I just got my unit and it is totaly awesome! One feature I would love to have though is more control over the random playing. I know it already has a few tricks, but Rush is my favorite band, so I have a lot of albums by them (and they made a lot). These means during random play I hear them back 2 back a lot. What I would really like is a feature to space out songs by the same artist during random play. It would also be great to keep the player from playing slower songs back 2 back during random play. As of now, I'm always skipping over slow songs, not because I don't like them, but too many in a row are difficult for me to listen to

Don't have a solution for you but you have an instant friend with Tony!

In reply to:

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...you have an instant friend with Tony!

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Whatever makes you say that? .

Yeah, that was my immediate thought too.

Well, Tony wouldn't have a problem with back to back Rush songs being played

Heh, I like Rush back 2 back, but I have a seperate playlist for that. Heck, thats one of the reasons I got an Empeg. I just start at the beginning and play them all! I could try to put less of them in my other playlists, but I can never decide which songs to cut out! I guess I probably am the only one who would like to space stuff out; I haven't been able to find an mp3 player for my desktop that does it either(I did write my own however, and that worked well).

Truth is, I spent so much time listening to Rush before I got the empeg, I actually really like hearing a variety of music other than Rush now. Who remembers this post? That small selection of 6 discs described in that post almost always had 2-4 Rush albums in it. It's not like I got SICK of Rush or anything, it's just that I really enjoy the extreme variety of songs on my player right now.

Something you'll probably notice, Jeff, is that the player tends to do a lot of "two-fers" in plain shuffle mode.

For example, I have a sum total of two songs on the player by Men At Work (out of 2000+ songs). In a random shuffle, I will sometimes get those two songs to play within a couple of songs of each other, like this:

- random song
- Men At Work song
- random song
- Men At Work song.
- random song.

Sometimes they'll even play back to back. So it's more than just having a lot of Rush on your player, I think there's actually something up with the shuffle (in my opinion). The empeg guys insist that this is just an interesting statistical anomaly, and I will concede that they could very well be right. Looking at things like this essay on large numbers makes me question my perceptions.

I didn't catch whether or not you're using 2.0beta7 or not. But when you do finally go up to a 2.0x version of the software, you will find some new shuffle modes such as "least recently played", which will help things seem to appear in a more natural order.

Otherwise, I recommend you expand your horizons and just get more non-Rush tracks onto the player. Start with Yes, Peter Gabriel, and Steve Morse, then work your way outwards towards more different stuff like Tori Amos, Brian Setzer, Depeche Mode, and Was (Not Was). Remember the old late-great syrinx.yyz.com Rush fan site? Shortly before they went offline, they were running a section that said "if you've only got Mars On Your Horizon, maybe it's time to broaden it" (referencing the song Red Lenses). They ran short clips of other bands that Rush fans might like, and I thought it was the coolest idea in the world. I actually got into Lenny Kravitz and a couple of other bands thanks to that site.

Something you're going to find is that owning the empeg makes you actually buy more CDs than you otherwise would have. I know that's what it's done to me. Suddenly I'm actually able to listen to the new CDs I purchase without feeling any pressure. Just keep piling new music onto the player and eventually Rush won't come up in the shuffle as often as it's coming up now.

Tony, just thought I'd post this as I have had 2 requests within the last week from people who are trying to branch out

I have 6 (I think) Rush albums, 5 Pink Floyd, some Deep Purple, Jimi etc etc but also Vivaldi, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Madonna, Clubbers Guide To Ibiza, Nirvana, Eric Clapton, The Bloodhound Gang, Muddy Waters, Joe Satriani, John McLaughlin, Steve Vai, Paco De Lucia -- (oops, got off onto a guitarist frenzy there)


Having the empeg on random (or least recently played) is the best method of showing people stuck in one genre (I admit I have a bias towards the blues/heavy metal guitar end of the spectrum myself) how to branch out. As the that kind of a search doesn't care about genre it keeps you on your toes. Some of the groupings are even worth keeping - I remember a Holst (Mars, the bringer of war), Pink Floyd (Us and Them), Judas Priest (Metal Gods) combination that absolutely rocked at high volume on the M6 one night:)

The reasoning goes like this:

If the tracks were evenly spaced, then they wouldn't be random, would they?

Yes, it is true. I've already started buying more albums because of the empeg (and of course the record companies are scared of mp3!, oh the irony). As far as a spacing not being random, of course thats true, but neither are the new shuffle modes either. What I am thinking of is more like you hear on the radio where you usually don't hear songs by the same artist together, but MY radio would only have my music that I like.
I was just thinking it wouldn't be too hard to factor a tag in before a new shuffle order was created. You could specify "Don't play songs that have the same (artist) tag within (4) songs". You could do this with others tags (such as a "tempo" field to get a good mix of tunes, that is not truly random, but is not the same every time you listen either. Of course, you have the problem at the end of the list where all you have left is Rush, but at this point it would be time to reshuffle.
Anyway this is just the only thing on my wish list: The empeg is by far the coolest thing I have ever bought! If nothing changed from this point on, I would be happy as a clam.

I for one like the two-fers. I have so much music on my empeg (about 8,300 tracks.... actually now about 7,800 tracks because I erased all of the artists that started with the letter C, but that is a differant post hehe) that hearing a two-fer is great.

That is of course unless it plays Bon Jovi because I only have him for DJ requests... but thats my fault for not setting up Wendy Filters.

(I admit I have a bias towards the blues/heavy metal guitar end of the spectrum myself)

There is a little-known feature available in config.sys (that the good guys @ empeg put in pretty much just for me!) that you might find interesting.

If you put these lines into your config.ini file:

[shuffle]
deduplicate=0

you get the following behavior: Normally, when you append or insert several playlists together and then shuffle them, any duplicate tracks (tracks that appeared in two or more of the combined playlists) are automatically deleted. If you have the two lines shown above in your config.ini, they will not be deleted. So what, you say?

Well, start with your root playlist (everything in your player). Append (or insert) your Blues/Heavy Metal playlist(s) half a dozen times. Then re-shuffle. Now you have the entire contents of your player in one big playlist, with a heavy bias towards your Blues/Heavy Metal. You can adjust the ratio of Blues/Heavy Metal to "regular" songs by choosing how many times you append/insert it before you reshuffle.

tanstaafl.

Guess I won't put all of my Floyd albums on there at one time.. I think there's only one I don't have..

That is of course unless it plays Bon Jovi because I only have him for DJ requests... but thats my fault for not setting up Wendy Filters.

You don't have to use Wendy filters for that, you can just set the 'ignore as child' property of the Bon Jovi playlist and it will be excluded...

/Pepijn

Now that I like! This means I can keep my wife's stuff on there and have it biased low relative to my music and reassure her that "It's all random - that's just how it comes out in a shuffle"

I've just added a checkbox to emplode to control this setting. I've had to split the "Advanced" player settings dialog -- the volume related settings are in a new tab now.

FITNR.