[evo]

as above, looking for a mp3 player that really plays tracks randomly

i'll need fm, so the ipod shuffle is out, though i remember that i saw somewhere else [gizmodo or engadget] that says that it's random play is really random

much thanx

 

[ds-]

Zen micro has a shuffle function which I use a lot. Also has FM radio.

Not sure how "Random" it is... but all the "randomness" is probably generated by a algorithm based on time which isn't that random since you can calculate the outcome if you know the algorithm that apple/creative uses and what the time is.... but since we all probably arn't that fast and good at math to do it in a split second to predict the next song... it's "random" to us humas I guess to the point where we can't predict the outcome... but that is beside the point....

I use my Zen Micro's "Random" feature for all the music on my player which works fine for me. It is not as small as the shuffle, but still pretty small.


Off topic: Is anything really random? Doesn't everything have a material cause to it?

 

[GSTom1]

I remember some mp3 players claimed to have a random shuffle play (iRiver H-Series comes to mind) when all it did was shuffle the songs in a pre-defined playlist and then play that list in order. My Muvo2 FM does it that way too, when I don't consider to be a true random shuffle.

 

[Kiran]

I have the iAudio U2. It does shuffle play, but the problem with the "shuffle" concept is that it really DOES shuffle and there is a possibility that you'll hear the same song over again. I've had it happen to me on a few instances where I choose to skip a song, go to another song (didn't like that) and skip forward again, and I get the song I first skipped. I know for sure that once I reboot my player, it'll clear its "list" of played songs and it'll create a new list that'll be shuffled. So here's the deal: when it's shuffled, it's really not. And when it's not, it's not. Get it?

EDIT 1oint being, it assigns a number to each track (duh) and at the end, the device chooses a number at random and that is not the one that's just done and can be any other. I know a friend who wrote a program for his calculator and a part of its code instructed it to pick a random integer and he set the limit from 1-10. I've gotten the same number twice and that's cause he didn't set the restriction as the one that came earlier. So yea... I hope I'm more clear now.

EDIT 2: Ok, so it IS a possibility for the player to not use the last few tracks and that can be achieved by keeping a list. The list, probably, will get erased after a certain number of tracks (it depends on its available resources and how quickly it can sort, choose, write, read, etc.) And since I told you my mp3 player loses the "list" after a reboot, it doesn't completely do real shuffle where everything is played without having things repeat themselves more than once. It can be done on the PC cause it's got, relatively (to the players), exponentially more resources (exponentially might've been too big a word, but you get the picture.)
--Kiran