Shuffle won't stick

[Vicariat]

I just paid up for Poweramp.  I like the interface.  Hate the shuffle.  I've spent waaay too much time on it.  I'm about to give up.

I have 20,033 songs (ALL on a card, ALL in one main folder).  I hit shuffle all, and its fine. Great. Excellent.  So I paid up.

However, after I close and reopen, it:

a) forgets where it was before

b) plays 2 songs only (1/20033, then 2/20033), THEN goes to the same artist each time and shuffles them instead (1/53 etc).  Every darn time.  I am not accidentally touching the screen, its in a cradle.

Both of these are design dealbreakers for me.  It seems others here have related issues, perhaps its exactly the same, I'm not sure.

I found another thread where you said "However restarting the app from cold will most likely trigger a reshuffle (which means you could possibly hear a track that you heard during a previous session again). The easiest way to tell is to check the track numbering, which increments with each song played in a list."  Personally, I find this really really limiting and renders the app close to useless for my needs.  Cant remember where it was?  Pretty limiting.

 

I have many other minor requests, or maybe I am missing, but the top three are:

i) where can you see whats upcoming or recently played in the shuffle list? 

ii) How can I enlarge the font for the album and track names?

iii) love the visualisations, but can their play speed be slowed down?

 

[blaubär]

43 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

i) where can you see whats upcoming or recently played in the shuffle list? 

ii) How can I enlarge the font for the album and track names?

iii) love the visualisations, but can their play speed be slowed down?

i) see

Make sure the queue is empty !

Think about creating a playlist.

ii) You can't. Perhaps there is a skin that can do that ? Look for skins in Playstore or https://forum.powerampapp.com/forum/23-skins-and-themes/

iii) No, the point of the vizusalisation is to move with the music. But you can slow down both by applying "Tempo" ( see Tab with Volume, Balance, StereoX ) :-) 

[Vicariat]

7 minutes ago, blaubär said:

Make sure the queue is empty !

Think about creating a playlist.

Those 53 files were indeed in the queue.  I did not recall putting them there.  After hunting to find where to do this, I cleared the queue and rebooted.  That seemed to both solve problems a) and b), so far.  It now seems to remember where I last closed the app, keeps playing.  Good.  Thanks.  So the queue overrides everything, including play all songs?  Strange.

 

As said by others in the link you provided, using playlists is awkward and cumbersome.  I have to remake it to add 1 track to 20033 of them?  For me this is counter-intuitive.  Whats simpler than play all the darn songs in random order?  How do I make a play list?  I just hunted 10 min and give up.  I found how to clear them, not make them.

Regarding my point i)

i) where can you see whats upcoming or recently played in the shuffle list? 

I now found it AFTER that link you provided, and first: changing the sorting "By shuffle order".  Never in a million years would I have found that.  then second: go to Library -> All Songs, which now displays the play order.  Anyway, thanks! 

 

In my view, this app need serious ease-of-use medicine!  But its definitely visually pleasing and feature-rich.  Phonograph is much better for all these issues I raised, and equally pretty, no forums needed (for me at least), but no visualisations. 

 

 

[blaubär]

13 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

So the queue overrides everything, including play all songs?  Strange.

The queue in Poweramp is an exceptional mechanism, intended to be used when you want to play some songs immediately, out of your usual listening order.

It should perhaps not have been called "queue", but "the special immediate playlist".

[blaubär]

15 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

How do I make a play list? 

In the main playing screen : hit the 3-dot-button in the album art, then "+ Add to Playlist".

In the list View : Long press the song, then ""+ Playlist"

[Vicariat]

1 minute ago, blaubär said:

The queue in Poweramp is an exceptional mechanism, intended to be used when you want to play some songs immediately, out of your usual listening order

Thanks.  Clear now (on this point).  But hardly intuitive!

[Vicariat]

Just now, blaubär said:

In the main playing screen : hit the 3-dot-button in the album art, then "+ Add to Playlist".

Sure, I found that easily.  Add one track at a time? out of 20,000??  no thanks.  How would I add all songs on my device (in a single folder).

[blaubär]

20 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

but no visualisations

There are visualizations : enable with the button on the left beneath the album art.

[blaubär]

2 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

How would I add all songs on my device

In the list view you can multiselect ( albums, folders, artists, whatever ) and then add all the selected whatevers to the queue or a playlist.

[Vicariat]

3 minutes ago, blaubär said:

There are visualizations : enable with the button on the left beneath the album art.

Yes I know. I like them a lot.  I said they were not present in Phonograph.

[blaubär]

23 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

In my view, this app need serious ease-of-use medicine! 

Yes, a manual would come in handy ! @maxmp : you're listening ? :-)

( it won't comfort you much, but other players aren't better in that respect )

[Vicariat]

3 minutes ago, blaubär said:

In the list view you can multiselect ( albums, folders, artists, whatever ) and then add all the selected whatevers to the queue or a playlist.

Great!  That works!   Thanks

[Vicariat]

1 minute ago, blaubär said:

Yes, a manual would come in handy ! @maxmp : you're listening ? 🙂

( it won't comfort you much, but other players aren't better in that respect )

Or a 5 min youtube clip would cover all the above...

(and most other players do not have a forum like this!)

[andrewilley]

Sounds like you've got most things sorted now. Inadvertently placing some tracks in the Queue was your biggest issue I think - the queue is designed to override regular playback until it has finished playing the requested temporary tracks (that is it's function) so it will keep on coming back until you clear it.

Not sure what method for selecting items to add to a playlist or queue (of other song-specific tasks) would be easier than just long-pressing on the song? I guess every line (or every thumbnail in grid view) could have its own three-dots icon, but to be honest the library view pages are already pretty full - close to being cluttered - and this way works fine. Though as you say, you do have to realise it's there (the long-press function really ought to be mentioned in the Help text, perhaps that could be added, @maxmp ?).

I do question the logic of having 20,000 songs in one folder though. That's got to be having a performance impact on file system access. Similarly, using the All Songs list rather than viewing by Album or Artist (or Folders if you had any) would not make finding anything particular especially easy! When you are playing music using any of the normal category modes - Albums, Artists, Playlists, etc - you can still override and change the shuffle mode at any time by tapping the Shuffle icon on the main player screen (lower-right, below the cover artwork). There are several modes available, it's worth having a play with them to see how they work (however if you are playing in All Songs mode, you are limited to using All Songs shuffling as the other modes are based on your chosen music category mode).

I would love there to be a manual for PA too. I was toying with the idea of putting something together a while ago, but then the v3 interface started arriving which would have changed most of it anyway so I kinda shelved the idea. Perhaps it's time to revisit it? That said, the design philosophy for mobile device apps is generally that the app and its help features should cover basic operation, and no one reads manuals anyway.  Thinking about it, I can't recall any other apps that I regularly use which have full manuals, we are mostly expected to just install and play. Perhaps more subjects could be added to the FAQ area of this site (which can be also reached from within the app by the way, via the Get Support feature).

Andre

[Nightshade Ghostaltar]

"Perhaps it's time to revisit it?" +1, love reading manuals myself, A PDF to read would be great, probably find a load of things we didn't know could be done

[Vicariat]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I do question the logic of having 20,000 songs in one folder though.

I do not.  I meant its a single parent folder.  Under this is genre folders, then artist subfolders, then album folders.  I meant they are not scattered over multiple locations.

[Vicariat]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Sounds like you've got most things sorted now.

Yes, thanks.  However, while I am happy, it should NOT be this difficult.  Some of the powers of this app are truly buried, of course, in my view.

[andrewilley]

55 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

I do not.  I meant its a single parent folder.  Under this is genre folders, then artist subfolders, then album folders.  I meant they are not scattered over multiple locations.

Ah, gotcha, and yes that's exactly how it should be done. I hope you can see how I misunderstood your initial comment "I have 20,033 songs (ALL on a card, ALL in one main folder)" though.

53 minutes ago, Vicariat said:

Yes, thanks.  However, while I am happy, it should NOT be this difficult.  Some of the powers of this app are truly buried, of course, in my view.

It is one of the perennial problems of "power" apps versus those simple (but featureless and non-configurable) stock apps that come with phones. My email program (AquaMail) is exactly the same, it is loaded with features and configuration options - many of which I've probably not even found yet - but equally it is not as simple to set up and use as the default Samsung Email toy that came with the phone. Same with my launcher (Nova Launcher). However once you've got through the learning curve, and get to know these apps in daily usage, their flexibility far outweighs the initial setup and learning process IMHO.

That's one of the reasons for these forums (and all "power user" apps tend to have them), which hopefully will help you understand how the app works, and also provide a channel for suggestions and feature requests which might make it better too.

Andre