Well, the main thing I'm noticing seems to defy even the statistical normals that you'd expect in a true random shuffle.

I'm not talking about a few songs by the same band coming close together.

I'm also not talking about a few variations of the same song coming close together.

I'm not talking about a certain band who dominate my playlist with sheer numbers (say, Rush) coming up excessive amounts.

All of the above I would expect from a random shuffle, and pretty frequently.

No, I'm talking about a consistent and regular "comb" of a LARGE NUMBER of closely-grouped FIDs coming up on EVERY SINGLE RESHUFFLE, usually noticeable within the first couple dozen tracks or so.

Case in point:

- My player has about 3000 songs on it now, of which 2759 are not ignored-as-child on a "down down down" shuffle.

- Of those songs, there are exactly 13 by Madonna. The album "Ray of Light" is the only album of hers I own.

- I do a down-down-down shuffle in purely Random mode.

- The beginning of the playlist looks like this:

Some song
Some song
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
Some song
Some song
Some song
Some song
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
Some song
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
Some song
Some song
Some song
A song from Ray of Light
Some song
Some song
Some song
Some song
Some song
Some song
(etc...)


Now, I could imagine this once in a while. But I see this happening at least once somewhere in every single full-player-shuffle.

I will admit that each time it's not "Ray of light" but it's something, some album or artist who I don't have a lot of compared to the rest of my collection.

Are you saying that in a truly random shuffle, that this behavior is still within the realm of statistical distribution?