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[al1947]

Surely you can implement this at last

[Matt]

How are you thinking this would work?

I'm imagining it would play a series of albums in random album order, but order each album inside that by track #.  Is that the ticket?

Thanks.

[JimH]

Play a whole album at a time, tracks in order, but albums in random order.

It was big in the '60's, when we had turntables with a spindle you could put a stack of albums on.

[al1947]

JimH is dating him (and me). But that's the idea.

iTunes has had it forever (in its current implementation you can chose to set shuffle mode to by album or by track). The original iPod had it built in. Current iPhones and iPads do not, but there's an app for that.

For me the big need is when listening to classical (but also jazz and album rock). Symphonies, for example, are divided into separate tracks for each movement. So the current MC shuffling method would mean you would jump from one movement of one symphony to another movement of another symphony -- no musical continuity.

There are scripting options in MC that can sometime approximate this, but they don't always work.

[Matt]

Coming next build:
NEW: Added the playback option Play Shuffled Albums (in track order) to take the tracks and expand them to full albums and shuffle the albums.

Thanks for the idea.

[al1947]

Matt,

Thank you so much. Much appreciated.

Could you explain how the feature might work in certain circumstances?

I put a lot of emphasis on using ratings to sort out wheat from chaff. It is pretty common in classical records that an album will contain a work that I want to listen to plus another that I dislike (or there is filler). To deal with this, I create smart playlists that are limited to tracks with, for example, a rating of 4 or 5.

My concern is that if you set the Play Shuffled Album feature to expand to full albums, the excluded tracks would be added back into what gets played. Is there a way to avoid that?

[Matt]

You could just create a user account that filters out the bad files.  Switch to that user when you want to do playback (probably always leave that user active).

[al1947]

You could just create a user account that filters out the bad files.  Switch to that user when you want to do playback (probably always leave that user active).

When you say "user account" you mean a new library, correct? So basically, I would clone my main library, and then remove all the low-rated files from it? Would there be any problem if, in doing so, track #1 is missing from an album?

The other thought I had would be to go through my classical albums and split off the "undesirable" tracks as separate albums. Would that work?

[Matt]

When you say "user account" you mean a new library, correct? So basically, I would clone my main library, and then remove all the low-rated files from it? Would there be any problem if, in doing so, track #1 is missing from an album?

The other thought I had would be to go through my classical albums and split off the "undesirable" tracks as separate albums. Would that work?

No.  A user is a Media Center thing that can have filters (like filtering out poorly rated tracks).

Explore View > User in the menu.

[al1947]

Thanks!

Didn't know about the "user" feature. (Then, again, I would consider myself lucky if I understand 10% of the things MC can do.)

Way cool. Solves a lot of problems for me.

[blgentry]

al1947,

I'm not sure that what Matt has in mind is what you want.  Please explain with an example, how you would like to shuffle by albums.  Describe the process you would use.  You don't have to give a ton of detail.  Just tell us how you would select the albums to be shuffled and when you would want that shuffle to happen.

Brian.

[al1947]

Sure. What I have in mind is this:

Let's say I am playing a playlist that has a specific selection of music. Example: genre: classical; rating: equal or greater than 4. I would like to randomly shuffle by album of those selected track, but only those tracks.

Why? Not uncommon, for example, for a recording of Beethoven symphonies to include one work I want to hear and one I don't. If the album shuffle mode expands to full album, then the work I don't want would be played.

Think of this example playlist:

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Genre]=[Classical] [Rating]=>=4 ~sort=[Album],[Disc #],[Track #]

I would like to preserve the order of tracks within the album, but randomly shuffle the order of the albums

[blgentry]

Yeah, Matt's solution won't do that at all as far as I can tell.  Perhaps the JRiver team likes your idea and could implement a "reshuffle by album" feature, which is pretty much exactly what you're asking for.

Player > Shuffle > Reshuffle (by album)

Complimented by a mode:  Player > Shuffle (by album)

Brian.

[al1947]

Matt,

Your feature is working as advertised... thanks.

Any possibility you might add it to the choices on the shuffle icon? I almost missed it in the play options context menu.

[wburkett]

Coming next build:
NEW: Added the playback option Play Shuffled Albums (in track order) to take the tracks and expand them to full albums and shuffle the albums.

Thanks for the idea.

I've been wanting this feature forever -- ever since I bought MC!!!