Truth is, I spent so much time listening to Rush before I got the empeg, I actually really like hearing a variety of music other than Rush now. Who remembers this post? That small selection of 6 discs described in that post almost always had 2-4 Rush albums in it. It's not like I got SICK of Rush or anything, it's just that I really enjoy the extreme variety of songs on my player right now.

Something you'll probably notice, Jeff, is that the player tends to do a lot of "two-fers" in plain shuffle mode.

For example, I have a sum total of two songs on the player by Men At Work (out of 2000+ songs). In a random shuffle, I will sometimes get those two songs to play within a couple of songs of each other, like this:

- random song
- Men At Work song
- random song
- Men At Work song.
- random song.

Sometimes they'll even play back to back. So it's more than just having a lot of Rush on your player, I think there's actually something up with the shuffle (in my opinion). The empeg guys insist that this is just an interesting statistical anomaly, and I will concede that they could very well be right. Looking at things like this essay on large numbers makes me question my perceptions.

I didn't catch whether or not you're using 2.0beta7 or not. But when you do finally go up to a 2.0x version of the software, you will find some new shuffle modes such as "least recently played", which will help things seem to appear in a more natural order.

Otherwise, I recommend you expand your horizons and just get more non-Rush tracks onto the player. Start with Yes, Peter Gabriel, and Steve Morse, then work your way outwards towards more different stuff like Tori Amos, Brian Setzer, Depeche Mode, and Was (Not Was). Remember the old late-great syrinx.yyz.com Rush fan site? Shortly before they went offline, they were running a section that said "if you've only got Mars On Your Horizon, maybe it's time to broaden it" (referencing the song Red Lenses). They ran short clips of other bands that Rush fans might like, and I thought it was the coolest idea in the world. I actually got into Lenny Kravitz and a couple of other bands thanks to that site.

Something you're going to find is that owning the empeg makes you actually buy more CDs than you otherwise would have. I know that's what it's done to me. Suddenly I'm actually able to listen to the new CDs I purchase without feeling any pressure. Just keep piling new music onto the player and eventually Rush won't come up in the shuffle as often as it's coming up now.