Most commonly, when you select the random option on a given music play-list—be it a cd changer or a media player--each song is entered into it once, and each song is played once, so the end result is you hear all songs once before you hear any one twice. That’s great, and I want to take it one small step further.

Say half-way through playing a cd, you decide you want your disc changer to go on full random. Surely it can handle that, except those songs you’ve already heard will show up again somewhere in the mix.
Or say you’re on random and get to a song you like, and you feel like hearing the next few songs and then switching random back on. Doing so means reentry of all songs back into the drawing.

All that’s needed for remedy is a small memory bank that remembers which tracks were played, and keeps them out of the mix until either all songs are played or the stop button is pressed.

I don’t know how often this affects people, but I would get good mileage out of a function like this. It could be integrated into every system, and almost nobody would know the difference.
-- yabba do yabba dabba, Aug 02 2004

I see this as good intentions, but would result in an instruction manual from hell. I stand neutral.
-- Cheekio, Aug 02 2004


You don't even have to mention it in the manual. Hence the last line of the description.
-- yabba do yabba dabba, Aug 02 2004


Good one, ydyd. Can't be that hard to do, and would be very useful. Sort of like an intelligent randomization system.

At the moment, my MP3 player is driving me mental. There doesn't seem to be any way to order the tracks in the memory (it's quite a cheap little thing), and the "random" mode, although putting the tracks in random order, uses that same order each time. In other words, it has two fixed playlists - the normal one and the random one. Annoying as hell. So - yes: more clever randomization, please.
-- lostdog, Aug 02 2004


(Actually, since the tracks would have been played in sequence up to this point, it would only need to store the number of the last track played in an even smaller memory bank; like maybe one byte.)

I'd think that if I had listened to say 8 of 10 tracks on a disk, then hit random and it played 2 tracks then quit, I might intuitively think the thing was broken. How would I choose between "randomize all" vs. "randomize remaining" modes? Two different buttons? That would make the manual easier to write.

This is definitely a feature that I'd never have thought about. Does this need arise frequently?
-- half, Aug 02 2004


+ for baby steps...
-- po, Aug 02 2004


Good question about the nearly done cd. Not a problem, though--it could play those two tracks, empty the memory, and throw them all back into the mix without stopping. "Randomize remaining" followed by "randomize all"
-- yabba do yabba dabba, Aug 02 2004



random, halfbakery