Why can’t Roon sort this and make it a default to play albums in order? There have been so many threads about this it is unbelievable. Trying to find the “unshuffle” button/icon is so hard and frustrating.
Cue lots of answers of “it’s easy etc” if it is so easy then why are there so many threads asking/complaining about it. Sort this out Roon. Please.
The default is to play an album in order. Shuffle by default would be nuts! Tell us what you are doing and we can tell you what’s happening and how to make it do what you need. Clearly something is wrong.
I always listen to full albums. They always play in order from first song to last song. I frequently listen to several albums by one band or performer in a row. I have never clicked on shuffle, so maybe that’s why I don’t see this problem.
I have never ever switched to shuffle but every now and then it just comes, it then takes ages to figure out how to switch it off. Just put the “shuffle” button in a prominent place on the album and this would not be a problem.
In reply to Danny, I just go to Roon, press play and it shuffles, I eventually find the unshuffle button, press it and it plays okay, then when I visit Roon again, the same.
The problem is that the shuffle button is only available on the queue screen.
If shuffle is activated and you are in an album view and want to play it unshuffled you have to click a lot: go to queue screen, click shuffle button, go back to your album, click play.
That you can’t see in album view, if shuffle is activated, don’t make it better. I cannot remember how often I started to play an album and it don’t play in order. Very frustrating.
Imho shuffle should be automaticly diabled if you click ‘play now’ on an album. All other play modes or playing single tracks should let the shuffle mode unchanged.
Or the shuffle button should be in the footer, so you can always see the shuffle mode.
Queue shuffle is such an uncommonly used feature we decided to move it to the queue and off the main footer.
Those people who turn it on, probably would figure out how to turn it off. in my opinion it’s not a very useful feature, but we didn’t want to break backwards compatibility with the users that did use it.
I suspect James_Fitzgerald is correct. I mainly play my library on shuffle because I like the variety. When I want to listen to an album it always plays from the beginning in correct order.
For me it is an important feature and I use it often. I have two main use cases.
Background music, radio or playlists or subset of my library with mood specific focus, plus adding single tracks manualy - shuffle on
Listening to albums - shuffle off
I have to generally agree. I don’t often use shuffle but when I do I find it catches me out the next time I play and I have to think “how do I turn this thing off”. Roon doesn’t often make me have to think like this.
I never use “Shuffle play” but for some reason, every now and again it seems to be activated. On my Mac Book Pro, bottom right corner there is the shuffle symbol but it is inactive, nothing happens when my cursor hovers over it. I did eventually find it in the queue menu, but surely, if it is on the main page and anywhere where one can initiate the playing of music, then everyone is happy. I never use it but understand that there are people that enjoy the feature.
I tend to agree that 1) shuffle is a useful feature and 2) it can be very confusing how it is turned on or off.
I would suggest that – instead of changing the shuffle icon to a different color to signify a change in status (i.e., blue = shuffle is on, black = shuffle is off) – change the icon itself so that it alternates between showing two parallel directional lines (i.e., parallel lines with arrows) when tracks are played in order, and then showing the current intersecting lines (i.e., the ones it currently always shows) when tracks are shuffled. With this approach, I would suggest just keeping the icon displayed blue at all times.
In short, it is counterintuitive to have the lines that cross showing at ALL times, even when tracks are playing in order. I think that’s part of the confusion (in addition to the fact that control can sometimes be hard to find).