Randomisation question

[slackjack]

Hi Jim/all,

Before I upload my mp3's to my player, I randomise sort them and add a numerical prefix to keep them sorted. But often when playing them, the player will still play the same song title (by a different artist) one after the other. e.g It'll play 2345Jack Jones - Love me do.mp3 straight after 45Kerry Smith - Love me do.mp3. Is it sorting from the ID3 Tag?

I don't mind having the same song/different artist duplicated but it gets a bit frustrating hearing it two times in a row. Any suggestions? Other than that, life is good at the moment.

Cheers

John

[jimwillsher]

Hi John,

Random is random. If you have number 1,2,3,4,5 then 1,5,3,4,2 is a random sequence - but so is 1,2,3,4,5! Random does not say that a number sequence MUST be different to the original list - if the random sorting ends up that way then it's still random, it just doesn't look it.

The actual sorting, when using the random feature, is done by reading through every item in the list, generating two random numbers, and comparing them with each other. If the first random is greater than the second random, the item in the list is swapped with the next one. So the "random" sortng is not done by ID tag, or name, or date, or in fact any of the attributes that you see, it's done using two randomly generated numbers.

Hope this helps. Sorry, I've waffled a bit


Jim

[slackjack]

Hi Jim,

I'll think it through - thanks for taking the time to explain it.

J

[slackjack]

Hi Jim,

I think my query is solved. I was hearing more and more songs with the same song title being played back to back (with different artists) too many times for me to accept that "randomisation" is "randomisation". Then I checked my song with the file name 4211 - Get back.mp3 (the 4211 being a prefix number assigned after a random sort on your program) against song number 4211 being played on the MP3 player. Guess what, they were different songs.

So, the mp3 player doesn't play the songs in file name order (even though I've got it playing in "normal" mode). It somehow plays the songs by song title. Thus the discrepancy.

How sick am I to get a kick out of this?

John (Australia)

[jimwillsher]

When is random not random? When the MP3 player chooses to ignore random

Glad you got the bottom of it, though sorry to hear that it's not the right answer....



Jim