Please make the shuffle algorithm more random. Because as it now it is very unlikely that it is completely random, also it seems to be susceptible to a sort of feedback reinforcement (i.e. it might start of playing a certain track a few times on random at first, but these random plays adds up to some sort of favourite rank, and therefore the algorithm starts playing it more often, and so on…)? Or at least provide a few user options.
Furthermore it would be nice if it was an option available to treat parts of an consecutive composition as purely individual tracks (especially, or only, when shuffling). As it very unlikely that I would like to hear, for instance, the full 8h composition rather than just one part of it, when shuffling my library.
I concur with treating the parts of a consecutive composition as purely individual tracks. I have the album ‘Amelie’ by Yann Tiersen, which is composed of 20 tracks that are considered as a single performance. When I use the ‘Play All’ functionality to randomly play music from my library, it will play the entire performance instead of just one of its tracks. I find it pretty annoying to cycle through the entire performance.
Agreed. This is my biggest bugbear with the otherwise wonderful Roon.
Also, the random play on all tracks has an annoying habit of landing on one or two tracks almost every time. I’ve got over 40,000 tracks but have heard Vashti Bunyans ‘Diamond Day’ more times than I’d wish to.
For a week or so, I started from scratch with a clean library. I’ve “unpicked” all tracks, no favorites, no nothing. As I play through my library by going to ‘Tracks > Play All’ and start “picking” and “liking” tracks, I noticed that these tracks will be played a lot earlier in the queue and a lot more frequently, up to to point where it starts replaying these songs even before songs that have never been played before.
This seems to contradict the implied (?) ‘Play All’ behavior. when a track has been played, liked or picked, it reinforces the chances of being played again, even before an unplayed track. I would expect that a track is only played once in a ‘Play All’ cycle.
(re-post. sorry I accidentally deleted my post)
Thanks for pointing this out. I’m also very frustrated with a shuffle mode behavior. In my case whether that tracks are favored or not, same tracks are played repeatedly while playing all library in shuffle mode, in very short period of time. It’s very annoying.
Currently it’s a dumb way but the only way to play tracks completely random without iteration is, put all tracks that you want o play in a queue and then play it with shuffle mode on.
But I don’t like it. I want more intelligent playlist. I want to set some conditions such as “do not play if played in the last # of days”, that allows tracks to come up again sooner than wait for whole library but not too soon.
My suggestion is the ability to “customize” the random parameters . . . e.g., a slider that lets you select previously played tracks more or less frequently, same for recently played tracks (including the ability to define what = recently played). A toggle for treating tracks as part of a composition or as separate tracks.
And perhaps a “grouping” function that allows us to tell Roon to play a certain number of similar tracks by artist, genre, etc. before moving on to a dissimilar track.
If i can allow another data point. I have a bookmark for a “focus” on about 10 classical subgenres which contain about 500 albums.
Issues:
I select play and have two options - Play or Start Radio. I see no difference between these options. In both cases there is no que. I que of tracks would be GREAT for one or the other option! Also, what exactly is the difference between Play and Start Radio in this example?
I would also LOVE if they played randomly. As is, out of the 500 albums, i see 8-12 constantly in front. Very frustrating. Perhaps what i think of random, the ROON folks think of as “structured” where a following track needs to be similar and related to the previous track? If so, cool with me, but let us choose between random and structured.
YES for CHOICE of random play. Let us choose to randomly play by album, work or track!
I know there has been other discussions on the above and i have read ROON confirming support for more randomness.
Could ROON let us know if the 3rd point – choice of random play – is in the cards?
Ha…Glad to see this topic appear on the forum. I’ve been meaning to write a similar post for about 6mo now but always forget to do so…until…the next time I choose Random playback within ROON and am reminded again how much I wish the Random algorithm being used was more intelligent
In an attempt to try and make playback more Random than what is offered today I have built large Playlists outside of ROON and then had the other software randomize the list before saving it as an .M3U file. When selecting that Playlist I would then choose Random again within ROON in hopes of randomizing it even further. It works for the most part but as others have mentioned, ROON seems to try and outsmart the already random list and ends up picking the same songs and order on many occasions.
I vote for the use of or inclusion of some sort of Entropy factors being taken into consideration by the program when Playback begins. This way the queue should be generated in a truly random fashion and no other outside influences should be used during Playback (such as previously chosen favorite tags, most played album history or most played Genre history…etc)
Bringing this post back from the dead to see if/when ROON expects to make some forward progress on feature of this thread topic?
I’m running Build 1.3 (262) on a Ubuntu Core. Its been a bit over a year from my last post and this non-random playback behavior still appears to exist.
I should clarify something though, when I say random playback. This could be within a given Playlist only, at the Root of my entire library, within a Tagged Playlist only, within a specific Genre only or any other combination one could try and use it.
This request clearly must be fairly difficult to implement otherwise it would have already been done long ago.
Here’s an alternative in case a real random option is not dooable for whatever reason or another. Maybe create a button in settings that turns off past playback history or anything else that may be responsible for the software attempting to pretend its smarter then the end user.
I still like the idea of entropy. Maybe use the internal Accelerometer Chip on the mobile device that is acting as the remote. Have the User give it a good “Shake” or “Twist” then click the Shuffle button.
