+1 for a real shuffle request

Hi all ,

I like the new sansa clip+, even without the addition of a memory card their are a few nice tweaks, both with the player it’s self and the firmware to make it feel like a + Upgrade.

BUT! <<< Relatively big but for a small player. The Shuffle feature really needs to be upgraded and designed to be a true randomization of music. In a way sandisk are miss advertising by saying the clip has a shuffle feature, quite often it’s just a repeat a certain order of songs in a loop feature.

Surely  some purely  random  based pattern order for files names that are then read  in number/alphabetical sequence (dependent on what the file name starts with A-Z First then 1,2,3 etc for example, can not be too difficult to code into the firmware?,and this method wouldn’t involve having to Tag all the files.

Ok so this feature doesn’t seem to be a sandisk priority  because they believe it won’t effect sales to much.

so in the mean time can anyone come up with the most simplest way to get the clip+ playing in a real shuffle mode? Bearing in mind tagging music is time consuming,especially because I add and delete many tracks everyday, and I’d much prefer to use that time doing something else than adding Tags . And what are these machines for if it’s not doing these laborious routines  for us?

Thanks for any help :slight_smile:

It should be easy enough to generate random numbers by using the real time clock as an input. On a player without a clock, generating random numbers might be much more complicated.

Sounds like a Good plan!

 Software Audio player playlist makers do the job when you click randomize playlist? Just have the same for the clip+ but instead of playlist have randomize files in the player .

Ok pure randomization isn’t possible because we live on a relatively ordered place where the earth behaves it’s self and travels round the sun every year + 1/4 day.Even a dice has controlling factors like gravity etc and the chaos theory is just that a theory but I like a alternating  track sequence because it adds to the variety.

For now I will just have to settle for making randomize playlists using a software Audio player<< poor me :-).It would be convenient to do directly from the clip+ Also then if the randomize playlist plays all the way through I can quickly re-make another.

If for example the clock circuitry can measure time in 10,000 ths of a second, then querying the time counter and reading the value of this 10,000 th of a second counter will generate numbers between 0 and 9,999. These could be further randomized based on other values on the player such as remaining battery life, and perhaps time since the player was turned on.

Nice Idea.Using the variations of timing ,battery power etc.So Using the variations of how the player is used.

When you think about it that way their a many variations that could be used to make a really varied shuffle feature.

Also being able to use this New well varied shuffle feature with the ‘Go list’ would be nice.Save all your favourite songs as they play to the go list then play the go list in shuffle mode.

I do love a suprise :slight_smile:

Please add my vote to the list of customers who know that the so called shuffle function on the clip+ does not work.

I can see on my web searches that this complaint dates back to the early days of the clip and has been ongoing for years.

Regardless of how you define the word shuffle (true randomized next play, or true shuffled and persistent playlist), it’s fairly obvious that the desired action is a non-repetitive play sequence.   That can’t be accomplished by using a randomized next play selection function.

I have over 2000 songs on my Clip+ 8GB and yesterday I heard the same song within 3 hours.      I do not have duplicates,   I did not power down or load new songs.   I did not let the battery drain down.   I did pause playback a few times, which, after a few minutes,  apparently forces a power down.   But when I powered back up,   play continued from where it left off, so it should also be able to remember a shuffled playlist.

For a while, I thought that I had a solution by playing all songs, which it then does in alphabetical order   (somewhat inherently shuffled).   That worked well for the first day.   However,  after powering down or adding new content,  the play sequence starts over from the top.   It’s way too difficult and time consuming to step over songs one by one to start play from the last song played,  even if I could remember which one that was.

Why won’t Sansa listen to the Voice Of the Customer and fix this obvious flaw?

Add me to the list of those who are dissatisfied with the so called “shuffle” option on the Sanza Clip+.   Sanza: Please correct this issue in the next firmware update. It really would make using your product a much more enjoyable experience. 

I’ve never had any problem with the shuffle function, and I’ve always used it a lot.

Marvin_Martian wrote:
I’ve never had any problem with the shuffle function, and I’ve always used it a lot.

Me neither, & I use it almost exclusively. In fact, I find the Clip+'s shuffle works better than the one in Winamp.

Smiley

What you have never had like 100+ tracks on shuffle mode and notice that over a period of time the same tracks seem to get a very high priority & get played over and over whilst other tracks don’t get played at all?.

Or are you guys just messing because you use rockbox?

Message Edited by IB1 on 08-12-2010 04:36 AM

IB1 wrote:

What you have never had like 100+ tracks on shuffle mode and notice that over a period of time the same tracks seem to get a very high priority & get played over and over whilst other tracks don’t get played at all?.

 

Or are you guys just messing because you use rockbox?

 

Message Edited by IB1 on 08-12-2010 04:36 AM

You’ll notice only one of my Clip+'s has rockbox. I’ve had the other one, without rockbox, for quite a few months now, and  with a 16GB card in it, I used shuffle all on that, with 3,000+ tracks, and Ithought it worked like a charm. Now that I have the other one with rockbox, I switched the card over to that one, and my older one only has about 300 songs on it, but I shuffle those at work and it seems to shuffle those well enough.

IB1 wrote:

What you have never had like 100+ tracks on shuffle mode and notice that over a period of time the same tracks seem to get a very high priority & get played over and over whilst other tracks don’t get played at all?.

That’s called randomization. You’re going to get repeats due to the ‘random’ selection of numbers (tracks). Just because one has already been selected and played doesn’t mean that track is taken out of the ‘mix’.

Of course, the more tracks you have to choose from (say 1000 or 2000 compared to 100) will decrease the likelyhood of repeats.

A festure or option in Rockbox (like Winamp) is that you can ‘pre-shuffle’ or mix up the playlist increasing the odds against ‘dupes’ coming up.

IB1 wrote:

What you have never had like 100+ tracks on shuffle mode and notice that over a period of time the same tracks seem to get a very high priority & get played over and over whilst other tracks don’t get played at all?.

That’s called randomization. You’re going to get repeats due to the ‘random’ selection of numbers (tracks). Just because one has already been selected and played doesn’t mean that track is taken out of the ‘mix’.

Of course, the more tracks you have to choose from (say 1000 or 2000 compared to 100) will decrease the likelihood of repeats.

A feature or option in Rockbox (like Winamp) is that you can ‘pre-shuffle’ or mix up the playlist increasing the odds against ‘dupes’ coming up. But having said that, I have not installed RB on my Clip+; it’s only on one of my e280’s so I’m using the standard factory firmware on it. I haven’t noticed any abnormalities in the shuffle sequence.