randomness of music

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

I have shuffle and repeat turned on and have selected ‘play all’.

I have over 800 songs on my 8GB Fuze.  But it seems to play some songs from a few albums much more frequently than others.  So much so, that it has become annoying.  

Has anyone noticed something similar?  Is there anything I can do to avoid it (besides removing the songs that I get tired of)?

2

It is supposed to be completely random but its not. There is nothing that can be done about this to the best of my understanding because the Fuze (and mayne other players) couldnt process an algorithm to make it truly 100% random (this is not something confirmed by Sandisk, I have a friend who is a programmer at another company who makes mp3 players who told me this is more common than you would think). This really bothered me for a long time until I found out that every player manufacturer deals with this. What I do now is when I hear the more common ones I just skip it, its still annoying but since there is nothing I can do I cope.

3

I am thinking of just turning off the ‘repeat’, but with ‘shuffle’ still on.  How long does it remember?  That is, will it play all 800 songs with no repeats?  It would take several days and numerous power off /on sequences.

Do you think this will help?

4

PedroV wrote:

I am thinking of just turning off the ‘repeat’, but with ‘shuffle’ still on.  How long does it remember?  That is, will it play all 800 songs with no repeats?  It would take several days and numerous power off /on sequences.

 

Do you think this will help?

That will help. But you will still get the repeats. The fuze doesnt know what its played and what it hasnt, so it just runs the shuffle algorithm, and that picks the songs. The only sure way to play with no repeats is to play all with no shuffle but what fun is that? Like I said, if you know whats been played its pretty painless to just skip them. Oh and as you mentioned before, you can just replace the songs you get burnt out on when you feel like you need to.

5

Nothing is random, ever! :wink:

6

I have a friend with an Ipod…  (How many people have said that?)

On trips to Phoenix, AZ we have used both his Ipod and my Fuze to play music… I’d say I never notice his player repeating songs too often… maybe 1 repeat in 100 songs, VS. Fuze sometimes will play the SAME song back to back!!!

That was both annoying and embarassing… 

And repeating the same song within 2-3 songs  range, that happened quite a few times.

His Ipod never does that…  

HINT for hearing a song less (rate all of your music and rate ones lower you want to hear less ** and lower… )

This helped a little, but not entirely for me.

I am not saying Ipods are perfect, but I wish I had bought one instead of my V2 Fuze… (At least I could Rockbox one of those)

And in regards to my old DAP (mp3/WMA/WAV only) Along with never needing any firmware updates and never having it crash or have other problems… it’s random is also random (NEVER repeats the same song back to back, or even within 30 songs range)

Capacity was it’s issue (Good for trips to town, 3-4 hour trips without repeat music)

I routinely drive 8+ hours, one way… mostly hiway… So it’d be nice if the Fuze could use an algorythm that would make repeats less often.

I don’t want to make a sync folder with my songs renamed randomly just so I can turn off shuffle and repeat… rerandomizing it each time I sync…

That would require too much storage (original music and folders, plus randomized titles in a single folder)

The problem with my other player (the one without problems) is songs play in the order they are imported (which I can use to my advantage, eg Randomness)

Since the Fuze obviously uses a database, can’t an extra field be put in each record…  you know, like a playorder field that could be set my the device’s owner?

Call it “play order” and give it a value between 1 and 8000…

It could be generated when the database updates, or later, by user selection (either of the order (random/sequential) or of the user’s selction of songs (the last option would be slow if done inside the player))

Just a thought.

7

@pedrov wrote:

 

I have over 800 songs on my 8GB Fuze.  But it seems to play some songs from a few albums much more frequently than others.  So much so, that it has become annoying.  

 

Has anyone noticed something similar?  Is there anything I can do to avoid it (besides removing the songs that I get tired of)?

Rockbox (an alternate firmware that can be used on a V1 Fuze) can do it without repeating.  It makes a random playlist of all your songs (or as selected by genre, artist, etc) with no repeats.

 

As someone noted, some players on random play explicitly repeat high rated songs more often. 

 The usual distinction (I don’t know how Sansa worded it) is “shuffle” should go through all the songs with no repeats. With “Random” as soon as a song is done it is elegible again.  So if you had 100 songs, you would  have a 1% chance of the same song playing 2 times in a row, and by the time you’ve played all the songs it is almost certain some will play 2 or more times.

 

Perfectly random generators ARE difficult, but one that can put out a sequence of 1000 numbers that a human couldn’t tell from random isn’t so much.

 

 

 

Message Edited by donp on 12-29-2009 07:16 AM