I have a question about the function of the 'playback -> next' command:

- set order to 'default', press 'next' -> the song below the current one is started
- set order to 'shuffle (tracks)', press 'next' -> a (more or less) random is started
- set order to 'random', press 'next' -> same behavior as if order was set to 'default'?!?

Is this intentionally?

I would guess that next will go to the next track cause you already have a random-button.

Hmm, that doesn't really make sense to me at least... (but having a random mode doesn't make sense to me either as shuffle(tracks) already exists...).
Why doesn't shuffle(tracks) work like that also then? You have a random button there too, right? But there the "next" command gives you a random track.

When shuffle is activated, you can use Previous and Next to browse through your playback history.

What shuffle does internally is to keep a permutation of the current playlist, for example FCDBAE for ABCDEF.

If you listen to track D and press Next, B will be played, and A afterwards.
Press Previous from A to listen to B again, press Previous twice to go back to D.

This behaviour ensures that you will listen to all other tracks before one track is played for the second time.

Random in contrast does not have such a list, it picks a random track from the playlist and only performs a check if it's not the same as the previous one. But it can happen that you listen to A, then B, and then again to A.

Ah, clever.

But I still think that random should pick random track on next... (maybe a little harder to implement because of what you spoke about, but still.)

As I said, you already have a random-button, why have 2 buttons do the same thing. Just my oppinion.

Well, I have only a single 'Next' Button on my Keyboard...

I never really took the time to get into that random/shuffle-debate but now things are getting clearer Should have been worth a FAQ-entry at that time, just to be informed

When you have selected shuffle (album) pressing random button will go to new album while pressing next to nex track in the playing album

You can try map your Next (MM) key to Random.


This is basically the meaning of random and shuffle.

Random is like a dice, any song can be played, even the same over and over(0.9.5 has a check so this can't happen, but aside from foobar2000 this is true),
just that the chance of that is pretty slim with many songs, but possible.

Shuffle is like a deck of cards, you shuffle it and then you take one card at a time in sequential order.
Means it's not possible that one song can be played again until all songs have been played.
Then it starts over in same order again.

Yeah, I know I could do this. But then I have a problem if playlist order is set to 'Default'...


Anyway, I can totally live with 'shuffle', I was just wondering, why 'Next' in combination with 'Random' doesn't work as expected (at least for me)

How about adding a "Next or Random" menu item that would do Next in default mode and Random in Random mode? That way we could simply map a keyboard shortcut to it.

The new version kicks ass by the way!

I think there has been one... back in the days where default, repeat and random were the only ones =P (and then came the shuffle plugin and everyone was in awe =P)