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[al1947]

I have had good results using Matt Ashland's basic formula:

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Track #]=1 ~n=3 ~sort=Random ~a

And varying it as I need. For example:

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Track #]=1 [Genre]=[Classical] [Rating]=>=4 ~n=3 ~sort=Random ~a

gives me three random, shuffled classical albums that include a high rated track

I was wondering if there is language that would refine that further so that smartlist still shuffles by album but is limited to ONLY the high rated tracks?

This is a concern with other genres, too. But I am especially concerned about classical as it's common practice for classical albums to include lesser works along with major ones to fill out the album. Beethoven cycles are notorious for the pairing of symphonies being dictated solely by what will fit on a single CD.

[blgentry]

There are probably several ways to do this.  Here's one way:

Make a new smartlist.  The first rule in this list should be:

playlists   is any    "your 3 album classical smartlist name"

Then add:
Rating    is greater than or equal to   4

That should do what you want.  Sometimes with MC, you can't do everything in one smartlist and you must cascade several of them together like this.

Brian.

[al1947]

Thanks, Brian

for some reason I didn't get the usual notice of a reply and just now found this... very helpful

[al1947]

Having a problem with making the two-step approach work.

Found on the forum a neat syntax to shuffle my entire library by album, which I adapted to my classical music:

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Track #]=1 [Genre]=[Classical] ~sort=Random ~a

Works great. Can reshuffle as much as I want. However, when I then create a second smartlist to limit the tracks to ratings of four or higher:

[Media Type]=[Audio] playlistid==2146407330 [Rating]=>=4

The results are locked into a specific order and cannot be reshuffled. Any way to get around this?

[blgentry]

I've experimented around with this and I see the behavior you are describing.  When I developed my original example, I was limiting my first list to only 3 albums.  So I got 3 random albums.  Then my second list gave me the rating>=4 songs from those albums.  This seemed to be random.  But I can now see that the second list orders the albums by artist name.  It's just very different on each refresh because it's three different albums each time.

If you change that limit (in the first list) to something like 10 albums, you should get a pretty good usable result:  10 random albums, ordered by artist name.  But that's pretty random in itself.  Though not truly random I know.  Here's the code for 10 random albums (of any genre):

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Track #]=1 ~n=10 ~sort=Random ~a

Otherwise, I haven't yet figured out a way of doing random albums *and* limiting the result to only rating>=4 songs. 

Good luck.

Brian.

[DJLegba]

This is a concern with other genres, too. But I am especially concerned about classical as it's common practice for classical albums to include lesser works along with major ones to fill out the album. Beethoven cycles are notorious for the pairing of symphonies being dictated solely by what will fit on a single CD.

Once the CD has been ripped there is not always a good reason to keep it associated as one "disc". I frequently change the Album name to break up bundled symphonies, for example. That way I can play Symphony No 5 with a single click and not get Symphony No 6 tacked on automatically at the end. Or play Symphony No 3 without having to open the "Symphonies 1 and 3" disc, navigate down to the first movement of Symphony No 3, and click there. The original album name is preserved in the file path (because that's in the ripping rule I set up in MC), but you can also preserve it in Comment or some other field if you wish.