Shuffle keeps playing same folders and albums?

[phangtonpower]

Hi, 

I've been using Poweramp for years now. I've always used the shuffle option to play over a thousand albums stored on my micro sd without issue. It wasn't perfect, but it shuffled enough to keep me happy. Recently it keeps playing the same folders and albums. It will fix it self for a little bit if I delete the app on my phone then download it again, but will go back after a day to same albums and folders. It doesn't matter which option I pick in the library either. If I let it go for a few days it will all of a sudden not play tracks at all and say that the file is corrupted. Is there any fix for this?

[Bencherished]

Did you change your sd card? Because what is happening here is, there are multiple corrupted files which Poweramp can not read, so it's only playing the few uncorrupted, that's why you are hearing same songs.

If you have a PC, try the sd card on it, if same issue occur, backup the sd card, and format it, then move files back. 

Don't forget to sort out the corrupted files while moving. 

Bencherished 

[andrewilley]

Shuffle always builds a complete random order of everything available to it. Usually that would be the whole Library, unless you are shuffling a smaller subset such as a Playlist.

However as @Bencherished  has said, if you have corruption on your storage you may find some songs are being skipped, which would bias the playback order. If too many files get skipped, playback will stop.

This could also be caused by an out-of-date Library. If you have moved or renamed large number of files or folders, the old entries could still be present in the PA Library but as unplayable items. Try doing PA Settings=>Library=>FULL Rescan and see if that helps get rid of any phantom songs (check the song count before and after doing this).

Andre

[phangtonpower]

5 hours ago, Bencherished said:

Did you change your sd card? Because what is happening here is, there are multiple corrupted files which Poweramp can not read, so it's only playing the few uncorrupted, that's why you are hearing same songs.

If you have a PC, try the sd card on it, if same issue occur, backup the sd card, and format it, then move files back. 

Don't forget to sort out the corrupted files while moving. 

Bencherished 

I haven't changed my card. I did try the sd card on my PC after finding a corrupted file on my phone. It did not work on my PC either. While it was in the PC I tried finding more corrupted files and could not find any. Way to many to go through. I put it back in my phone. Everything is working fine again. I guess I'll have to wait until it happens again to find those corrupted files. The frequency it was happening on the phone  before was it would be at least 20 tracks before it would play something, so I thought it would be easy to find bad files on my PC, so I'm not really getting why it all of a sudden decides that a file is corrupted.   

[phangtonpower]

4 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Shuffle always builds a complete random order of everything available to it. Usually that would be the whole Library, unless you are shuffling a smaller subset such as a Playlist.

However as @Bencherished  has said, if you have corruption on your storage you may find some songs are being skipped, which would bias the playback order. If too many files get skipped, playback will stop.

This could also be caused by an out-of-date Library. If you have moved or renamed large number of files or folders, the old entries could still be present in the PA Library but as unplayable items. Try doing PA Settings=>Library=>FULL Rescan and see if that helps get rid of any phantom songs (check the song count before and after doing this).

Andre

I try doing a rescan every time this happens, but it only seems to reset if I delete the app and reinstall. I haven't moved or done any major rearranging. I do also check the number of files has changed when I do  rescan. It will say about 35,000 files, but when it goes all wanky, it wont even play any where near the amount of files it says it has in the library.

 

I did change phones recently. Could that be the issue? I've never had any issues when changing phones before. 

Edited June 30, 2022 by phangtonpower

[andrewilley]

Although it might take a while, I would suggest backing up anything you need from your SD Card, reformat it, and then copy everything back onto the card again. If your music collection is already stored identically on your PC (same folder layout too) it would be better to copy the files back from the original master copies. That should deal with any questions about files that got corrupted over time.

If you changed phones and your old database got restored, then there could still be invalid entries in the Library database. Although a FULL Rescan (not just the routine update rescan) should correct that, it does still retain some information for restoring things like ratings and play counts. However you can also manually back these up using PA's own Export Settings/Data option (tick to export Playlists too) which would allow you to fully clear all music database entries and start again. Go into Settings=>Library=>Music Folders and untick everything and tap 'Save' (you may need to leave a single empty folder somewhere ticked to allow you to Save the setting). Then once PA shows zero songs, go back into Music Folders and enable the folder for your music collection again and let it all scan back in. The restore anything you backed up (if necessary). Another way to do it would be to clear app data for Poweramp and let is start as a fresh app (that would clear cached cover art too).

Andre

[phangtonpower]

4 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Although it might take a while, I would suggest backing up anything you need from your SD Card, reformat it, and then copy everything back onto the card again. If your music collection is already stored identically on your PC (same folder layout too) it would be better to copy the files back from the original master copies. That should deal with any questions about files that got corrupted over time.

If you changed phones and your old database got restored, then there could still be invalid entries in the Library database. Although a FULL Rescan (not just the routine update rescan) should correct that, it does still retain some information for restoring things like ratings and play counts. However you can also manually back these up using PA's own Export Settings/Data option (tick to export Playlists too) which would allow you to fully clear all music database entries and start again. Go into Settings=>Library=>Music Folders and untick everything and tap 'Save' (you may need to leave a single empty folder somewhere ticked to allow you to Save the setting). Then once PA shows zero songs, go back into Music Folders and enable the folder for your music collection again and let it all scan back in. The restore anything you backed up (if necessary). Another way to do it would be to clear app data for Poweramp and let is start as a fresh app (that would clear cached cover art too).

Andre

Copying everything back on to my SD card as we speak. We'll see how it goes.

 

Thanks for the help!

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, phangtonpower said:

Copying everything back on to my SD card as we speak. We'll see how it goes.

At least that will remove one possible source of your problems.

Andre

[phangtonpower]

On 7/1/2022 at 3:12 AM, andrewilley said:

At least that will remove one possible source of your problems.

Andre

It's been a week and seems to be all good. A few other glitches, but as long as the shuffle works.

Thanks for the help!!