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[Thg6276]

Good day,

I am totally newbie with JRiver Media Center.

Could you explain to me how to listen my library by album with random function.

Thanks in advance

[ferday]

if you want a random complete album

go to playlists, right click on smartlists>add smartlist

once you've named the new smartlist, right click it and edit smartlist.  when the window comes up, click import/export in the bottom left corner

paste in this (exactly, just copy and paste)

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Media Sub Type]=[Music] [Complete Album]=1 [Last Played]=>1h [Last Skipped]=>1h ~limit=1,1,[Album],[Album Artist (auto)] ~a ~seq ~sort=Random ~limit=1,-1,[Filename (path)],[Channels] ~sort=[Sequence]
now every time you use the new smartlist it will choose a new album at random

[blgentry]

I think you're asking this:

Play all albums.
Play the albums in song order, 1, 2, 3, etc.
But order the albums randomly, so maybe you get an album from ZZ Top, then Alphaville, then Judas Priest, Queen, etc.

There are a number of ways of doing this, but none of them are a simple setting or switch.  Do you really want to listen to your WHOLE collection this way?  Or would it make more sense to filter it down to a group of artists, or genres, or years, or something, and then randomize *that* by album.

I just built a view in about 60 seconds that randomizes by album, but lets me pick genre, artist, or even specific albums.

Or are you trying to do something else entirely?

Brian.

[Thg6276]

Thank you for your answers

Play all albums.
Play the albums in song order, 1, 2, 3, etc.
But order the albums randomly, so maybe you get an album from ZZ Top, then Alphaville, then Judas Priest, Queen, etc.

You are correct, it is just that I want.

[blgentry]

Probably the easiest way to do this is to create a new smartlist and apply some rules to it.  You could do it with a view also, which gives you more choices.  But if you want just a simple "play all albums" like we've discussed, a smarlist is the way to go.

Once the smartlist is defined, all you have to do is right click on it and select "Play" and it will add the whole smarlist, in order, to playing now, which should give you what you want.

Just like ferday suggested, after you make your new smartlist, click edit, and then "import/export" at the lower left corner.  Then paste in this definition:

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Audio] ~nodup=[Album],[Album Artist /(auto/)] ~sort=Random ~a
That will give you all of your albums, with the songs in order by album, but the albums randomly ordered.  Press the refresh key at the upper left corner of the smartlist to get a new random album order. Whenever you're satisfied, right click on the list and select Play to play the whole list.

As I said you can have more control over this with a view instead, but this should get you started.

Good luck.

Brian.

[Thg6276]

Thank you to both of you for your precious help

[wburkett]

Maybe this is a silly question, but why isn't "random album" a natural switch or function of the Shuffle capability?  Mediamonkey has the same failing.  It seems like this is such an obvious end-user requirement and I can't understand why we have to jump through hoops to get the capability.  Is it really that hard to implement?  Or is it just "we don't want to be like iTunes"?

Bill

[blgentry]

I think it's more JRiver's philosophy of building tools that let you browse, sort, and search in (almost) any way that YOU want to.  Trying to anticipate the desires of everyone is both extremely difficult, and prone to cluttering the interface with special modes and switches that just don't work for everyone.

MC includes just enough for most people, who aren't picky, to get what they want without a lot of effort.  Beyond that, you can search, sort, and browse almost any way you want, by using smartlists and views.  Feel the power. 

BTW, I build a View based on this thread.  I just used the rule in my post above as the "include files for display" in my view.  I set it up as a Panes view.  So I can filter by Year, Genre, or Artist, and get random albums.  Or just get random albums from my whole collection.  It's not something I personally like to use much, but I can see why someone would want it.

EDIT:  As usual a picture is worth 1000 words, so see the attached screen shot.

Brian.

[walrus]

Apologies for digging up this old thread, but I found it via google.

So I basically want to reproduce the Subsonic homepage, with a panel of random albums, I've got the view down the way I want it, but 'refreshing' the list doesn't seem to be working...it's basically showing me different combinations of the same small set of albums, instead of randomly pulling from the hundreds in my library. What part of the equation am I missing? I'm basing it off of ferday's code, except showing a dozen albums instead of one. But it's just giving me the same few LP's every time.