OK, I feel like a complete idiot, since I'm asking this question after owning an Empeg since, basically, day one, but here goes.

For the longest time, I've had shuffle on, and would play my root playlist, or a subplaylist (say, "By_Artist/Sting"), and that would behave exactly as I wanted, randomizing all the tracks in that playlist around regardless of what subsubplaylist (e.g., "Sting/Soul_Cages", "Sting/BlueTurtles", etc.), so I might end up with one song from one album followed by one from another album, etc.

Life was good.

Then I wanted to listen to a concept album (Operation:Mindcrime if anyone cares) straight through, beginning to end. I realized I had to turn shuffle off to do that, which would then semi-bone future runs through the root playlist.

Is there any way to set up playlists so that it might be like:

/ - Randomize Everything Under This Playlist Equally
/Sting - Randomize Everything Under This Playlist Equally
/Sting/CD - Don't randomize this at all

So if I Select "/" or "/Sting", I'll get "all the songs randomly", but if I select the CD itself, it plays through straight, front to back?

I thought the "randomize the contents of this playlist" was the way to go, all that does is randomize the "immediate contents" and not the descendants of such.

Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong? Or do I really have to manually toggle shuffle on and off when I do this?

D

Hmm, tricky. If you only ever want to listen to your concept album all-through, you could re-encode it as a single MP3. (This treatment would work on Pink Floyd's The Wall, for instance.)

Is there anything so wrong about this plan: listen to the whole lot on random play, then, when a song from Operation: Mindcrime comes on, manually turn shuffle off (press 0), listen until the album ends, then manually turn shuffle back on again?

Peter

Doesn't really work for a couple reasons:

1.) It's not like I was wandering through the root playlist, heard a song off of Mindcrime and said "Hey, that's what I'll listen to"... it was one of those, "get in the car and decide.. hey I want to listen to Mindcrime".

2.) That would only work if you happened to randomly hit the first song. Otherwise, you'd have to hit random_song, punch 0, track-back until you got to the first one, and then let it go, remembering to turn shuffle back on afterwards.

3.) Encoding as a single MP3 prevents single-songs from the album from being thrown into the random mix. This might be almost necessary for some concept-albums (like maybe The Wall), but with something like Mindcrime, they stand on their own pretty well, and do well when I hit them randomly and out of order in the 3000+ long root playlist.

A few ways to go about this...

- You could realize that turning off shuffle is just one button (0 on the remote control), so it's really not that tough just to turn shuffle on and off as you need it.

- If turning shuffle on and off has you worried about "songs you already heard" coming up on the next full shuffle, remember that 2.0 will have a weighted shuffle option, so it won't be an issue when 2.0 comes out.

- You could create two separate playlist trees-- one of them called "random" and the other one called "sequential". Mark all the random ones and their children as "always randomize", and mark the sequential list as "ignore as child". Then leave Shuffle off all the time. You could populate the "sequential" list only with concept albums if you liked. This will get you an always-random "down down down" shuffle, but allow you to specifically select Dark Side of the Moon if you wanted.

- As stated elsewhere, you could rip your concept albums as one big MP3.

- Personally, I just shuffle everything, and if a song from a concept album shows up, sometimes I choose to un-shuffle and listen to the remainder of the concept album. Or sometimes I un-shuffle and rewind to track 1 of the concept album.

___________
Tony Fabris

You could realize that turning off shuffle is just one button (0 on the remote control), so it's really not that tough just to turn shuffle on and off as you need it.

True, but it requires me to convince my wife to put the remote back under the sun-visor where she found it, something she's eminently forgetful about.

If turning shuffle on and off has you worried about "songs you already heard" coming up on the next full shuffle, remember that 2.0 will have a weighted shuffle option, so it won't be an issue when 2.0 comes out.

True... good point.

You could create two separate playlist trees-- one of them called "random" and the other one called "sequential". Mark all the random ones and their children as "always randomize"

My experience with "always randomize" doesn't lead me to believe this would work. Always randomize SEEMS, from what I can tell, to only randomize "immediate children", e.g., if I have a structure like

/
/Artist/Sting
/Artist/Sting/AlbumOne
/Artist/Sting/AlbumTwo
/Artist/Metallica
/Artist/Metallica/AlbumOne
/Artist/Metallica/AlbumTwo
/Artist/Floyd
/Artist/Floyd/AlbumOne
/Artist/Floyd/AlbumTwo

And they were all marked to "randomize contents", then Artist would randomly play one of the three artists, which would in turn randomize which album it was going to play, and then randomly play every song on that album, before moving on to the next random album, until all albums were done, then moving on to the next artist.

At least, that's what it appears happened when I tried setting that up to see if it would work as a replacement.

Still seems to me as though this should either (a) already be something in the player I'm just clueless on how to use, or (b) a really cool feature to add.

remember that 2.0 will have a weighted shuffle option

Don't know if you can answer this one Tony, does the non-weighted shuffle behave like the current one ? The exact behaviour that I like is the fact that the current shuffle manages not too shuffle too completely, meaning that it is normal to find two or three tracks from the same album close to each other in the "random" list.

It would be good if there were:
- weighted shuffle
- real random shuffle (not weighted, but more random than now)
- randomish shuffle (is it currently works)

__
Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

The exact behaviour that I like is the fact that the current shuffle manages not too shuffle too completely, meaning that it is normal to find two or three tracks from the same album close to each other in the "random" list.

That's a bug, IMHO, but I don't think the behavior has changed. I think their work-around for the bug was to implement the weighted shuffle.

Not certain, though.

___________
Tony Fabris

As the old saying should go "one man's bug is another man's feature"...

__
Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Mindcrime...... One of my all time favorite albums

Mk2 #105 32g blue, w/tuner

1.) It's not like I was wandering through the root playlist, heard a song off of Mindcrime and said "Hey, that's what I'll listen to"... it was one of those, "get in the car and decide.. hey I want to listen to Mindcrime".

3.) Encoding as a single MP3 prevents single-songs from the album from being thrown into the random mix.

Oh, sorry, I've got a bit confused as to what you're asking for here. If you want sometimes to play everything at random (with Mindcrime tracks shuffled in), and other times to listen just to Mindcrime all through in the right order, that's easy. Mark the root playlist "Always randomise", don't mark the Mindcrime playlist "Always randomise".

That way, choosing to play the root playlist will get you everything at random (including scattered Mindcrime tracks), and navigating the menu to the Mindcrime playlist and playing it will get it all in the right order.

Peter

If you want sometimes to play everything at random (with Mindcrime tracks shuffled in), and other times to listen just to Mindcrime all through in the right order, that's easy. Mark the root playlist "Always randomise", don't mark the Mindcrime playlist "Always randomise".

That way, choosing to play the root playlist will get you everything at random (including scattered Mindcrime tracks), and navigating the menu to the Mindcrime playlist and playing it will get it all in the right order.


That's what I tried, and it didn't work. :) "Always randomize" only seemed to randomize "direct children" and not everything in that playlist. (or i had extremely odd randomization on several attempts )

D

"Always randomize" only seemed to randomize "direct children" and not everything in that playlist.

[F/X: looks at code]

Ah yes, you're quite right. Er, I'll have another think...

Peter

Is this a good spot to point out that it'd be really really cool if always randomize behaved as you described (and indeed many people have THOUGHT it did), to solve just this problem? :)

Thinking out loud, of course.

I would like to re-iterate that this isn't a "Problem".

One needs only to press a single button to turn off shuffle. I don't see how it could get any simpler than that.

___________
Tony Fabris

I would like to re-iterate that this isn't a "Problem".

I think that's a matter of opinion. It's certainly a nuisance that the UI's "randomization" doesn't behave the way you'd expect, and whether it is enough of a nuisance for an individual to classify it as a problem is up to them, don't you think?

Because that's really what this boils down to "Always randomize the contents" shouldn't just randomize its immediate children, it should randomize "everything in that playlist tree". It's not a "shuffle vs. no-shuffle" issue, it's a "does the option given to always randomize a playlist behave the way you'd expect it to", and I contend it doesn't. I'll defend that position by saying that even the guy who has access to the code thought it behaved as I did until he went back and looked at the code.

I don't see how it could get any simpler than that.

If you'd been paying attention, it could get simpler by not having to push that button at all.

D

I just would like to list some uses for "always randomize" that I saw on this BBS while I hung around. Note that some of these are hypothetical. I will also list the functions/options that would be needed to enable this behaviour:

1. Allow playlists to always be completely randomized
   Option needed: "Always randomize complete" playlist (including sub-playlists)


2. Allow playlists to only shuffle the order of its sub-playlists
   Option needed: "Always randomize first level" of playlist (ie. not including sub-playlists)


3. Allow the random play of 3 songs from sub-playlist 1 followed by 2 songs of sub-playlist 2 followed by 3 songs of sub-playlist 1, ...
   Options needed: "Always randomize first level" of playlist, auto-repeat of playlist, "always randomize" on sub playlists, "pick X items" on sub playlists


4. Allow the complete randomization of a playlist including its sub playlists, but play some sub-playlists in their normal order (or as a single track)
   Options needed: "Always randomize complete" on playlist, "Never randomize"/"Handle playlist as single track" on some sub-playlists

I think these are the most common options that might be of interest (at least I can't think of any other one). So this boils down to the following options being needed:

• Always randomize complete list


• Always randomize first level only


• Never randomize / handle as single track


• Pick X from playlist on each run


• Auto-repeat playlist

cu,
sven


proud MkII owner (12GB blue/green/smoked, was #080000113 is #090001010)

Dredd... I concur

Tony... As has already been discussed, it is not just as simple as pressing the 0 button. You have to LOOK at the the track you are on, remember where on the CD this came (no track numbers displayed at present) and then skip back the correct number of places to get to the beginning. This doesn't sound so good unless you want me to press pause before I start too!!!

I also listen to mine mostly on shuffle, but if I select a specific album, I want it in its original order from the first track. This is not possible without some looking and remembering.

My opionion is that the playlist's shuffle option should do the following:

If checked then shuffle ALL playlists and children it contains (even if some of the child playlists are set as unshuffled)
If not then play 1st entry and unshuffle.

MK2 Home made smoked 32Gb S/n 090000949