@phred, it might be helpful if you do a sync preview and see whether the preview looks as expected ie. no tracks on the list twice, playlists at the end. I tried last night with your settings and synching was fine for me, so i will probably have to create a debug version
Hold off on preparing a debug version Steven. I'll have more time later today to delete files off the Classic and perform another sync. I always look at the Preview and yesterday saw that there were three hundred and whatever tracks to sync, which is about how many new tracks I added since the last sync, so I didn't look any further. Today I'll do the same sync in 3.x and then 2.5 to see if they're both behaving the same. And I'll also sync my Android device to see what happens there.
Thinking on what I reported as the behavior yesterday, I suppose that my recent syncs (before v3) had new tracks, but not tracks that were included in the playlists. In that case, MB would show the tracks being sync'd first, and then show the playlists. I just can't recall seeing tracks belonging to a playlist being transferred followed by the playlist and then more tracks and the next playlist. I'm not saying it -didn't- happen before. I'm just saying I don't -recall- it happening before.
I've done some experimenting with this and I think something odd is going on with v3. First off, does the number of files to be processed in the sync include Playlists? Using MB I deleted ten tracks from the Classic and then attempted a sync. It showed that there were 93 files to sync. But I also have 67 playlists. So even if the "files to be processed" count includes playlists, something is off. The preview showed the ten tracks I had deleted earlier and the playlists. That still doesn't total 93.
Now that the sync taking place, many tracks are are showing as copying/copied that were not in the preview. In the screenshot below, the circled tracks belong to the playlist indicated by the "squared" call-out immediately below those tracks. And none of the ten tracks deleted before I started the sync belong to those playlists. My contention is that MB is copying the tracks from each playlist despite that they're already on the Classic and don't need to be sync'd.
And at some point after taking that screenshot, the "processing" indicator changed to this:
Yes, MB was still syncing when it changed to this.
And like yesterday, I had to abort the sync as the Classic was running out of free space.
Now looking at the Classic via 2.5, the ten tracks I deleted initially are there, having been sync'd via v3 but they're not showing in the playlist in which they belong. Probably because I aborted the sync before it got to that playlist. However, the sync preview says there's 2gb of tracks that need to be deleted. So the 2.5 snyc is now progressing and I'll see where I wind up.
Unless I'm doing something horribly wrong, it looks like I'll need a debug version.