This is a bug which will be fixed before the 1.0 release.

I'm really glad to hear you say that, Hugo. It was a pet peeve of mine.


Dignan17, in case Hugo's answer confused you at all, I thought I could clarify a little more on how the shuffle play mode works for the Mark 1. Since Hugo has said the playlist functions will be getting some behavior changes before 1.0, this might not be the case forever. But since you asked, I wanted to make sure you were absolutely clear on how it functioned.

The shuffle play mode in the Empeg shuffles the playlist like a deck of cards. Each entry in the playlist is like a card in the deck. So if no two cards in the deck are the same, then there won't be any repeats in the list. And it doesn't just shuffle the tracks willy-nilly, it literally creates a list of file ID's in memory, shuffles those, and saves that shuffled list. So you can traverse the shuffled list- for instance, you can go back and forth through that shuffled list and see the same song order. This even counts across power-downs and pull-outs. For instance, if I am listening to a shuffled playlist in the car, then I pull it out of the car and plug it in at my desk, it will pick up that same shuffled playlist right where I left off.

This method is very elegant, but it has a couple of disadvantages:

1) If you are playing the root of your playlist "tree", you probably have some songs that are copied into more than one playlist. For instance, on my Empeg, I have all the songs individually in artist/album trees. But I also have separate "mood" or "test" or "demo" playlists, too. So if I choose to play the entire Empeg (the main "root" of the playlist tree), that's like having a deck of cards where some of the cards are the same. Since I do this often, I get repeats rather often. But like Hugo said, that'll be fixed by the time the Mark2's ship: They'll simply de-dupe the flattened playlist before shuffling it.

2) It only performs the shuffling function when you select a new playlist. This is different than the behavior of consumer CD players. For instance, on a consumer CD player, when you turn on shuffle, the next track will definitely be a random track. Or when you turn off shuffle, the next track will definitely be the next song on the CD. The Empeg works a little differently. It uses the "shuffle" option as a parameter for playlist selection, rather than a function that initiates on its own. You can turn shuffle on and off all you like, and it won't change the current-running playlist. The only time it's taken into account is when you choose a new playlist (or choose the same playlist again). Only then does it reshuffle or unshuffle.

I don't know if the behavior of #2 will change or not (perhaps Hugo can fill us in?).

If they wanted to make the shuffle button behave like a consumer CD player (i.e., it instantly shuffles or unshuffles when you hit it), there's some odd behaviors that they'd need to account for, and it's not an easy choice to make.

For example, let's say that I'm listening to the entire Empeg, shuffled. I have some songs in multiple branches of the tree. I have a "Pink Floyd" playlist, with the "Wish You Were Here" album as a sub-playlist of that branch. But I also have a few songs from that album copied into other "mood" playlists that I've made. For instance, I have the first section of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" in my "Low Key" playlist.

Let's say that the first "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" section was playing. And as the song neared its end, I could "feel" the song "Welcome to the Machine" coming up. I decided that I wanted to hear the rest of that album unshuffled, so I turn off shuffle play. I expect it to roll directly into "Welcome to the Machine", because that's what a consumer CD player would do in that situation.

But the Empeg doesn't know which copy of "Shine On" it should continue after. What if the copy of "Shine On" it was playing was the one from the "Low Key" playlist, and not the one from the album playlist? Then the next song wouldn't be "Welcome to the Machine", it'd probably be a Pat Metheny tune or something. Not what I expected.

So, since the files on the Empeg are organized in a more complicated way than the songs on a CD player, it makes the behavior harder to code. If they wanted the shuffle function to behave like a consumer CD player, they'd need to do some serious coding work to make it decide where in the playlist it should drop you after an unshuffle.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144