Every day when I turn on my express to play my music, it plays the songs in the same order as the day before. If I stop the player and turn it back on it will resume with the song where it left off, but then the next song starts back at the beginning of the shuffle order. Is there a way to get the shuffle to mix it up a bit more?
Welcome to the forum JJ!
The shuffle should definetly be a little bit more random then that. Unfortunately theres nothing that can be done on the player itself to mix it up a bit more. If I were in this situation I would try formatting the player reloading my tunes to see if it was the same. I have an express here and the shuffle is not repeating the same songs in the same order.
This was disturbing to me as well - but I figured a workaround… When you’re done with your Express hit pause, then just wait until it goes into auto-off. The next time you turn it on - hit pause again and Express will pick up where it left off - song, and shuffle.
I really love my Sansa Express. I love what it can do, I have lots of songs on mine and love the flexiblity. Love the radio scan/presents. I travel by train back and forth from Philly to NYC and it comes in very handy. I kinda laugh at those people who overpaid on the iPod. But there is one thing that I cannot stand with this product and just cannot understand why this is the case: it must have by far, the worst SHUFFLE of any player. It definitely repeats a certain sequence. I know of at least 3 different sequences that it plays. And each sequence, it plays in the same order. There has to be a better shuffle than that. Its definitely not random and it should be. In fact, it doesn’t play all the songs on my Express and will go over the same song a couple of times while avoiding some songs all together. Am I alone in this? Can’t Sandisk create some sort of update to create a better randomized shuffle? If it did, then I would give this product a perfect 10 (at least for my needs).
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@poopfartcrap wrote:
ive hacked this site so yall cant do squat!
crazy train
I did something that may have solved it. About 1/3 of my songs have track numbers listed in the name of the song. I deleted the track number on the song for example ‘02-JayZ-feelin’ it’. When I did that, the shuffle changed dramatically and it wasn’t repeated songs they way it used to. This is my first day of doing it, but it has played a lot more of my songs than before, a lot more. I am not sure why that would work, but if others have that problem, they may want to try it.
BTW, I love the fact that my Sansa can do a radio scan and do automatic presets of radio stations. So cool.
What we really need is a firmware update that supports a “random” shuffle.
Means that every time you press “next”, the player has to pick the next song randomly, and not based on a predefined shuffle playlist…
I, too, having been having these problems with Shuffle…and Play All.
For specific example: I turn on the Express, go to Music/Genres/Alternative and select Play All with Shuffle on. Invariably, it begins with U2 - Even Better Than the Real Thing. And I mean invariably. It doesn’t matter if I turn it on and off again. It doesn’t matter if I force a hard reset. It always starts with that same song. Similarly, the second song is always Hoobastank - Better. And on through an allegedly shuffled list that never changes.
Further, turning the player off after listening into this list any number of songs (whether paused or not at shut off, auto off or key-pressed) always results in the same thing. Turning the player back on resumes the last song played, but the very next song will be the original second song and the predefined “shuffle list” continues as though restarted.
The result is as others have reported here. I have several hundred songs on my Express, yet Shuffle is giving me the same few dozen over and over again while the vast bulk of my music onboard never gets even a single play (unless I turn shuffle off and select the songs manually one at a time).
So far I’ve found only one pseudo-workaround that is still not acceptable. While playing, it seems you can partially reseed the list by pressing Menu. For some reason, going back out to the root directory and reselecting Music/Genres/Alternative/Play All gets me halfway there. The first song will still be U2-Even Better Than the Real Thing, but least then the second song is new. It’s still a predefined list, just a slightly different one. Powering off and back on, however, sets you back to square one.
I’ve found the Shuffle Lists go in order, too. So after a power off-on, you start back to Shuffle List #1. Doing the Menu/Music return to root trick bumps you to Shuffle List #2. It’s the same Shuffle List #2 as before. This time, Cowboy Mouth - Take it Out on Me always follows U2’s omnipresent opener. Each return to root prods the Express to choose the next Shuffle List. Except the Shuffle Lists always contain the same songs in the same order, and the lists themselves always occur in the same order, too.
The different lists still seem to pick on the same small subset of albums or artists. I still end up with just a few dozen songs played over and over with the vast majority of my collection never touched.
Sorry for the length of this, but hopefully it is specific enough to provide insight to those who write firmware updates (or tech support). The problem is most definitely and distressingly repeatable. Such a small effective playlist is wearing thin rather quickly. Soon, I’ll be willing to return my Express as defective and pay extra for an iPod, if only to get real Shuffle.
I think Sandisk tried to pull off something kind of cool, which is a “shuffle” feature that you can go backwards and forwards in. I find one annoyance with other mp3 players with shuffle is that if you get FF>> happy, you can blow through a song you wanted to hear, and then have no way to get back to it. So being able to do so is cool. However, there needs to be an easy way to re-shuffle the list, or maybe it just saves the last five songs so you can return to them. Then it could use that list to make sure it doesn’t randomly pick the same song again for at least five listens.
The other thing that annoys me is that it seems when I’m navigating the menu, if I go to play > artist > select artist > play all, and there is only one song for this artist or album, it displays “no song”. I have to go all the way out to the album and then song selection, and select the ONE SONG I want to play. I notice this most with podcasts, where I tend to delete them when I listen to them, so often there is only one from that artist/album/podcast category.
I thought my new method for ‘reshuffling’ would work, but no. The shuffle is definitely some sort of predetermined shuffling order. If a new firmware can correct this, then my express works perfectly…I’ve had no other problems besides this annoying ‘shuffling’ feature. It should not be a predetermined sequence, it should be completely random.
