Discussion Rant On >> WMP << Rant Off

Nov 17, 2019
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I use Win7 and plan on staying with it. Yeah, I know, tough noogies.

One thing I like is WMP. It's fairly versatile, but one thing has always bugged me and no one, not even the tech expert sites can explain it. Nobody seems to know how the underlying database works or why 'randomize playback' isn't so random. My current playlist is around 1,900 tracks and and 170 hours. With that kind of volume to 'randomize', how is it possible for two tracks from the same album to play back to back?
 

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
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Pretty sure I have waaaay more tracks in my iTunes library. Nearly all are full albums I own and ripped myself. Playing "all music" on shuffle, I hear back-to-back tracks from the same album frequently.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
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Foobar's a great player, and was my first choice when I was on windows, but it can play tracks back to back also. That's what random is. What Greenman said is 100% true if the selection is truly random. What you're looking for is 'random, except when...'. I'm unaware of any players that do that, but it wouldn't be hard to create.
 
Nov 17, 2019
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^^^^ Ideally ....

If you have 10 albums in the playlist, once one track plays from any given album, no other track plays from it until one tracks plays from each of the other albums. There would always be 9 tracks between any 2 tracks from an album.

If that makes sense.

"Course, problems commence when all albums don't have the same number of tracks .....