Rockbox has a great feature on their firmware called “random”. It appears at the top of any music list right below “Play All”
What Random does, is exactly like it sounds. I chooses something for you at Random.
I have a WIDE variety of music on my Fuze, and sometimes don’t really KNOW what I want to listen to, so what’s nice is to go to “Albums” and choose “Random” and have a Random Album queued up for me.
If I really don’t like it, I just pop Random again and get another album queued up. This is a great way to setup an hour or so of music in my cubicle, and since I like my nearly everything on my player, but sometime just don’t know what I’m in the mood for. It’s great way to eliminate alot of scroll wheel activity too.
Please note, this is not “shuffle”. It simply is a Random feature that allows the player to make a “random” selection for you, either album, song, or artist.
Two totally different functions. Shuffle simply mixes up your playlist, the album tracks or whatever you have queued.
A “random” function would choose an album at random, (or artist, genre) and then allow you to play them in whatever you order you choose (shuffle or not).
So let’s say I choose Album, from the Music Menu and hit Random. The player would then choose an album at random and play the entire album.
If I picked Genre and then Random, I would get a list of Artists in that Genre. Hitting Random again would pick a Random Artist, and then present the available Albums. Choosing Random again would choose a Random Album from that album.
Shuffle only affects the play order of a specific playlist that is MANUALLY selected. (Choosing Play all, is still a manual selection). Random is used to randomly create the playlist, but does not affect play order.
I know it sounds the same, but if you’ve ever used both functions, you would find that they are different.
One affects play order (shuffle)
The other affects what is actually queued up to play (random).
