iPod shuffle is a furphy

[Dobson73]

I'm sure there have been other threads about this but I can't seem to find them.

I have an iPod and have nearly 1200 tracks in my 5 star playlist and around 15Gb overall. Of those 1200 tracks, when using shuffle I repeatedly get 2-3 tracks coming up at least once, if not twice a day along with tracks that each day I think, "not this one again?" whilst there are tracks that I have to manually search out if I want them played.

iPod's "random" is bullshit. I love the music but I am sick to death of hearing the same tracks come up over and over again while I know there are 100's of pieces of music that just never get played. I shouldn't have to keep flicking to the next track, the next track, the next track to finally come up with something I haven't listened to for a while.

This is just a whinge. I'd love an explanation but.......???

 

[Corny]

Computer generated random numbers are not random but pseudo random. they repeat and the sequence is often predictable.
It is possible to make them "quite" random, but the nearer you come to that goal, the more computing power/memory is needed. Some media players come with a setting to allow more "random" permutation, iTunes or the iPod doesn't seem to be one of them for true random numbers you need to analyze something more random .. like atmospheric noise.

but also - you have a little bit of a misunderstanding here. random does not mean that the number cannot occur twice. or thrice. or more often. an occurrence does not remove the number from the pool. randomness has no memory, once you got song 233 the chance that it would play again are equally high as the chance for song 12 or any other song.

to prevent that effect there are also random number generators or media players which actively DO remove a number from the pool after it occured. but the iPod isn't one of them

 

[Ekim23]

WOW

nice explanation Corn !!

 

[sexsomniac]

to prevent that effect there are also random number generators or media players which actively DO remove a number from the pool after it occured. but the iPod isn't one of them

Ipod touch does have that function if you use shuffle function on an album. Each song, in the album, will never get repeated. It will stop playing once it's done playing all. But I'm not sure if "shuffle" works the same way in playlist as it does in an individual album.

 

[Dobson73]

WOW

nice explanation Corn !!

What he said!

Thanks, Corny. It doesn't cure my frustration but it certainly helps.

I find myself already wishing my iPod would wear out so I could buy something new. I'd never buy another one, not just for the "non" shuffle issue but just an overall dissatisfaction with it. Maybe I'm too demanding?

 

[andysayshi]

Note that, assuming you use iTunes to put music onto your iPod, there's a metadata tag for each track that defines whether a track should be included in shuffle-mode or not.

Plug your iPod into the computer, then right click on the suspect tracks, choose Info, and check to see it hasn't been excluded from Shuffle mode.

 

[gdude30]

Wow I never knew that O_O"

God I love the apple geniuses at JUB.

Another thing you can try is to make playlists and than shuffling the playlist.

Or doing a genius playlist if your iPod supports that. All you have to do is in iTunes go to the bottom right corner and click the atom like icon. It will set up genius by going through your music and than deciding what sounds alike and will get information from other users as well. It does sound invasive but it works. You can also access it by going to the toolbar and clicking store and than turning on genuis there.

It's really useful if you like a certain song. By doing a genius playlist of it the music it gathers sounds like what you are listening too. It works better if you have more music on your computer though. I have a shit load of music. And if you have different genres or sub genres too it identifies that as well. It's kinda like Pandora except it uses music you already have.

And of course...shows you music that you don't have and recommends you buying it. But you can easily hide that side bar.

Just a suggestion.