digitalphono Help!

playing music

The AT&T digitalphono music player plays special encypted and compressed audio files. These audio files can contain from a single song to the contents of an entire CD. Once you have installed the digitalphono music player and downloaded or purchased sample music from the digitalphono music Store, then you're ready to play it on your PC.

This page provides several scenarios to help make you comfortable with the digitalphono music player.

Loading and playing my first song
Creating and playing my own custom playlist
Organizing my songs

loading and playing my first song

Once you have downloaded the digitalphono music player, you'll need some digitalphono music audio files (*.mes files) for input. These files are encoded to be played only by your player on your PC. If you cannot remember where you stored your files, then use your File Manager or Windows Explorer to search for the pattern *.mes. If you can't find any, then you'd better get online and surf our Website: http://www.digitalphono.com and download at least one song.

Okay, now you have at least one .mes file to play. Bring up the digitalphono music player by:

Start->Programs->AT&T digitalphono music->AT&T digitalphono music player

and hit the File Tab to open a song:

File->Open

This brings up the file browser (looking at File Type Song Files (*.mes)) and you can navigate to
the proper directory to find your song. If you toggle the File Type menu, you can look instead for Playlist Files (*.digitalphono) which we describe in the next section.

Now you're all set! Hit the red buttons at the bottom of the player window and you'll have the
responses of a normal CD player. Touch the upper green buttons to change the center display.

If this does not work, then go back to our player Help index for some help.

creating a playlist

The Playlist Manager within the digitalphono music player provides you with the capability to gather any of your songs together into a collection called a playlist. This is nothing short of fantastic, for it
enables you to create your own custom collection of digital songs, which can be played as if
they were consecutive song tracks on a CD with hundreds of songs!

The notion of a playlist is just that: a list of songs to play. The playlist manager does not move or
rename your digital song files; it simply refers to them as an ordered list, the first representing
track 1, the second representing track 2, et cetera. A playlist cannot be embedded within a playlist; only .aac or .mes files are valid members for a playlist.

You may refer to the same digital song name from within as many playlists as you desire. A
playlist may be as long or as short as you wish. Playlists can be reordered with ease, as shown
below. Illustrated is the Playlist Manager window, which comes up when you select from the player Menu Bar:
File->Playlist Manager

We have loaded a playlist entitled My Favorites which currently comprises the list of digital songs "Black Water" through "You've Got a Friend" . A load or save brings up the file browser,
with which you can find any of your stored playlists. Similarly, selecting the add button brings up
the file browser for digital songs.

The Playlist Manager command button semantics are as follows:

Create: create a new playlist

Load: open an existing playlist ( a file of type .digitalphono )

Save: Save this playlist file

Play: play this Playlist

Add: add a song to this playlist

Delete: delete a song from this playlist

Move up: move a song up 1 track in the playlist

Move down: move a song down 1 track in the playlist

So to make your first playlist do the following within the Playlist Manager:

              1.Click Create to create your new playlist
              2.Click Add to add song(s) to this playlist
              3.Click Save and name your playlist

That's all there is to it! Anytime after this you can play selections from this particular playlist by
hitting the Play button within the Playlist Manager.

When you later Load this playlist, you can add songs to it as you did before with the Add button;
you can rearrange the list by highlighting a selection and then a sequence of Move up and/or
Move down clicks.

Use the Playlist Manager to create your own unique blend of music!

organizing my songs

Song organization is completely at your discretion. Every digital song you download is stored as
a file with the suffix .mes. Every Playlist you create is stored in a file with the suffix .digitalphono. The digitalphono music player will store these files by default into the directory named Music, but you may move them to any location you so desire.

Organization is normally done to avoid chaos. In this case, until you have a large number of songs then you may not worry too much about it. But if you do move your song files, then any
playlists that referred to them in their former location are now invalid. So remember, when you
reorganize you will also have to redo your playlists. Here is a case where early thought to some organization (for instance, subdirectories named rock, classical, blues, ...) will save you a lot of work later.

If you move your songs or playlists, you should check the Directories tab within the User Preferences window to see that they coincide.