Playlist Sort Preferences
 

Afternoon, all. Long time listener, first time caller.

And that's the problem---I've been using Winamp for a decade now (first 2, then 5) and my playlist is how I sort my music. I've been finagling id3/id3v2 tags for as long as I can remember to catalogue the order of my various files, and I've found I can no longer upgrade without having to retag several hundred files, as the sorting methodology has been altered somewhere between my current (5.08) and upgraded (5.581, natch) versions of the software.

For most people, this is an issue of little consequence; they use the media library, or they don't directly care about how their files are sorted. I keep all my music in a single playlist that I can easily scroll through to find what I need. Before the title of a song, there'll generally be an alphanumeric designation that, when the list is sorted by title, will put it in alphabetical and chronological order. For example, (pretentious bastard alert) I have both the stereo and mono box sets of The Beatles' back catalogue released last fall in this playlist. In the ID3v2 tag for, say, the mono version of "Michelle," I have written "m0607. Michelle." M for mono, 06 for the group's sixth LP, then 07 for the track number, a dot and the name. This remains workable through 5.581's sorting methodology, but when more complex filings arise, issues do as well. "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper" was the first single to be released in the period where "Rubber Soul" was on the market (in fact, they were released side-by-side in late `65), but neither song appears on the record itself. For this purpose I went ahead and listed each as m06x1 and m06x2, basically for "extra" or "on the side," as well as being visually distinctive from the main LP listings. The 5.581 sorting methodology ruins this filing system by seeing numbers as whole units, placing the tags with shorter/smaller numbers first, leading to the odd situation where all the single-only tracks are listed first, with "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" [s13x3, as it was only released in stereo] coming directly before "I Saw Her Standing There" [s0101.]

Additional problems come up when listing both the `87 and `65 mixes of the `09 stereo remasters of "Help!" and "Rubber Soul," though to go into exhaustive detail would be belaboring the point unnecessarily. (Suffice to say, "s056501. Help!" is directly below "s1312. Get Back" on the playlist.)

The short version (which I probably should have led this inquiry with) is that I would like to know if there is a way (by hook or by crook, by checkbox or by code-hack) by which I can make newer versions of Winamp sort their playlists as in the older versions. My wrists and I await your reply, hoping for a possible method by which we can escape the impending carpal tunnel syndrome inherent in the activity of checking the tags of ~17,000 files.


[PS - Also, it's really damn weird seeing 10,000 Maniacs listed AFTER 3 Inches Of Blood.]