foobar random bugged? Options

[Sihnu]

Hi all

I really like foobar. I've been using it for a couple of months now. I've just noticed a weird thing about playing random songs. It doesn't seem to work correctly. When I look amount of play times of my songs it looks like random is playing some particular songs and some songs it never plays. For example, I got one album with 4 songs that have been played and those got like 5-7 play times. Random has never played rest of the songs even once and I've never played those songs myself either. They all have been played randomly. This same happens with all of the rest albums I've got. Has anyone else noticed similiar thing? As far as I know random should play the songs randomly so that one song can be played more times and shuffle puts the list in random order and starts to play it from beginning to end. So is random really bugged or might I've some settings wrong? How could I get it working correctly?

My version of foobar is 1.0.2.1 and I got this pack of components installed: monolite plus
In addition to the packet I've not messed around with anything.

[callisto]

[...] They all have been played randomly. [...] As far as I know random should play the songs randomly so that one song can be played more times [...]

Well, you said it yourself

[Sihnu]

Well, you said it yourself wink.gif

Yeah but it can't be just coincidence. I've got better example. I've one album from which only 3 songs have been played. One of the songs have been played 14 times, another 19 times and the third one 9 times. None of the rest of the songs have been played even once. There is 13 songs in that album . This same thing happens with all of the albums.

[smkk]

With random it could also happen that one song plays over a hundred times in a row, it's just very unlikely.
You probably want to try shuffle mode.

[Robertina]

foobar's FAQ may help the OP:

http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ#random_shuffle_playback_order

[smkk]

Well i guess i have to take back what i said but the point was there is no real control of which tracks are being played in random mode, so its perfectly possible that some tracks will never get played.

[Sihnu]

Thanks for the answers. I understand the differences between suffle and random mode. I know that songs might get played more than once while some of the songs would never be played. What my point is that I can't believe this would be just coincidence. To make things more clear:

One album: three songs played: 14 times, 19 times and 9 times. Rest of the 13 songs never played.
Another album: two songs played: one 8 times and another 18 times. Rest of the 12 songs never played.
Any yet one example album: 4 songs played: 11 times, 7 times, 7 times and 15 times. Rest of the 11 songs never played.

I could keep writing more same kind of examples from my play list. I've not played any of those songs manually (examples above). It seems that it keeps playing same songs from the list.

Edit: I kept checking the play times while I was playing with random mode. One song was playing with none previous play times and suddenly there popped 10 play times. Could it be that the information is coming from last.fm and it loads the information after the song has been played? So if a song hasn't been played for a while the information is not loaded until the song gets played showing none play times. That would explain the issue. Anyway, I believe random mode is working just fine.

This post has been edited by Sihnu: May 2 2010, 23:16

[dhromed]

As the amount of already played tracks increases, the probability that any already played track is played again also increases. This process will converge to the unintuitive conclusion that some tracks with 0 playcount have a very low probability of ever being played.

I think for fun, I'll let foobar play overnight in Random Mode (turing off playback stats and scrobbling, of course )

[shakey_snake]

If the selection is sufficiently random, then given enough trials, the expected result should be a bell curve, with a handful of tracks at -3 standard deviations (i.e. 0 plays) and some at +3 standard deviations (e.g. 12+ plays), but most will be between those extremes.

[phatpaul]

I've been noticing some weird behavior with the Shuffle (albums) feature for a long time now and just got around to looking into it.
I know it's not exactly the OP's question, but I feel it's on topic.

I always keep it in the Shuffle (albums) mode, and frequently hit the "Playback / Random" button to advance to another album.
The order of albums seems suspiciously non-random. I don't think I can explain it, so I'm trying to think of an easy way to prove this.
Perhaps I'll create a lot of 1-second silent mp3 files, organized into "albums", and somehow record the order in which they are played. Then check the randomness with the chi-squared test.

The difference between "random" and "shuffle" is detailed here:
http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ#random_shuffle_playback_order
And one possible explanation is that the "Playback / Random" button doesn't advance 1 album in the order of the "internal randomized list of tracks", but instead randomly chooses a new album.
Since I often hit that button when shuffle chooses an album I don't care to listen to, I may be causing the behavior described in the FAQ: "Note that manually selecting a track to play in your playlist will result in shuffle playback continuing from that track's location on the randomized list, which is often perceived as repetitions".
If this is the case, what I really want is a button that skips to the next album in the shuffle list, instead of randomly jumping to an album. (I also don't want to have to hit the "Playback / Next" button until the end of the album.)

Any ideas? Thanks.

[kode54]

Shuffle builds an internal list of tracks to play, containing the entire playlist. Clicking the Random button resets that list.

[phatpaul]

OK, so that confirms my theory.
So is there a way to skip to the next album in the shuffle list without having to advance through each track?