Shuffle Feature Has Favouritism?

[kalo]

Say I have about 300 songs from different folders on my 900. What I noticed is that when I put the songs on suffle, the unit tends to play a select of 50 of those songs. There are some songs i've got that I rarely even hear, and there are some that come on almost all the time.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what is the cause of this? Is it just bad algorithm programming from sony?

Edited April 15, 2005 by kalo

[jadeclaw]

Bad algorithm I guess.

Programming a real good random number generator isn't easy.

[Breepee2]

Oh my god.....

They ARE a bunch of newB VisualBasic programmers at Sony..... If you can't write a random number generator, you shouldn't be placing devices on the market with such function....

[merkin51]

The shuffle feature on my JB3 was equally as bad as what kalo is describing, if not worse... haven't tried shuffle on my NH1 yet, hoping it's decent :/ But anyway, bad shuffling is definitely not just a Sony-issue, needless to say though it is incredibly annoying.

[streaml1ne]

Say I have about 300 songs from different folders on my 900. What I noticed is that when I put the songs on suffle, the unit tends to play a select of 50 of those songs. There are some songs i've got that I rarely even hear, and there are some that come on almost all the time.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what is the cause of this? Is it just bad algorithm programming from sony? 

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Reorder your groups in Sonic Stage every once and a while to semi-work around this.

[matrulesok]

Reorder your groups in Sonic Stage every once and a while to semi-work around this.

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But if your groups are in chronological order (e.g. albums from 1 band), then first off you're as a sad as me, and 2nd, this ruins your whole Obsesive Compulsive life!

[The_Stamp]

i set my play settings as shuffle->no repeat. that way, i will have listened to every song once before restarting the disc, and listening to it all again in a different order.

[matrulesok]

i set my play settings as shuffle->no repeat.  that way, i will have listened to every song once before restarting the disc, and listening to it all again in a different order.

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Ahaa - Very clever! So I assume then that fixes it!

[streaml1ne]

Ahaa - Very clever! So I assume then that fixes it!

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I don't think that works on the players. Maybe if you play within a group, but if you're playing tracks globally it will repeat even with repeat off.

[The_Stamp]

I'm not a programmer for nothing

[El Eddie]

I try to start to play the sequence from different tracks, not allways from track 1 at the beginning of the disc. I get more variation that way, but dont know why.

[BJ]

The only machine (ONLY) I've had that would never repeat shuffled tracks is my N10. Even on poweroff, it remembers what it's played and won't repeat. Built-in battery, maybe?

I've also noticed on my Sony deck at home that if I have, say, three Splashdown songs on a 40-song mix disc, the deck will play all three--randomly--back to back. Without fail. Next mix disc, all four U2 songs back to back, even if the four tracks are scattered across the disc. It's bizarre.

I don't know if it's incompetent programming so much as lazy (or money-saving) programming.

[MZ-NH1]

There use to be another thread like this, but I can’t find it.

I was in the car on the weekend on a 4 hr journey between states, and so I put my MZ-NH1 to Select Track randomly... Of the shuffle feature...

I have said this before, and I will say it again... it has a very strange way of randomising the songs!

If you start on song 1, it will then go 1,2,4,8,16,32,64.. And so on! Or close to it, so when you get to the end of your songs... say you have 150 songs.. It might get up to 128 or something, it will start from the beginning again!

I noticed this especially on the weekend :@

I was in the car, and within an hour of using the random play feature, I had heard more than 3 songs twice in the hour!

This is ridiculous!

Anyone know if Sony knows about this or what?

[Breepee2]

I kind of blame Apple always for their bad hardware part, iPod, Macs and so on, but geez....... Sony people just can't write software. Sonicstage, clean interfaces, random generators.....

Why o why don't they team up and create a killer device: The iMD.

[matrulesok]

There use to be another thread like this, but I can’t find it.

I was in the car on the weekend on a 4 hr journey between states, and so I put my MZ-NH1 to Select Track randomly... Of the shuffle feature...

I have said this before, and I will say it again... it has a very strange way of randomising the songs!

If you start on song 1, it will then go 1,2,4,8,16,32,64.. And so on! Or close to it, so when you get to the end of your songs... say you have 150 songs.. It might get up to 128 or something, it will start from the beginning again!

I noticed this especially on the weekend :@

I was in the car, and within an hour of using the random play feature, I had heard more than 3 songs twice in the hour!

This is ridiculous!

Anyone know if Sony knows about this or what?

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Was that suffle with repeat or without? I have got all my zz top albums on 1 himd, and had it on shuffle play without repeat all day today. Not one track has been repeated!

[bug80]

iMD

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Please noooooooooooo!

[MZ-NH1]

I was talking about with shuffle ON, my MD will repeat songs an hour into listening to it!

I was now the only person with this problem on an MZ-NH1...

You put it on shuffle, and it seems to shuffle to the next double number (2,4,8,16,32....)

Extremely strange! And very annoying, because you will always hear some of the 1st 10 songs (Track 1-10) at least twice!

[matrulesok]

I was talking about with shuffle ON, my MD will repeat songs an hour into listening to it!

I was now the only person with this problem on an MZ-NH1...

You put it on shuffle, and it seems to shuffle to the next double number (2,4,8,16,32....)

Extremely strange!  And very annoying, because you will always hear some of the 1st 10 songs (Track 1-10) at least twice!

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It appears you mis-understood. I dont know how the nh1 works, but on the nh900, once you turn shuffle on you get the option "repeat on" or "repeat off". It appears that if you select "repeat off" it plays every song on the disc once, in a random order. You can then restart the disc if required. I hope this is clearer!

[MZ-NH1]

Where abouts is that option on your MD?

Never heard about that on the NH1...?

[kalo]

What about the 2nd gen? Do people get the same problem?

[matrulesok]

Where abouts is that option on your MD?

Never heard about that on the NH1...?

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Once you select shuffle, it gives you 2 options, "repeat on" and "repeat off".

[MZ-NH1]

Don't have that on the NH1

[hkey_barker]

I would like to know if SonicStage can create a random playlist. Then I could dump this to my NH1 and not have to experience the bad shuffling. This might improve battery life as the laser doesn't have to skip around as much.

Any ideas???

[Weaves]

I kind of blame Apple always for their bad hardware part, iPod, Macs and so on, but geez....... Sony people just can't write software. Sonicstage, clean interfaces, random generators.....

Why o why don't they team up and create a killer device: The iMD.

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This may not be exactly true. Here is a link to an NPR audio clip discussing iTunes playing favorites.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4473363

If it doesn't work, go to NPR.org and type in shuffle iTunes for the search.

Weaves

[The Low Volta]

This might improve battery life as the laser doesn't have to skip around as much.

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as far as I remember, feel free to correct me Dex , md-data (and music) is kept in blocks spread over the disc. So the laser wouldn't be jumping around more when playing in shuffle than in normal...

ok, it's nitpicking , I agree, but there's no need to let a mistake spread

[dex Otaku]

as far as I remember, feel free to correct me Dex    , md-data (and music) is kept in blocks spread over the disc. So the laser wouldn't be jumping around more when playing in shuffle than in normal...

Tracks are written contiguously on the first pass.

When tracks are deleted, the space taken by them is opened. This creates fragmentation when new tracks are written; continuous play requires the MD / Hi-MD system's read buffers in order to work. Fragmentation is one thing that makes the read head skip back and forth.

Rearranging the track order on a disc will also cause the head to skip back and forth during reading.

Random play has the same effect.

A disc that has been written in-order using SS, and never rearranged, will [nominally] play continuously from beginning to end without having to seek back and forth at all.

A disc on random play will be skipping back and forth to find each and every track. Add possible fragmentation to that and you've got a lot more seeking activity than a freshly written disc playing normally from beginning to end.

And yes, seeking uses power.

[The Low Volta]

I stand (partially) corrected...

a day in which we've learned something is a day well spent!

[Weaves]

Tracks are written contiguously on the first pass. 

When tracks are deleted, the space taken by them is opened.  This creates fragmentation when new tracks are written; continuous play requires the MD / Hi-MD system's read buffers in order to work.  Fragmentation is one thing that makes the read head skip back and forth.

Rearranging the track order on a disc will also cause the head to skip back and forth during reading.

Random play has the same effect.

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Dex,

This makes sense now. I had recorded a workout MD in LP of about 30 songs. The original was done on my MXD-D5C. I know I deleted some tracks later. The playback is on my MZ-N707. When I set it to random mode, it skips on me. Almost always at the same point (i.e middle of previously removed (now new) second track).

This seems to be the only case of skipping on a MD that I can remember. This is going back to '97. My original was the Sharp MS722.

Is the disc now bad? at least from the perspective of that point in the second track.

Thanks

Weaves