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.

What is very strange is that you always get about 80 or 90 "combed" songs no matter how many total tracks you have (unless you got down to 50 or less, duh!), which made me question the output, but I couldn't find any bugs at first glance.

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?

It does discrete album segments, assuming 10 "songs" for every "album", except perhaps the last (if you have an odd number). Put another way, it does consider "boundries" of albums.

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.

I'll see what I can do. I've been very bored at work recently so I should be able to mess with it in my down time on Monday. I also want to give my brain some time to think this through, as I didn't expect the results I got at all (though I guess that might be a good thing).