Audacious

I'm not sure what you mean. Of course it will play the same songs, but in a random order. Can you please explain better?

My English is bad. I'll try to explain better.

There is a list of 300 songs. If I turn to play the songs in shuffle mode, play the same songs, but do not play other songs from this list. As if the player chose a certain interval, and includes songs in sequence. But with 300 songs played only a part of them, the other part is not played at all. I watch it about 1 year. I'm tired of hearing the same thing. I want a real change.

So, what you're saying is that over a year of observation, you've seen certain songs played repeatedly and others never played. Do I understand you correctly?

Yes, John. It looks like this:

1...50...100...150...200...250...300 – is number of songs (N=300).

If play with shuffle mode, songs are played in sequence:
1...50...100...150...200...250...300, or
1...52...99...151...203...248...299, or
2...49...101...148...199...251...298.
It is an intensified model of play. I want to show that, for example, 5 – 45 songs never played.

The situation changes if the playlist is constantly replenished. If the compositions were 300, now is, for example, 400 (N=400):
1...60...120...180...240...300...360...400 – near these numbers player will choose songs for play.
As can be seen from the description, the player chose exemplary interval N/7. Again, my description is only a model for a visual explanation.

I propose to change the function of mixing, adding another a random variable:
S – function of shuffle mode,
N – the number of songs in a playlist,
A – random of N now,
B – additional random variable (from 1 to, for example, 50).
S(n)=A+B
In such a case can be played songs other than 1 and 50, and near these numbers.
It is my suggestion. Perhaps you can find a better solution. I'm just giving an idea.

I've never seen the behavior you describe. Audacious gets the playback order from the rand() function in the C run-time library (seeded with the current time(), as is common practice). It sounds like your C library has a broken random number generator.

May be. I conclude on the basis of the 1 year observations. I listen my playlist constantly and watch that some songs never played. I watched it and when listening playlist on the other computer.

John.
I too am having the same issue with the shuffle play. Whatever the method is it is not random.
I have 342 songs and playing and in 8 hours I can hear some songs upto 4 times EVERY day. And other songs are never played.
But if I manually forward to the next song then its does seem to be random and I'm unable to see a repeat easily.

Honestly, you have an issue. I'm now tired of the repeated some and missing on others so bye bye Audacious! sorry

Michael

While this is an old thread, I am definitely observing the same issue: the list of actually played songs appears not truly random over the course of ~8 weeks, but is very much like Виктор Пономарёв described (that's what brought me here). If it takes the rand() function, fine - but is this somehow re-using the same seed or re-using a previously generated list!? Just wondering whether more people are having this issue. Thanks!

I am indeed getting closer to what Michael said, "I'm now tired of the repeated some and missing on others..."

This is Audacious 3.7.2 on kubuntu 16.04

Thorsten

xyz dragon, you're the first person in this thread to make a real attempt to understand how the shuffle algorithm works. Thank you for that.

Really though you should have looked at the code; it's not quite that simple. Audacious does keep track of an internally shuffled list so that each song is played once before repeating, but that list is currently not saved when you close the program. So if you have a short playlist and play it to completion, you'll hear each song once. If you play a whole collection of 1000+ songs on shuffle, restarting Audacious every day, you'll hear some songs more often than others, as you observed in your test program.

@John Lindgren Ok, I see your point.

For users running into this problem. Just use "Playlist -> Sort -> Random Order" and then play that shuffled playlist sequentially.