just curious here. how come empeg went with shuffling the entire playlist instead of simple randomizing the next track played like winamp does. is one better than the other?

jeremy

12 gig, green...

how come empeg went with shuffling the entire playlist instead of simple randomizing the next track played like winamp does.

As the player knows what the next few tracks will be, it can (a) cache the beginnings of them, so you can fast-forward a couple of times while it's frantically spinning the disk up, and (b) do funky stuff like Hate Next and Match Artist.

is one better than the other?

Yes, but I'm not telling you which.

Probably better still would be a compromise approach, so it knows the next few tracks (or more than a few if you've used Match Artist, or 1.1's new insert mode in Search, or if shuffle's turned off) -- but no further.

Lazy evaluation of shuffling lets you do what someone on a Wishlist thread was talking about recently: have (effectively) A, B and C playlists like a radio station, by which the tracks on A get played more often than B, which in turn get played more often than C.

If this happens at all, it'll be after 1.1.

Peter

Guess I've been missing some features. What is this "Hate Next" and "Match Artist" stuff?

Proud Owner of MK2 080000558 - 18gb Blue

Guess I've been missing some features. What is this "Hate Next" and "Match Artist" stuff?

Ah, well, for people who find it insufficiently challenging to remember all the principal functions of the remote, there are a few other functions on the number buttons. To see them at their best, you need to be in Now&Next Visual.

8 = replace next song with another upcoming song from the playlist at random ("Hate Next")

2 = replace next song with another upcoming song from the playlist by the same artist as the current song ("Match Artist"). If you keep on pressing Match Artist, it'll change the next-but-one, next-but-two, and so on until you run out of songs by that artist.

3 = Match Source (i.e. Match Album)

5 = Match Genre

6 = Match Year

(and 0 = Shuffle on/off, while we're at it)

I can never remember these, I had to look up the numbers in the source code. The New Remote will have them labelled.

I asked Mike whether there was logic behind that layout and he said "Ah, it goes Artist, Source, Genre, Year; they're in the order they appear in Emplode, except without the 1 and 4 keys".

The 1 and 4 keys don't do anything because people fumbling in the dark for the volume buttons on their remotes might have them the wrong way round.

Peter

A couple of things I wanted to add to this thread:

1) I didn't realize you were going to call the 8 key "hate next". I thought it was called "swap next". Besides, I sometimes choose to use the 8 key even though I love the upcoming song. Perhaps it's a NIN tune and my wife is in the car, for example.

2) I can't imagine why anyone would want the next song to be simply random. Having a static, genuinely shuffled playlist is so much better. This static playlist allows so many great software features: Duplicate removal, the ability to go back to a song you heard three songs ago, shuffle weighting, bookmarking, the list goes on and on. A true "deck of cards" shuffle is just The Right Thing.

(Now, if only we could get it to shuffle a little harder so I don't get clusters of the same artist...)

___________
Tony Fabris

(Now, if only we could get it to shuffle a little harder so I don't get clusters of the same artist...)

I second that (i know it's been hashed through before), cause yesterday i shuffled my entire playlist of 4000 or so songs and got 4 in a row from the same album on two seperate occasions!



|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

I second that (i know it's been hashed through before), cause yesterday i shuffled my entire playlist of 4000 or so songs and got 4 in a row from the same album on two seperate occasions!

For me, I tend to get "combed clusters" sporadically.

For example, I have a sum total of three Men At Work songs in the Empeg. Yesterday I got:

- Men At Work Song 1
- (random song)
- Men At Work Song 2
- (random song)
- Men At Work Song 3
- (random song)


___________
Tony Fabris

Hate Next on the number 8? Maybe they can call it "H8 Next(tm)" then? ... ugh.

Calvin "1m 50 133+, ... not"

A true "deck of cards" shuffle is just The Right Thing.

Deck of cards doesn't let you do A-list, B-list and C-list tracks -- each track gets played the same number of times. I for one have some songs I love on my player, some I don't mind listening to, and some I only want to listen to in an attempt to broaden my musical taste enough to like them.

Oh, and I checked and it's only called Hate Next in the source code. On the New Remote it's labelled "Swap".

Peter

In reply to:

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I can never remember these, I had to look up the numbers in the source code

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There's always my web page.

Nick.

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18Gb blue (now AR red) - s/n 080000299 (original queue position 8724)

(Now, if only we could get it to shuffle a little harder so I don't get clusters of the same artist...)

I actually quite like that "feature", though I would like the option of a more random shuffle sometimes.


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