Playlists are the basic structures that the ML-9600 uses to organize tracks before creating CDs. Each of the sixteen playlists is like a "CD in waiting" on the hard drive: a list of the songs that you want to have on your CD plus instructions for how each song should be processed. Within a playlist, you choose the order you want your songs to appear on the final CD, the amount of time between songs, the relative volume between the songs, what kind of DSP (compression, EQ, limiting) each track should have, and how long fade-ins and fade-outs will be. Playlists allow you to be in charge of exactly how your CD will sound.

Each Playlist can contain up to 99 tracks, which is the Redbook spec. Keep in mind that the tracks in a Playlist are merely pointers that point to the Audio File stack on the hard drive. This is why you can change the order of songs and add DSP, etc. without affecting the Audio File itself.