Compilations and various artists- Playing order on iPod

Hi everyone.
I have a two-fold problem with my iPod Classic 160 GB:
I have several compilations of various artists that I grouped by "Artist"- being the title of the album (so it will show up in Albums), and the "Album Artists" being the names of the respective various artists. It plays fine- i.e. in the correct order in my iTunes when my iPod is connected to my Mac, but when I play it on my iPod (not connected to my Mac), my iPod plays the songs in alphabetical order by artists.
The other problem I have is that I have several albums in which artists cover other artists. I entered the "Artist" as the artist covering the tunes (for instance Richard Cheese)- so that it shows up under Artist in my iPod setlist, and the "Album Artist" as the original artists of the songs. Again- no problem in iTunes when iPod is connected- correct order. On my iPod, it alphabetizes the songs based on artist.
Is there any way to fix that so that, under both circumstances, the songs play in the correct order, while still being able to search "Artist" as the artist covering other artists and "Album" by the name of the compilation?
Thanks in advance for any info, and hopefully the questions made sense

Artist should be the name of the recording artist of each track. *Album Artist* should have the same for a whole album, so a compilation album typically records the *Album Artist* as *Various Artists*. Most iPods group tracks on Artist instead of Album Artist which causes problems when you have guest or featured artists... All this and more explained fully at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp
tt2

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