A real working random shuffle

[Kloppstock]

I have 2300 items in my playlist and there is a playing overrepresentation 10 fold of certain tracks compared to others, and its really annoying.

I  have compared with other music players and i see the difference that they shuffle for real random, but on the other hand the player is not as good as PA

I think you shall redoo the entire shuffle system from scratch after other players

 

 

 

[andrewilley]

The way Poweramp shuffles music is completely random. It shuffles the WHOLE of your requested category and makes an 'internal list' of everything that will be played - e.g. if you have 4,500 songs on your device and you enable Shuffle All Songs, it will start playing track at 1/4500 and continue until it gets to track 4500/4500. There will be no repeats of the same physical file until every one has been played.

Of course if you cause a reshuffle (by stopping and restarting, changing play mode, manually selecting a new track, etc) then a new random list will be created which may contain things you have heard recently. The track counter would return back to 1/4500 whenever this happens. The frequency of reshuffles can be reduced using Settings > Library > Lists > No Reshuffle.

Andre

[Kloppstock]

On 3/28/2020 at 3:34 PM, andrewilley said:

The way Poweramp shuffles music is completely random. It shuffles the WHOLE of your requested category and makes an 'internal list' of everything that will be played - e.g. if you have 4,500 songs on your device and you enable Shuffle All Songs, it will start playing track at 1/4500 and continue until it gets to track 4500/4500. There will be no repeats of the same physical file until every one has been played.

Of course if you cause a reshuffle (by stopping and restarting, changing play mode, manually selecting a new track, etc) then a new random list will be created which may contain things you have heard recently. The track counter would return back to 1/4500 whenever this happens. The frequency of reshuffles can be reduced using Settings > Library > Lists > No Reshuffle.

Andre

What i ment was, i dont doubt it will eventually play the whole of my requested category, i ment that i suspect the code creates a hierarchy order were certain tracks act....as they have been favored to play early on

and not late everytime, and thereby create a repeat pattern, and that this happens over and over again. And maybe after you have clicked 4-5 times on shuffle to create a new pattern, the order starts to change, and rare tracks will be placed

first and the overplayed  tracks will be placed in queue instead. Thats the pattern i see.

In any case im going to change to No Reschuffle and see what it does.

 

[maxmp]

@Kloppstock Currently random ordering is not weighted. There are plans to add weighted random (which is less "randomy"), for example, with the preference to avoid recently played tracks or tracks from the same author, etc.

[andrewilley]

Random is random. That means it is quite possible to hear a song that you heard as track #10 in one session popping up as track #2 in the next shuffled sequence. They won't be in the same order as before of course, but they could show up at any time.

Andre

[Kloppstock]

On 4/1/2020 at 10:31 PM, maxmp said:

@Kloppstock Currently random ordering is not weighted. There are plans to add weighted random (which is less "randomy"), for example, with the preference to avoid recently played tracks or tracks from the same author, etc.

English is not my language, so i cant se  what "weight" means to this context?

I get reminded every day though that there is a sick overrepresentation of early playing for the same track, and the first click on shuffle just replace some newcomers in the order.

So you get moore or less crazy of the overplaying. Until this is resolved im going to click shuffle 10 times and see what composition list i get

[andrewilley]

"Weighting" means to give priority - or "weight" - to some tracks over others. For example in order to make it more likely for you to hear songs rating as 4+ stars, or to reduce the likelihood of you hearing recently-played tracks again. Poweramp has no facility to do this though, the shuffle process is truly random. However the nature of random means you may hear the same track again next time (through probably not in the exact same position in the list) or you may not.  The mind has a habit of noticing the occasions when this happens, and ignoring the times when it doesn't, though.

Andre

[Kloppstock]

On 4/3/2020 at 11:36 AM, andrewilley said:

"Weighting" means to give priority - or "weight" - to some tracks over others. For example in order to make it more likely for you to hear songs rating as 4+ stars, or to reduce the likelihood of you hearing recently-played tracks again. Poweramp has no facility to do this though, the shuffle process is truly random. However the nature of random means you may hear the same track again next time (through probably not in the exact same position in the list) or you may not.  The mind has a habit of noticing the occasions when this happens, and ignoring the times when it doesn't, though.

Andre

I see, even though PA dont have it built in, it could maybe perhaps have worked as a AI and developed a weightening system,and the  question becomes what fix shall we add to maybe prevent it from continue

You are wrong about the truly randomness and habitual sences clouding the judgment, this is a fact and it differs PA from alla other players

[andrewilley]

No, PA has not developed an AI of it's own to deliberately mess with your music listening.

If it is a "fact" please provide some objective evidence, as so far everything you have said is completely subjective. For example you could make a short playlist of ten songs and play them all in Shuffle Songs mode (with Repeat Off). Keep a record of the order they play in, and then reshuffle the list and listen again and try to determine any repeating patterns.

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

I think that "random"  has nothing to do with Poweramp specifically. I suspect a general function rnd(n) is used to randomise.

[andrewilley]

Not sure how Max does it, but in the "good old days" I always used to seed my randomise functions with a millisecond value from the system clock, just for a bit of extra mixedupness.

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

The way I implemented the random function in my app New Playlist Manager is as follows, first select all tracks which gives you a number x, then use this x to generate a random number. You need to use x to ensure you stay within the maximum value bounds