The Shuffle Function

[henrycow]

Okay, I think it's about time to start a thread specifically dedicated to the shuffle bug - what it is, how it manifests itself, why is it doing what it's doing, how should it work, where did it all go wrong, and the like.
With all of this talk about flash in 2.49, I think we need to raise the profile of the shuffle function to have any chance of a fix in this upgrade.
I have asked about this twice on the Cowonglobal Q&A and only got one bog standard reply - they just don't seem too interested.

[doniago]

How about mentioning what the bug actually is? If you don't know, why'd you start a thread about it? :)

[TedJ]

I'll agree with you, Henry. The lackluster shuffle on my iRiver was very annoying. It was one of the major reasons for my move to Rockbox.

That being said, I believe there are other bugs I'd like to see fixed first... like the track order bug for vorbis tracks using the Music Library. Since 98%+ of my music is vorbis, this is a very big deal for me.

In the interim I'll continue using filetree browsing.

[henrycow]

Thank you pointy mod. As best as i can explain, it goes like this. i have about 50 albums on the unit and 60ish on the SD card. The shuffle plays only what's on the unit, usually confined to the first 20 folders as they appear listed alphabetically on the browser, with a peak at folder 1, and again at about album 9 or 10. It very rarely plays anything above folder 20, and nothing on the SD card. If you browse to a track on the SD card, play it and start the shuffle from there, it seems to be OK for a few tracks, playing stuff from the SD card etc, but after a few minutes, it seems to gravitate back down to the same old rut and stays there. Not only does it play the same folders, but it has a preference for certain tracks, which it will play two or three times in a short period, and sometimes even plays the same track consecutively.

If everyone shares their experience of how it plays for them, then someone clever might be able to figure out what it's doing in technical terms. That's why I started the thread, and also so I don't have to moan on about it on every other thread, which I was tending to do.

[adr]

The shuffle is horribly broken, but I picked the 2nd option, because I think it's even more important to fix the problems with the music browser, such as selecting one track and being played another one entirely.

[Judge]

Where is the 'No, there's nothing wrong with the shuffle on my D2' poll option? I'd go for that.

[henrycow]

Judge - you are indeed fortunate ! Can you tell us which firmware you are running - the shuffle seems adequate on 2.21 but messed up on subsequent releases. If your shuffle does work - plays tracks from the unit and SD card with a reasonable spread, then perhaps there is something about the way tracks are organised which affects the shuffle. Have you got stuff in folders, or just one big folder, and are you using any system for id3 tagging ? I thought originally that it was the tags on my tracks cos I had some that were blank, so I used mp3tag to edit them all, but I don't have any standard format eg 01-trackname-artist etc. Your input here would be very much appreciated !

[ManchesterBaby]

The shuffle does indeed suck, at least since fw versions after 2.21. It tends to pick tracks from a few albums/folder more highly over others. It seems to have improved since 2.41 (which was truly awful) but it's still pretty crappy. Besides, technically a "shuffle" feature should NEVER play the same song twice until ALL of the other tracks have been played - if it does then it should be labelled "Random".

Even so, why it can't just pick a pseudo-random number between 1 and the total number of tracks on the device (as displayed in the top right of the screen) and play that one is beyond me. The random selection procedure should be completely separate from anything to do with track name/folder/whatever - it should just pick a random number (the tracks ARE indexed by number in the player already, as evidenced by the number in the top right, so it should be dead easy) and play it! Unfortunatly this appears not to be the case...

Come on Cowon: it's so easy I could write this with my eyes closed!

/rant over

[Judge]

Judge - you are indeed fortunate ! Can you tell us which firmware you are running - the shuffle seems adequate on 2.21 but messed up on subsequent releases. If your shuffle does work - plays tracks from the unit and SD card with a reasonable spread, then perhaps there is something about the way tracks are organised which affects the shuffle. Have you got stuff in folders, or just one big folder, and are you using any system for id3 tagging ? I thought originally that it was the tags on my tracks cos I had some that were blank, so I used mp3tag to edit them all, but I don't have any standard format eg 01-trackname-artist etc. Your input here would be very much appreciated !I use folder browsing with the following filetree structure: Music\A-C\Alanis Morissette\Jagged Little Pill\01 All I Really Want.mp3
Tags: ID3v1 and ID3v2.3, artist, tracktitle, tracknumber, album, sometimes genre and year. (P.S. I'm anal about my tags, I have no files with missing tags, all my filenames are in the same format as well, as per the above format)
4GB on my D2 and a 2GB SD card. Same filetree structure on the SD card.
If I use shuffle I use settings: Boundry: All, Shuffle: Yes, Repeat: All.
I've used 2.20, 2.21, 2.41 and now 2.46. I haven't noticed differences between their shuffle modes.

What I'm sure of:
- My shuffle does not repeat the same song
- My shuffle definitely spread between the D2 and the SD card.

What might be the case but I just haven't noticed:
- The shuffle might omit or not play some artists/folders, but I have to say I haven't noticed that.

I hope that helps.

[Rosiu]

Mine works ok as well.

[Dicky Dave]

Ok. I just did a shuffle on my D2 and noted down the tracks played. Here are the first 52 tracks. I have over 3000 songs on the D2 (250+ albums). As you can see there are numerous repeats and some albums appear to be favoured over others. In fact, this is probably better than it usually is:


Regurgitator - The Song Formly Known As
Fun Things - Time Enough For Love
Carlos Gardel - Apure Delantro Buey
Rita Marley Anderson - A De Pon Dem
Billy Bragg - A Lover Sings
Ed Kuepper - The King Of Euro-Disco
The Velvet Underground - Beginning To See The Light
Johnny Cash - A Legend In My Time
Howlin' Wolf - Baby How Long
Dirty Three - As It Happened
Dirty Three - At The Bar
Blondie - Atomic
The Chemical Brothers - Asleep From Day
New Order - Kiss Of Death
Nirvana - All Apologies
The Avalanches - Avalanche Rock
Dirty Three - A Strange Holiday
Rita Marley Anderson - A De Pon Dem
The Celibate Rifles - 24 Hours (SOS)
Terry Hall & Mustaq - A Gathering Storm
The Go-Betweens - Bachelor Kisses
The Sunnyboys - Alone With You
The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck
Derrick Harriot - Answer Me My Darling
The Saints - I'm Standed
The Cramps - Womanneed
Melodians - Last Train To Expo '67
The Skatalites - Addis Ababa
Joe Higgs - Song My Enemies Sing
Lou Reed - Andy's Chest
The Triffids - Wide Open Road
Leonard Cohen - Tower Of Song
The Drones - Bird In A Church
Dirty Three - Alice Wading
Kill Bill Soundtrack - Battle Without Honour
The Saints - I'm Stranded
The Donnas - Big Rig
Dirty Three - Alice Wading
Lou Reed - New York Telephone Conversation
The Donnas - All Messed Up
The Pogues - Billy's Bones
Howlin' Wolf - Evil
The Skatalites - Addis Ababa
The Go-Betweens - Bachelor Kisses
Kill Bill Soundtrack - Battle Without Honour
The Drones - Bird In A Church
Nirvana - All Apologies
The Celibate Rifles - Back In The Red
Ed Kuepper - The King Of Euro-Disco
Terry Hall & Mustaq - A Gathering Storm
Celebate Rifles - Back In The Red
Blondie - Atomic

It usually seems to start off OK but degenerates fairly rapidly.

EDIT: Continuing on, and "The Donnas - All Messed Up" has now been played 5 times, once consecutively.

[ManchesterBaby]

Yeah, that looks very much like the behaviour i get on my player. I wonder if it still behaves weirdly (preferring some tracks over others, consecutive repeats etc) when within a single folder boundary? I might give it a try sometime...

[henrycow]

sorry - this is off topic - I just had to commend dicky Dave on his excellent taste !

[henrycow]

I can see a predominance of tracks / artists starting with the letters A - H in Dicky Daves list - are these tracks mainly drawn from the first 20 albums/folders on your D2 ?
Judge may be on to something with his approach to tagging, which from a previous post, (just discovered) goes like this:

- A-C
-- Alanis Morissette
--- Jagged Little Pill
---- 01 All I Really Want
---- 02 You Oughta Know
---- etc
--- MTV Unplugged
--- etc
-- Anna Nalick
-- etc
- D-F
- etc

Judges uniform system may be the key to a more random shuffle - some more time on MP3tag might be in order. Thank you all for your time on this issue !

[Dicky Dave]

All of my tags are uniform. After purchasing the D2, I re-ripped all my music in OGG using the same tool and I am very anal about my tags too. I have not organised the folders into A-C, D-F, etc. Instead, I have a flat structure like:

Nirvana - Bleach
Nirvana - Nevermind

to have the albums of a particular artist grouped together. The settings I use are: Boundary: All, Shuffle: Yes, Repeat: No. I found that if I used Folders, shuffle only played tracks on either the internal memory or the SDHC, depending on where I navigated to. So, I now go to 'Tracks' and start playing from there.

henrycow, for whatever reason my CD collection is heavily weighted towards artists in the A-N range so perhaps that explains what you saw. Oh, and thanks for the compliment on my music taste.

What I find bizarre is that the D2 always seems to select the same tracks on the same albums. For example, it always plays "Armagideon Time" from "The Story Of The Clash" album, never fails. I can't recall it ever selecting another track from this album.

[Dicky Dave]

I can see a predominance of tracks / artists starting with the letters A - H in Dicky Daves list - are these tracks mainly drawn from the first 20 albums/folders on your D2 ?
Actually, I think you might be on to something. This morning the D2 has only played tracks by artists starting with 'B' and some tracks from a 'various artists' compilation. As mentioned before, I have all of my album titles set to:

<Artist> - <Album>

and so the tracks by artists starting with 'B' are at the very beginning of the list and the compilation is 'Various Artists - Rock N Roll Disease' which is the third last album alphabetically. And as I type on comes 'Bob Dylan' just to re-enforce the theory. And now the next track is from another compilation towards the end of the list.

And this time I tried something different. Rather than navigating to 'Tracks' or 'Albums' to start the shuffle off, I tried 'Genre' but it appears that if anything it is worse this way. So, I agree that there is a tendency to play tracks towards the start and end of the tracks selected to be shuffled. Oh, and now we have 'Blondie'.

[Lukekeeeee]

i was wondering if these "songs repeat" and "limited shuffle range" problems are present in the 2.50 final firmware.

and if they are, are they only in id3 browsing? or are they in file tree browsing too?

[ManchesterBaby]

Seems fixed to me with 3.50b or 3.50 and presumably 2.50 too. There's some discussion on the shuffle feature here: http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15849