Keep me going!

September 6, 2005 9:46 AM

How might one get a Creative Zen Micro to play on a permanent basis (24/7 until replaced or the drive burns out)?

I am using one of these players (6GB) to provide hold music for a phone system, and it shuts itself off every few days. I have it set to "shuffle repeat" all of the approximately 900 tracks on the player, and it isn't set to shut down because of a sleep timer or an idle period. The player is obviously AC powered, and the same behavior is exhibited whether or not the rechargable battery is in the player.

The previous player I used for this function was one of the first Archos 6GB jukeboxes, and it managed to play constantly for about three years before dying. I would not be displeased if I could get the same to happen with this one.

Searching the Creative forums or Googling is difficult due to the vague nature of the language used to describe the issue, so I'm hoping that someone might have a solution.

posted by hoboynow to technology (9 comments total)

Why do you want it to do this? Why not just use winamp or something?
posted by delmoi at 10:24 AM on September 6, 2005

I want to do it this way because of space constraints (this is a public building, and the phone system is tucked away in a sump pump room. Besides, a little bitty mp3 player uses a whole lot less power than any PC I've ever met. So:

1. Ease of use
2. Smaller footprint
3. More economical
4. ???
5. Profit!
posted by hoboynow at 10:36 AM on September 6, 2005

Suggestion: get a CD walkman that will play mp3 CDs , and use that. If recorded at 64kbps (more than adequate for a phone system), there will be > 20 hours of music. They can be had for about $60.
posted by curtm at 10:43 AM on September 6, 2005

Hmm... 900 tracks at ca 4 min ea is 3600 mins which is 2.5 days. Are you sure it doesn't just stop once it's played every song?
posted by neustile at 10:48 AM on September 6, 2005

It probably does stop once it's played every song. My MuVo Slim has this same behavior. It's annoying and AFAIK there's no way to disable it.
posted by selfnoise at 10:51 AM on September 6, 2005

First of all, I'd like to try and work with this particular player if possible. I have it already, and my institution is not keen on spending more money in this arena.

Hmm... 900 tracks at ca 4 min ea is 3600 mins which is 2.5 days. Are you sure it doesn't just stop once it's played every song?

Yes, that may indeed be what's happening (though the time might be a bit longer, as this is mostly classical music with longer tracks) but, as I said, the player is set on shuffle repeat, which, per the manual, "plays and repeats all selected tracks, in random order." In my experience with other similar devices, "repeat" implies not just one repeat but an infinite number of repeats. So I dunno.
posted by hoboynow at 10:58 AM on September 6, 2005

Have you tried removing the shuffle parameter, and just having it play the tracks straight through? This might get the repeat behavior to work.
posted by frykitty at 11:05 AM on September 6, 2005

You might hate this solution, but you could string together a very long mp3 out of a bunch of tracks (you can do this in iTunes easily or use mpgjoin etc) and just repeat that one track if single repeat does in fact work and not stop after awhile.
posted by neustile at 11:17 AM on September 6, 2005

I have a Zen Nano and the "shuffle all the tracks" and the "shuffle al the tracks and repeat forever" icons are two distinct things that are similar enough to be confused.
posted by dong_resin at 4:29 PM on September 6, 2005