I use my iPod to play backing tracks at my piano gig. I have MANY playlists, to have a variety of prepared 3-set evenings. I want these to show up at the top of my playlist selectin, but the sorting seems odd.
iTunes:
Gig Folder (with a bunch of playlists similar to those below)
Apple's Music Videos, Recently Added and Recently Played
!0_recent
!0_1stSet
!0_2ndSet
!0_3rdSet
0_1gig1
0_1gig2
0_1gig3
0_Ballad
0_BigBand
0_standards
a_Gig
a_iReal
A0a1
A0a2
A0a3
a0jazz1
a)Jazz2
etc.

In my iPod, when I search Playlists, it looks like this:
a_Gig
a_iReal
A0a1
A0a2
A0a3
a0Jazz1
etc.

!0_recent is about at the lower third of the set of lists.

Is there ANY WAY to make the sort order consistent? a_Gig, a_iReal, A0a1 is WAY out of ASCII sort order. How does this work?

Anybody? I posted this on three forums, no response...

I played around a bit. I found no way to force any order, and did not twig onto whatever sorting was going on.

I recommend you look into some of the third party player apps, especially the DJ style ones. They should give you far more control over playlists, and maybe a few other tools you'll find useful.

I agree with Twerppoet, we have used iDevices for playing both DJ sets and backing tracks. I haven't tried the DJ apps but we used interfaces with their own custom firmware to provide that kind of control (although we used it mainly as a backup, the software was good, the hardware was a bit cheap and nasty). Numark iDJ2’s were used as although not entirely reliable the hardware/software combo did what we needed. I believe Numark have an app so this may well give you what you need.

The Archangel

Thanks, guys. I already use Big Button as a setlist lopayer, but the stlist sort is the same as Apple's. I don't need more hardware, just a way to move the most-used lists to the top.

It may be worth looking at something like the iDJ App, it doesn't require the Numark hardware as it works standalone. There may be better apps out there......maybe try a search on the App Store for "Playlist".

The Archangel