Re: Shuffling and unshuffling (was Re: ID3 tag question)

On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 06:06:45PM -0500, Rob Funk wrote:
> Dave Sherohman wrote:
> >1)  It allows any arbitrary song to come up twice before all others
> >have been played once.  (This is, of course, a matter of personal
> >preference.  Me, I prefer the randomness.  I get the distinct
> >impression that you prefer to have everything played with guaranteed
> >even frequency.)
> 
> I'm with Dean (or at least against Dave) on this -- I like
> sequentially playing a random-ordered playlist much better than Dave's
> fully-random selection method.

Nope, we're not in opposition.  I'm asking for full-random as an
option in addition to the current shuffle method, not as a
replacement for it.

> That's one thing I like so much better
> about the Slimp3 over most consumer CD players -- the CD players use
> Dave's method, so I end up hearing a few songs many times, while not
> hearing other songs at all.  That gets tedious.

The reason I use random play in the first place is so that I don't
always hear the same songs in the same order.  As you say, "That gets
tedious."

> >Grab a copy of XMMS (or WinAmp, if that's the way you swing).  Create
> >a playlist with 5 songs, ordered A, B, C, D, E.  Turn the "random"
> >switch on.  Hit 'next' a few times.  Doing this just now, I got the
> >play order E A C B D E B D A C B A.  Always random.
> 
> I notice that in your example, nothing repeats until all have played
> (EACBD EBDAC BA).... it looks to me like the "reshuffle at the end of
> the playlist" method, rather than the total random selection method
> you're advocating.

Huh.  I hadn't noticed that...

I did a bit more playing with XMMS and you are mostly correct.  The
one detail that you missed (since it doesn't appear in my example) is
that it also does a "reshuffle on startup".

So, Dean, how about options for "reshuffle at end of playlist" and
"reshuffle on startup", both defaulting to off?  (Although I can't
quite work out how "reshuffle on startup" would best deal with synced
players.  Probably by only reshuffling the playlist if it is not
currently in use (i.e., playing on some device or stream), but it
feels like there's a better way that I'm just not seeing.)

-- 
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
  - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)

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