One possibility to help with "No latitude in menu setup": ipods (at least, my old one) support a "Genre" field, which is usually filled with complete junk data, so isn't usable. Assuming the Alpine can be persuaded to use this, you could re-tag your music with "Genre" fields which contain the top level of whatever 2-level heirarchy you'd like. You'll still be restricted to artist or album as the next level (assuming you don't want to overwrite them), but it might be a useful improvement.