Random Play / Shuffle Mode: Can any techs explain?

[ACEtone]

Consider this, if you will: when I play 50 CD changer (now thrown out actually) or iPod (or your similar device) I have noticed over the years that from any album a lot of the same tracks will keep on cropping up and perfectly good, often great tracks will remain unplayed - ever!

How are the Random/Shuffle modes programmed and why would the code involved be doing this? I'm not alone in this experience - I know that for sure - and I would really like to hear what anyone else has to say tech, geek, or just plain old music loving people.

Example: Whenever the Trojan Roots box set came out, I bought it, never put played the CD, ripped it to mp3 and put it on my iPod. Selector J pointed out Jah Jah Me No Born Yah by Cornell Campbell on another thread and I found that it IS on my iPod, IS on the aforementioned Trojan comp - but I have never heard it before now. One little deliberate listen and I really like it a lot. What is up with that? And this is not an isolated occurrence.

Is there something wrong with the code? From my limited understanding it is all about data and id numbers, so how can such great music get passed over all the time?

Your thoughts please. and lets not get sidetracked by talk of poor sound quality of mp3s etc.

Respect!

[Nugstriker]

Luck of the draw, it is completely random. The program looks at a list of all the songs and shuffles them randomly to create a new list. With ipods or itunes, they may have more complex algorithms which take other things into consideration. here is a link about the topic:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports ... c2959.html

read about the golden ratio, that could explain patterns that you will find with a random shuffle.

[ACEtone]

I had to go and misspell algorithm. Oh well.

Thanks Nugstriker for the link. Fairly dry reading and really the summary is 'it sucks and there isn't much that can be done about it'!
There should just be a random with no repeats mode...

[Chris]

The random number generators used by most statistical software and I assume similar algorithms are used by our CD players, i-pods, etc. are not truly random numbers as no computer can generate a true random number, but instead a "pseudo-random" number based on program codes that are "near" random, so as long as humans are programming the "randomness", it can never be truly random.

[ACEtone]

I can't see why it is not possible to go from something like this:
Tracks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
play randomly as 6 4 8 2 1 10 7 3 5

to tracks 1 to 11,500 being randomized in the same way with no repeats.
Why is this so difficult?

Sorry I don't have time to write it all out just now...

[ACEtone]

Just had a bit of time to look into this a bit.
On my iPod I have never heard (it never played them really) 3,692 tracks of a total of 11,435.
Some of the tracks played have been played several times - some because I deliberately played them - many, many others as part of the shuffle. Something is amiss.
Anyway to sidestep this weirdness I have set up a playlist of never played tracks and will be shuffling them for a bit and see how it goes.
Seems such a shame to have such great stuff to listen to and have it ignored by a bleeding chip...
The fact that some tracks have featured a few times and others never is still baffling to me still even though I understand it a bit better...