Is the Sansa Clip's shuffle random?

MP3 players Sansa Clip | Clip+
1

I have a sansa express and the shuffle is a predetermined pattern. It plays the same songs in the same order every time. I am thinking about getting a clip, but I do not want it of it has this same major flaw. So, has sandisk fixed this problem?

Thanks for the help.

2

well, since nobody feels like answering this. I’ll give a small answer. My clip usually always starts in the early 100s, and i have no idea after that since, i dont’ look at the clip anymore after that. If you press the NEXT or PREV button, they change to different a song.

3

Thanks for the feedback!  Hearing the same playlist over and over again gets old fast.

4

Well, here is what I experience.  If you put Shuffle feature ON, the clip will play all the songs in your device randomly until all are played and then repeat. I have about 250 songs to shuffle and I have not heard a repeat for awhile so I assume that it’s not predetermined but randomly generate. 

5

Was experiencing the same thing

I got used to hitting the play all ,  and it seemed to have become a playlist until i read this post

and realized the last firmware update must have turned the shuffle off .

thanks for the post , looking forward to a better bike ride with " new " music

[because if i wanted to hear the same old stuff , i’d listen to the radio of course !]

6

@okgb wrote:

Was experiencing the same thing

I got used to hitting the play all ,  and it seemed to have become a playlist until i read this post

and realized the last firmware update must have turned the shuffle off .

 

thanks for the post , looking forward to a better bike ride with " new " music

[because if i wanted to hear the same old stuff , i’d listen to the radio of course !]

Glad the posted solution worked for you.   Updating/reinstalling the firmware resets some of the settings on the player back to the default ones.

This just goes to show that no matter how long ago a solution had been posted, it can still help someone resolve an issue.

7

Thanks for sharing useful information…

8

My experience is just the opposite; on shuffle I hear the same songs come up way to often. This feature and the poor FM reception are my biggest gripes though I think this is a great player.

9

Hi guys, same here. The list that Samsa clip provides in shuffle mode gathers 15-20 songs from a sample of 500. Is it biased somehow? Does it work? Thanks

10

I’m looking for an MP3 player that has a truly random shuffle. I’ve had a Sony Walkman that had a random shuffle but has worn out, and a Hipstreet that always repeated the same 20-30 songs out of over 700. I’m getting rid of the Hipstreet and considering buying a Sandisk Clip Jam or Clip Sport. If I put it on random play will I get the same songs over and over or will each of my 700 songs have the same chance of playing? Based on the latest replies on this thread I don’t know whether I should buy

11

Using the firmware the player comes with, when in shuffle mode the player seems to generate random numbers and use those to decide what song to play next. In other words, some songs will repeat before they are all played. If you install the free add on firmware Rockbox on your player, then the player will put all the songs you are trying to play shuffled in the current playlist, and shuffle them the way a deck of cards is shuffled, so there will be no repeats until after all the songs are played. Rockbox also has many other great features. Rockbox is a dual boot OS that sits next to the Sandisk firmware, so you can boot into the Sandisk firmware by holding down the left button while you turn on the player. I have Rockbox installed on my Clip+ and Clip Zip players. It is not available for the Clip Sport, Clip Sport Plus, or Clip Jam. 

www.rockbox.org

1 Like
12

Thanks for the info, sounds like this will do what I need. I realize that in a random system, you can get repeats or some songs playing twice before another song plays once. On the Hipstreet mp3 player I was talking about, it would actually rotate through the same 30 or so songs(out of over 700). Each time I’d turn it on I’d have to skip through dozens of songs to get to one I hadn’t heard the previous day. Even if I picked a new song as a starting point, after a couple of songs had played it would fall back into the same cycle. Very annoying. I recently learned that if I just paused it while playing a song and let it “go to sleep”, it would continue on a random shuffle when I turned it back on the next day. It was explicitly turning the power off and on that caused it to always start at the same point. Thanks again for the reply