sony shuffle mode sucks?

[sjondenon]

Hi there,

I just discovered that when I'm listening to my a845 with the shuffle mode on, It doesn't play all songs... I just picks some random songs but these songs are always the same... For example I heard the same song twice within 20 minutes..
I've got 9 gb on music on my walkman and when I'm listening in normal mode I hear songs I've never heard before... Is anyone familiair with this problem?

[CrowdAds]

[Just Some Guy]

Maybe it's because I have the 64 GB model and have over 13000 files, but I've never really had that problem. It's shuffling quite well.

Also, random is random, even to the point where it will repeat itself, because that's also random. Worse case scenario, the seed they use for random number generation isn't as variable as it should be, and you just have to press "next" one more time.

One variable you might have is whether you're playing from a specific folder or though "All Songs" or "Artist" and such. Some players like to shuffle within that folder or album.

[sjondenon]

I'm always using 'All songs' so that can't be the problem.. btw I'll just use the normal mode then...

[Just Some Guy]

How many songs do you have in the player? Depending upon the number, and the seeding the RNG is using, you're likely just getting a few occurrences of repeating songs. Given a limited (and relatively small) pool to select from, it could just simply be random occurrence that is causing the same song to play more than once.

A second factor may be if you have shuffle and repeat on at the same time. This would explain how the same song(s) appear even though they have already been selected.

Another thing to consider is having redundant songs. You may simply have multiple copies of the song on your player, in different folders and/or albums without realizing it. If you have two or more copies, that would slightly increase the chance of it playing more than once.

There's also the possibility that there isn't anything wrong with it at all, and you just think it's repeating a lot. Given that the brain is hardwired to think a few occurrences is grounds for assuming a pattern (seriously, it's a known design flaw of the the human brain, and no matter how many times we submit a bug report, the manufacturer refuses to fix it. Next time, I'm going to wait for a better model, screw this early adopter shit), it's entirely possible that you're unknowingly assigning a random set of events as a repeatable situation.

Without a detailed list of files and doing some math, there is no way to be certain. There is no known shuffle or RNG issue with any Walkman device that I could find online. If anyone does have any evidence of it, by all means, post it so we can see.