What I found is that the combing effect seems to be relatively low. Much lower than what I've seen on the Empeg.

Actually, if I'm reading the output of this program correctly, it's kind of showing me that a certain amount of combing is to be expected.

I didn't catch how it decides what an "album" is, I assume it's 10-15 sequential numbers? If so, does your algorithm count any number close to ANY 15th-or-less neighbor without considering album boundaries, or does it split the list up into discrete album segments and then decide from that list?

For example: If it sees two guys from the list "A B C D E F G H I " close together, say D and G close together, it counts that as a "hit", but what if the album boundary was between E and F? Then it shouldn't be considered a hit.

I know that from the point of view of a statistical sample, the album boundary is irrelevant. But from our perception of whether or not D and G are unnaturally paired, it's critical. And that's what we're testing: Is it normal for us to perceive that kind of clustering and combing in a random shuffle?

This discussion has been VERY enlightening so far! In fact, if we can fancy-up that Delphi program a bit more (make it more obvious what it's measuring), I'll do a FAQ entry on this topic and link the EXE from the FAQ.