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[maruf_65]

well to my opinion mC is the no.1 player for listening music and organize.

i like many features of it. of them
it can do the crossfading thing so well, no other player can do perfect like it. and its strong library will full of customization is just wonderful.
i want a feature in mc. itunes has a feature like "party shuffle" i like this feature and i want this in mc.

musicmatch also has a feature like the "party shuffle " of itunes

[Alex B]

What does "Party Suffle" do?

[JimH]

iTunes' shuffle algorithm ... chooses songs "without replacement." In other words, much like going through a shuffled deck of cards, you will hear each song only once until you have heard them all.

If you'll excuse me, that isn't random.  It's artificial random.  Random is the result of a chance decision -- flipping a coin, for example.  There is a certain probability that, if you flip the coin 10 times, you will get heads 10 times.  In a library of 500 tracks, there is a certain probability that you will hear the same track 500 times.  It doesn't happen often, but it can.

This is an entertaining topic around JRiver.  "How random should we make it?"  It's like saying "How absolute can we get?"

[Chris Shaw]

Sounds like a smartlist with random sort turned on. Random order with no repetition.

Incidentally, I guess Apple having the same argument. They've introduced a Randomness slider in iTunes 5. It's called Smart Shuffle
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/itunes-5-feature-introduction/

[jgreen]

Quoting JimH:
"There is a certain probability that, if you flip the coin 10 times, you will get heads 10 times."

It's a little-known fact that when Steve Jobs went to visit JimH with an offer to buy jriver, JimH replied, "I'll flip you for it.  Heads I win." 
And you know what?  It was heads, and the rest is history, as they say.  Of course, Jobs never checked JimH's coin to see if there was a tails on it, but the following year Steve Jobs introduced itunes, along with Jobs' concept of "random", which is, in essence, anything less than a 100% likelihood of success. 
Future historians will debate the importance of JimH versus Bill Gates.  But one thing is clear:  If JimH wants to emulate Steve Jobs, he needs to get a turtleneck.

[JimH]

Not in a million years.

[Matt]

For the record, MC doesn't have a random shuffle anymore either.  If you search, you'll find long threads about this.  Basically, what we learned is that random isn't what people really want so we skew the distribution to spread similar artists and albums apart.

And why be like Steve Jobs?  I say aspire to something better:
http://www.ntk.net/media/dancemonkeyboy.mpg

[edbro]

And why be like Steve Jobs?
http://www.ntk.net/media/dancemonkeyboy.mpg

That's Ballmer. About 180 degrees out from Jobs.

[Matt]

Hmmmm... that's one of the reasons why I started to put two shuffles in my playlists, songs from the same album were being grouped too close together with just one shuffle present.

(not complaining, just observing)

Aside: when I want to randomize a list of somethings, I add a column and fill that column with random numbers, then I sort on that column.  Most of the time lately, I've been doing this in MS Excel.  Excel's random number generator is pretty good.   What function do you use in MC to randomize?

MC has a very good, statistically provable randomizer.  However, true random shuffles have more clustering than people expect.  The statistics for clustering probability work a little like the classic "birthday problem." (google search for more info)

[Deivit]

Speaking about shuffling Playing Now, is there a way to re-shuffle PN only for what respects to the "remaining tracks", avoiding that the already listened tracks get shuffled again?

Let's put an example:

Populate PN with 100 tracks and start the session. During the session keep on adding some more tracks to play, now and then, using the "add to playing now" right-click feature or whatever other method.

At some point, you may want to reshuffle the remainig songs so that the newly added tracks are not put all together confined to the end of the list or as next to play.... but you don't want to play again the already played tracks. If you right click on PN -> Shuffle, you end up with the whole thing being reshuffled. The only way that I know of doing that is by selecting the already played tracks, deleting them from PN and then doing the shuffle thing... which is  tedious if you don't have a keyboard available.

If this is not doable, would it be very difficult to split the current right-click "Shuffle" feature into two?:

-> Shuffle (All)
                (Not Played)

Thanks.

[lee269]

Speaking about shuffling Playing Now, is there a way to re-shuffle PN only for what respects to the "remaining tracks", avoiding that the already listened tracks get shuffled again?

...

If this is not doable, would it be very difficult to split the current right-click "Shuffle" feature into two?:

-> Shuffle (All)
                (Not Played)

No way I know in MC11. And, yeah, Im with you on this - I end up doing what you describe a lot. I guess we hold that thought and start pleading once 11.1 is in the offing...