Proper random play (not shuffle)

[wickedlemon]

Sorry if this has been brought up before, but a search for random brings up lots of results, often to do with Shuffle play. Which is my issue.

Is it possible to get a random play option to compliment the shuffle option?

Using cards as an analogy, the current option is:

Shuffle: Shuffle all cards and pick them put one by one. Eventually all 52 cards are picked, just once each.

I'd like Random: Shuffle all cards; pick a card from the pack, then replace it; pick another. Endless selection.

 Shuffle is great if you want to mix up an album or small playlist, but if you want to listen to non-stop continuous music - especially with a large library - knowing a song isn't going to be played for another 5000 tracks is almost as annoying as knowing what track is coming next.

The obvious downside is the same song being repeated too often. Easily fixed with configuration options for minimum artist repeat and minimum track repeat.

[blaubär]

42 minutes ago, wickedlemon said:

The obvious downside is the same song being repeated too often. Easily fixed with configuration options for minimum artist repeat and minimum track repeat. 

You mean maximum repeat, not minimum, I presume.

If random works and the number of songs is big, this isn't an issue anyway.

[wickedlemon]

57 minutes ago, blaubär said:

You mean maximum repeat, not minimum, I presume.

If random works and the number of songs is big, this isn't an issue anyway.

No, minimum repeat. If track X plays, it doesn't play again for Y tracks. Does that make sense?

[blaubär]

18 minutes ago, wickedlemon said:

No, minimum repeat. If track X plays, it doesn't play again for Y tracks. Does that make sense?

Yes, minimum songs played before repeat makes sense. Won't be needed though - with the total number of songs high ( and that seems to be the use case you have in mind ) repetitions would be sufficiently rare anyhow.

[wickedlemon]

1 minute ago, blaubär said:

Yes, minimum songs played before repeat makes sense. Won't be needed though - with the total number of songs high ( and that seems to be the use case you have in mind ) repetitions would be sufficiently rare anyhow.

It could still happen. I cited 5000 songs, but what if you had random set for playlist of 500, or 50? My car stereo annoyingly tries to play the same song twice in a row on occasions. Discounting an easy configuration option because its unlikely will eventually annoy someone!

[blaubär]

1 minute ago, wickedlemon said:

My car stereo annoyingly tries to play the same song twice in a row on occasions.

If that happens often then that's not random.

[blaubär]

That could be implemented by using the existing shuffle. A reshuffle after each song, while not incrementing the track counter, would do the trick.

[wickedlemon]

11 minutes ago, blaubär said:

If that happens often then that's not random.

Or it could be. That's what random means 😉

[blaubär]

1 hour ago, wickedlemon said:

Or it could be. That's what random means 😉

With n songs the probability for a specific song as the next song is 1/n. So you can count the occurences: if for 50 songs that happens more than once in 50 songs then that implementation of randomness is inadequate.

[wickedlemon]

3 minutes ago, blaubär said:

With n songs the probability for a specific song as the next song is 1/n. So you can count the occurences: if for 50 songs that happens more than once in 50 songs then that implementation of randomness is inadequate.

I don' think you can say a randomness is inadequate unless there is some identifiable influence. The same song could be played 100 times in a row and the implementation still be perfect. That's why some conditional parameters, like I suggested, are desirable.

[blaubär]

10 minutes ago, wickedlemon said:

The same song could be played 100 times in a row and the implementation still be perfect.

That would happen only once in ( n to the power of 100 ) times where you played the 100 songs.

Maxmp uses his limited resources to maximum effect. If you want a feature to be implemented you'll have to show its usefulness. Avoidance of an arbitrarily improbable event won't be a good argument.

[andrewilley]

Random means that at the end of the current track, a new track is chosen at random - which could technically even be the same track again (somewhat unlikely of course, but that's the nature of random).

Shuffle means your whole song list (or album, or whatever) is mixed up into a random order and then all of the tracks in that sequence are played. You won't hear any repetitions until the complete sequence has been played through once. This is the method that Poweramp uses.

Andre