Currently, the checkbox that says "Always Shuffle This Playlist" (sorry, I forgot the exact wording) will do a shuffle of everything one-layer into that playlist. This is in fact useful in certain circumstances, and I'm not suggesting that anybody change that.

What would be really cool would be if that checkbox caused everything in that playlist, n-layers deep, to be shuffled. Here's the scenario:

You create a playlist that defines a category. Let's call it "Jazz". You then create a bunch of playlists inside that category, each representing a further subcategorization of Jazz, such as "Oscar Peterson" and "Dave Brubeck". Inside those playlists, you have individual albums (err, sorry, CDs) from those respective artists. Further, you mark the outside "Jazz" category playlist as "Always shuffle". If you hit Play for the Jazz category playlist, you get a random sampling of Jazz from across your whole collection, one track at a time. If you want a specific CD or a specific artist, you can go and select those, and they'll play sequentially, instead of randomly, because the playlist you're selecting in this case does not have the "Always Shuffle" bit set, only the Jazz category playlist containing it does.

Thus, you neatly get the best of both worlds, whatever you want.

Of course, this doesn't work today, because the shuffling is done at the top level of the playlist, not throughout the depths of the playlist, so you end up with random albums or random artists but not random tracks.

Wouldn't it be cool, though?


jester
Sunnyvale, CA
MkI / 20GB / Blue / SN00309

...I'm pretty sure turning on "shuffle" mode (from the empeg's menus, not emplode) does this now..
-m

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

I'll try it again, but last time I tried it seemed to pick a sub-playlist at random and play that whole thing. I could have dreamed it, though... ;-)

jester
Sunnyvale, CA
MkI / 20GB / Blue / SN00309

This has my vote -ie to propogate through a list form top to bottom.

You seem to have my tastes in Jazz, too!

...I'm pretty sure turning on "shuffle" mode (from the empeg's menus, not emplode) does this now..

Ok, I re-read your post. I had missed your point the first time. Unfortunately, this completely misses my point. Turning shuffle on and off from the empeg itself is a tiresome process. The object is to have a playlist organization that lets you play specific CDs in normal order or play a random selection from a large group of CDs without going back and forth and turning shuffle on and off.

So, my wish stands.

jester
Sunnyvale, CA
MkI / 20GB / Blue / SN00309

What would be really cool would be if that checkbox caused everything in that playlist, n-layers deep, to be shuffled.

You've my support too. This is really the way I would expect 'shuffle' to work. At the same time, I'd like to throw in my pitch for a refinement I suggested a while ago. Rather than an option to 'always shuffle a playlist' (in emplode), I'd much rather have an explicit option to never shuffle a playlist. Most of the music I record can easliy be played in random sequence and the method you describe would be super, but there are exceptions. Randomly playing parts of classical stuff doesn't make any sense and there is also some pop and jazz that I'd like to protect from ever playing in a random sequence.

Any chance I could have an emplode option 'never play in random sequence'? Any support?

Henno

...I think the option should be there for both ways.. Alot of times, I wouldn't mind jumping in the middle of a continous cd, IF I can have these options:
CROSS-FADE if the track doesn't already have one
resume the rest of that playlist with a menu option

For that case, it'd be nice to have a menu option to play other songs by a perticular artist.
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

What a would like to see is that each play list has a play mode:

Normal
Shuffle
Never Shuffle
Never Play

When a play list is played:

Normal, Never Play, Never Shuffle - play sub lists and tunes in order, skipping any 'Never Play' play lists.

Shuffle - recursively go through the sub play lists and tunes to build a list of possibles skipping Never Play and stopping at any play list that is marked Never Shuffle, shuffle the list of tunes and play lists and play them in the new order.

Andy.

You can actually do this... Almost.

1. Make a new playlist called Jazzhuffled (or whatever).
2. Go into a playlist under Jazz
3. Select all the tracks
4. Right-click, and select 'Copy'
5. Go into the Jazzhuffled playlist
6. Right-click and select 'Paste'
7. Repeat 2-6 until all of you Jazz music is copied into the Jazzhuffled playlist
8. Remember to set Jazzhuffled to 'Always Shuffle'

This workaround gives you what you want, while still keeping the original order of your playlists, and enabling you to play you Jazz Non-shuffled (should you get the desire). Furthermore it only takes up a few KB of spacefor each song in Jazzhuffled.

Yonzie