Late to the game with this, but I received my first MP3 player as a Christmas gift. Never had one before. I have downloaded over 400 tunes onto the thing and have been enjoying using it in the car and also for some indoor bike trainer rides.
I like the “shuffle” option, so that you don’t know what tune is coming up next. However, despite the fact that their are 400 tunes on the there, it seems to shuffle around in a list of maybe about 50 tunes on it’s own. If I skip songs manually then it shakes it up a bit. But in extensive listening their are tunes that have never come up on the Shuffle option.
Anyone know why that is? How does the shuffle option work? What drives it?
I am not sure what player you are using but I have seen the same thing on my Sansa. Apparently this is a known problem with the ramdomizer, I thought for the longest time it was just me. If you google your player you may find a solution.
… Apparently this is a known problem with the ramdomizer, I thought for the longest time it was just me. …
Most computers can not create true random numbers. That is the issue. Its been a problem since the dawn of computers.
The only thing I can think of is do you have it set for your favorites to play more often than others?
I had thought that, because it does seem to be picking and playing the songs that have been played the most - either by it’s own choice or mine manually.
It probably depends on what brand player you have and also what software you are using on your computer. Its possilbe some machines may just randomly pick a list of songs (eg 50 in your case) and then shuffle among that list or have multiple options and that is the default setting.
The only player I am familar with is my iPod and both the iPod and iTunes have various ways to affect what plays in shuffle mode. The iPod will play the entire contents its little harddrive or you can have it create a shuffle list based on ratings you’ve made or how often you have played songs in the past. Shuffle on the iPod is really just a setting as to what order to play a play list in. On, it plays in random order, off it plays in the order the songs are already in on the list. (The “list” can be all the contents or a playlist you created).
I do know that Itunes on my computer has a “party shuffle” function that works the way you descibe, not sure if that is also on the iPod itself. Also, at least on the iPod, the iTunes software lets you set individual songs not to be included in “play all” mode on the iPod which will affect what comes up.