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I use it all the time

I use it from time to time

I tried it and didn't find it useful

I tried it and wasn't able to get it working

I'm aware of it but haven't got around to trying it

I don't know how

[JimH]

If you right click on an artist and choose "More Play Options", then "Play with Play Doctor", JRiver will play a mix of songs that include that artist and other similar artists.

There is a wiki topic on Play Doctor.

Instructions (short form):  Right click on any audio (artist, album, genre).  Choose "More Play Options" and then "Play (with Play Doctor)".  MC will build a playlist, using your selection as a "seed".

[blgentry]

My Genres aren't tagged well, so I don't think Play Doctor would work very well for me.  I tried in a couple of times WAAAAAY back and haven't touched it since.  Perhaps I should give it another shot.

Brian.

[jmone]

I tried it a couple of times way back when.

[Trumpetguy]

Every now and then, a few times in total.

[JimH]

I haven't voted, but it looks like I may be the only one who uses it a lot.  It's handy when you just want music and you don't want to spend time choosing it.

I've also found a lot of music I like but had forgotten about.

[mx4789]

I can't seem to figure it out in Theatre View (or is it Theater View?) which I use exclusively.

"I've also found a lot of music I like but had forgotten about" - that's what I love about shuffle as well.  My personal rule for shuffle is that you cannot skip any songs, you have to listen to what comes up next regardless. I found that once you start skipping songs you might as well stop and just go back to your favorite top ten, or so.

[JimH]

To use it from Theater View, I think you'd have to set some Car Radio buttons, choosing "play chart", then find them in the Playlists section of Theater View.

[DJLegba]

I'm old so I prefer to listen to albums. I have a couple of smart lists for certain situations when an album isn't what I want, but even then I'll usually just pick a genre like Jazz and select Play (shuffled).

[Spike1000]

Play Doctor is fantastic. I love it. With volume leveling enabled you get your own radio station (all tracks play at the same volume) made from your own tracks. There's no human bias in picking the tracks so you get to hear music you may well have forgotten about all based on the 'theme' of the seed track(s). Fantastic.

Spike

[marko]

Play Doctor is brilliant. I use it without a seed (don't ask, Matt doesn't get it either but promised not to try and 'fix' that ) and the list mostly always sorts itself out within a skip or three. It's my 'go to' item in theater view when I'm not entirely sure what I want.

I can't seem to figure it out in Theatre View (or is it Theater View?) which I use exclusively.

I call it up using MCWS. The fact I also use Zone Switch depending on whether it's video or audio complicated the issue, so the Theater View item runs a bat file that makes sure we're in the "Audio" zone, then runs the Play Doctor command. I'll dig it up later on if that sounds like something you could use? It's a 'set and forget' thing I did several years ago, which is why I can't post it here from memory

Need it really badly in JRemote though... Really badly.
I thought that KISS might have been the answer to getting Play Doctor in my car, but so far, no joy...

[davelr]

... I'll dig it up later on if that sounds like something you could use? ...

If you wouldn't mind, that would be very helpful. Thanks

[A.K.]

I'm using it more and more. Great for general lazy feeling when I just want good and easy background soundtrack. Many times it picks some great surprises from my music catalog that I have to rate them immediately before they are lost in the depths of hard disk.

[mwillems]

I'm not a huge fan of playdoctor as I'm one of those dinosaur album listeners, *but* my wife is a big fan of playdoctor.  She uses it all the time, but I almost never do.

[marko]

If you wouldn't mind, that would be very helpful. Thanks

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,111444.0.html

[Vocalpoint]

All of my 75000+ tracks are meticulously tagged (beyond belief) and the few times I have tried Play Doctor - it still makes me cringe.

Maybe my bar is set too high after using my Smartlists which hit 99% of what I want to hear at any given time.

To be honest - after creating a baker's dozen of excellent Smartlists - I do not see any point to Play Doctor. Then again - if you have no background in playlist creation at all - it may help - but it's logic makes it's highly unusable for me.

Maybe if more backgrounder was supplied on how it makes it's choices AND what needs to be done to one's library to make it fly better - I might be more inclined to use it.

VP

[MikeO]

I don't really use it. Maybe someone could explain how it works and what tags need to be accurate for it to work

I guess the Genre tag , mine have had little attention in rock etc hence I get a bit of a scrambled mix.

When I evaluated "another product" it was feature I liked.

I'll give it more of a go

Mike

[Spike1000]

I guess the Genre tag , mine have had little attention in rock etc hence I get a bit of a scrambled mix.

It might depend on what you expect it do

For me it's like a radio station (the volume leveling means all the tracks play at the same level). If I seed it with a track by a female artists it largely plays tracks by female artists. It can drift off onto other things but I don't mind that. I tend to seed it with just one (or maybe just a few tracks) that are similar so I guess that gives it a clue where to start. If you seed it with a wide mixture of tracks I guess you'll get a wide mixture as the output and that may not be pleasing to the ear

I feel it follows the BPM of the tracks and their dynamics to a degree (I think how it exactly it works is a bit of a 'trade secret'). Try seeding it with just one track and see what happens. . . You may have been doing that already though. I find it can revisit the same album quite a bit with just one seed and does repeat tracks (which is a minor annoyance) but I still like it.

Spike

[William-NM]

Thanks - this got me to play around with it a bit. I tweaked the rules a little with some of Marko's suggestions  , and I'm enjoying it. I have hundreds of mostly smartlists for favorites by artist/genre/decade, etc., but even with 'shuffle' set, they can get a little 'stale'. Nice for those of us with 'indecisiveness' issues, too. One of the things I like about MC is that there's always something new (to me) to try. 

[mark_h]

Hadn't really bothered with it, as I've curated my own smartlists for playback, however, I've been trying it over the past few days and really enjoyed the ability to stick in an artist and then see what comes out.  Seems to work pretty well.  Shall be using it more moving forward.

[Windcrest77]

I'd want to like it, but it always returns results where songs are heavily duplicated (like 5 to 9 times each duplicated).

I have my settings set as follows:

Return 1 hour of media
Audio only
Greater than 3 star rated
Omit duplicates on "Name"
Omit duplicates on "File name and file path"

Even with the above settings it consistently returns about 100 line items, out of those 100 there are only typically 19 DISTINCT songs (so each of those 19 are duplicated 5 times to come up with 100).

If I can get it to NEVER duplicate a song, I will use it. But as far as I'm concerned Play Doctor is a flawed, broken function with a serious bug in that it cant return a list of distinct tunes, it has a serious song duplication issue. My library has 250,000 tracks and maybe 30,000 of those are 4 stars or better, so my rules above should find plenty of data to work with. But the duplication is a problem that is always there.

[JimH]

What version of MC are you using?

[marko]

I'd want to like it, but it always returns results where songs are heavily duplicated (like 5 to 9 times each duplicated).

I have my settings set as follows:

Return 1 hour of media
Audio only
Greater than 3 star rated
Omit duplicates on "Name"
Omit duplicates on "File name and file path"

Even with the above settings it consistently returns about 100 line items, out of those 100 there are only typically 19 DISTINCT songs (so each of those 19 are duplicated 5 times to come up with 100).

If I can get it to NEVER duplicate a song, I will use it. But as far as I'm concerned Play Doctor is a flawed, broken function with a serious bug in that it cant return a list of distinct tunes, it has a serious song duplication issue. My library has 250,000 tracks and maybe 30,000 of those are 4 stars or better, so my rules above should find plenty of data to work with. But the duplication is a problem that is always there.

I think your problem starts here...

Return 1 hour of media
Audio only

Forget about the "1 hour of media rule".

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm sure Play Doctor is hard coded to start of with 100 songs.
There will always be 100 songs in the queue, so once the first track is done, the Doctor adds track 101, and so on...

This means that unless your songs are all about a ½ minute long, it can't satisfy your time rule, and start with 100 unique tracks.
The idea is that Play Doctor will keep adding songs to the list, shaking it up based on any you've skipped, so lose the time limit, enjoy the results, and just press stop when you're done listening.

-marko.

[JimH]

I think your problem starts here...
Forget about the "1 hour of media rule".

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm sure Play Doctor is hard coded to start of with 100 songs.

You're correct.  Thanks.

[fitbrit]

I didn't use it until you started this thread, Jim. The instructions on what to do at the beginning of the thread helped. I chose an artist and selected "Play with Play Doctor" and was pleasantly surprised by the tracks it returned. I may use it more often now. Thanks.

[Trumpetguy]

I was overly negative in my first statement. I actually Iike concepts like Play Doctor, and use it at work when my workday allows for it. It makes me rediscover tunes not heard for years (decades sometimes). But at home, my listening is always more targeted due to less self time availability...

[gappie]

Play Doctor is brilliant. I use it without a seed (don't ask, Matt doesn't get it either but promised not to try and 'fix' that ) and the list mostly always sorts itself out within a skip or three.

that is also how i use and love it. 😎

[MusicHawk]

All of my 75000+ tracks are meticulously tagged (beyond belief) and the few times I have tried Play Doctor - it still makes me cringe.

Maybe my bar is set too high after using my Smartlists which hit 99% of what I want to hear at any given time.

To be honest - after creating a baker's dozen of excellent Smartlists - I do not see any point to Play Doctor. Then again - if you have no background in playlist creation at all - it may help - but it's logic makes it's highly unusable for me.

I'm simply posting the above because it is precisely my situation and lack of need for Play Doctor or anything similar. My tags let me create any Smartlist, which always yields exactly what I expect. I know my library -- every song was put there by me, carefully tagged. I'm not looking to be surprised, just served what I order.

Well, I like a little bit of surprise, so I use Smartlist with Shuffle, plus MC's radio-station-style track segue mode (oddly called Cross-fade aggressive). This makes me quite pleasantly surprised at what comes up next and how nicely MC segues song-to-song.

Accurate "tagging" is the key to using any database. Do it well, once, and it will forever provide satisfying results. This capability is why I adopted MC many years ago (MJ6, or maybe it was MJ5).

[Spike1000]

My tags let me create any Smartlist, which always yields exactly what I expect.

For me one of the pleasures of play doctor is that it often yeilds exactly what I didn't expect  That can be inspiring and creative. . . I've said it aleady it's like a Radio Station to me. I like the 'freedom'; but on the other hand I can see why this might grate with someone who's spent 15 years tagging thier music collection and creating playlists. . . 

Spike

[Cinelder]

It's a great feature.  Would appreciate knowing (or if not, here's a request) if there's a keyboard shortcut to access it directly in MC 23.  It would also be nice to have in JRemote.

[marko]

It's a great feature.  Would appreciate knowing (or if not, here's a request) if there's a keyboard shortcut to access it directly in MC 23.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,111545.0.html

[Windcrest77]

What version of MC are you using?

Version 23

[JimH]

Full version, please.

[Ferdi]

Thanks for the poll: made me look and try again.
Don't use it because 99% of time I use JRemote on iPhone, and play doctor isn't available there.

[JimH]

You can save a Play Doctor list and find it under Playlists on any remote.

[marko]

true... but... it won't play as a Play Doctor "Play Chart".
Play Doctor is not available via JRemote on iPhone. I wish that it was, but it isn't.

It's why I thought Radio Kiss could be the answer to this, but no matter what, I cannot get it to play anything on the device at all. Usage would be from a WAN (4G) connection. I tried using the home WiFi too, but still, nothing played on the device.

Does the server still mask the MIME type? or was that only a Gizmo thing?

[JimH]

A browser that doesn't support HTML5 could account for that.

[ST]

true... but... it won't play as a Play Doctor "Play Chart".
Play Doctor is not available via JRemote on iPhone. I wish that it was, but it isn't.

I discovered Play Doctor while using JRemote with Iphone. It works perfectly. Sometimes, if your database is big it may take a while to load the files.

Never tried with MC23 as I am battling with other bugs. I have reverted to MC23.

[Fangio]

I didn't, but I do now I know what it does. Enjoying the results!

[kolia]

I just dislike the idea of playlists. This is not the way I listen to music.

[Jumbosausage]

If your library is tagged correctly then smartlists will always be a better option than Playdoctor.

[JimH]

If your library is tagged correctly then smartlists will always be a better option than Playdoctor.

No.  They aren't the same.  Playdoctor can learn, for one thing.  You can use one file for a "seed" or many files.

Both methods are useful and important.

[mpffffhhhh]

as many others here -> me dinosaure, listening to albums...

but i tried and it looked nice for those who need it.
and if you say that playdoctor is learning, so maybe
i should play with it from time to time.

[flac.rules]

I like the feature, its like a better "play random".

[adphil]

Yes I use it and I like it. Especially as a means to explore and find forgotten albums beyond my usual preferences like genre or artist.

Classical music doesn't lend itself so much for this method. But if I seed Play Doctor with a genre like rock or blues, none of my classical music songs will come up. Neat.

[Vali Mihai]

I am really missing the old PLAY RADIO future, which randomly played my library track by track without being aware about what will come out next. It was an amazing option to play music from your own library.

[JimH]

I am really missing the old PLAY RADIO future, which randomly played my library track by track without being aware about what will come out next. It was an amazing option to play music from your own library.

I think you mean Play Doctor. 

[MikeO]

Oops RADIO is a Roon feature that does the same as Play Doctor 

[joshhuggins]

using my Smartlists which hit 99% of what I want to hear at any given time.

To be honest - after creating a baker's dozen of excellent Smartlists - I do not see any point to Play Doctor. Then again - if you have no background in playlist creation at all - it may help - but it's logic makes it's highly unusable for me.

Maybe if more backgrounder was supplied on how it makes it's choices AND what needs to be done to one's library to make it fly better - I might be more inclined to use it.

My thoughts on this as well. My OCD kind of gets picky at times.

[BPT40]

Hello, I just tried using the Play Doctor for the first time and I think it's something I will use. I've got over 38,000 songs that are well tagged but many are forgotten and buried in the mass of music. I tried it with a few of my favorite tracks and Play Doctor selected 99 songs that matched up very well. I'm listening to music I forgot I had and some I never did give a listen to, I'm rediscovering my own music! I've always tagged my files as I've added them ( Artist,song,album and genre at the least) and it seems to work great with Play Doctor! Glad I looked on the forum and this post.

[slerch666]

Is there a simple way to use Play Dr from Panel? Would be a nice addition. If it's there, I can't find it.