trademark Champaigne Music will keep flowing. I can skip back to the beginning of that "album" if I wish or simply listen to the rest until the next grouping.

    I suppose turning all the modes off when I hear an artist that strikes my fancy (say, Ray Conniff or Dead Kennedys), allows me to wallow in my collection where ever I happen to be at the moment.

    I suppose I need to do more meaningful testing of the unit but I continue to be distracted by all this incessant accellerating, braking and steering. :p

    NOTE: I've edited this post to correct the "refresh" method to the correct key sequence. Apologies for the mis-information.
     
    #7 jaybee, Dec 10, 2005
  8. bookrats

    bookrats New Member

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    Great tip, Jaybee -- thanks!
     
    #8 bookrats, Dec 10, 2005
  9. jaybee

    jaybee Junior Member

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    The info to which bookrats is referring was incorrect and I've edited the original post to correct it.

    Thanks.
     
    #9 jaybee, Dec 12, 2005
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