Good randomiser for PC music box.

JimmyEatWorms · 18 Jun 2006 at 17:13

The party shuffle shows you what is coming up so that you can clear out songs you don't want to hear before they come on. I've never really used it but that seems to be the only difference.

Ultra_Extreme · 18 Jun 2006 at 17:17

i dont get why random is so difficult on PC, ive tried loads of things, even dreaded iTunes, and whichever i use they tend to cycle through the same 5-5 artists or albums all bloody day, even worse when u restart the computer the 'random' order repeats almost identically. Why is it so hard to just pick songs randomly jeezz

Sic · 18 Jun 2006 at 17:35

oddly enough, with itunes, you have to select repeat all, for it to go through the whole library...if you don't, it picks a playlist of about 20 songs and cycles through those. not that it matters because itunes sucks

pinkegobox · 18 Jun 2006 at 17:47

itunes on windows truly sucks, whereas on osx it's not that bad. i still haven't figured that one out myself, although perhaps apple just want you to think osx is better as it runs itunes better. I JUST DON'T KNOW. and that's always been true (IM_vv_HO (the vv means very very)), even way before windows/osx would run on the same machine.

so down with itunes, long live itunes or something. i'm still undecided on the best media player. used to be winamp, but wmp 11 (beta) is quite nice and nice and smooth on vista. nevermind, i'm going offtopic.

perhaps taking the time to choose songs you like, and having different playlists for different times of the day? then, assuming you're running windows, have a scheduled task that calls selected playlist at certain times of the day. however, that would kill a song half way through to start a new song. hmm... difficult one. have you google'd for existing software to do what you want to do?

Ultra_Extreme · 18 Jun 2006 at 18:15

pinkegobox said:
snipped

The thing is, if you make playlists for certain times of the day then you get the same problem as with CD's, same songs at the same time every day, also with a large song collection you rarely hear even half the music. Google turns up sweet FA, sucks.

Conrad11 · 18 Jun 2006 at 20:25

i-Tunes is excellent and everything i would want from a music player but:

1. it has quicktime by default (although you can get rid of this).
2. it takes a lot of resources (which doesn't particuarly bother me, its just the fact you still have things running when you close it)

Those resons are exactly why i don't use it. I now use WinAmp

Clarkey · 18 Jun 2006 at 21:44

Itunes is brilliant in my experience, nothing else makes it so easy to manage an enormous library. Ditched winamp a long time ago, rubbish in comparison.

Clarkey · 18 Jun 2006 at 21:47

Conrad11 said:
i-Tunes is excellent and everything i would want from a music player but:

1. it has quicktime by default (although you can get rid of this).
2. it takes a lot of resources (which doesn't particuarly bother me, its just the fact you still have things running when you close it)

Those resons are exactly why i don't use it. I now use WinAmp

it has quicktime because it needs it to play the videos, there is nothing bad about quicktime anyway, it is no longer the pile of pap that is Realplayer.

Mine uses 45MB or memory never any more. The reason it still has components running after shutdown is because of the ipod detection, plug an ipod in and itunes pops right up, you can disable this.

Memphis · 18 Jun 2006 at 22:18

Clarkey said:
Itunes is brilliant in my experience, nothing else makes it so easy to manage an enormous library. Ditched winamp a long time ago, rubbish in comparison.

I have to agree with that.

The excuse of "iTunes is a resource hog" just doesn't wash with me. All I can ask is what the hell are you doing with your machine that you find iTunes affects it's performance and if you find that is the case, why are you running on such an apparently low specced machine???

If you just generally don't like the style of the program, fair enough, but slagging of software with useless excuses annoys me.

Oh and QuickTime can be removed so that excuse is void also.

William · 18 Jun 2006 at 22:22

JimmyEatWorms said:
The party shuffle shows you what is coming up so that you can clear out songs you don't want to hear before they come on. I've never really used it but that seems to be the only difference.

But then that defeats the purpose of it shuffling songs.

fini · 18 Jun 2006 at 22:31

William said:
But then that defeats the purpose of it shuffling songs.

not really - imagine it - you want to listen to some music, but can't feel stuffed what - you put on party shuffle and before you move away from the computer you glance through the list and take out a few tracks that you know are poo.

fini

Augmented · 19 Jun 2006 at 01:21

There are specific applications available for generating random playlists continuously - typically used for automated radio broadcasts - but these often come at a premium. I had Raduga running when I was doing student radio a few years ago for overnight playlisting, and it did the job, but I wouldn't consider it as easy to use as something like iTunes. Have a google for something like 'automated broadcast software' or 'automated radio playlists' and see if anything good comes up. I couldn't say what software would be best to go with currently, but be aware there are professional applications designed for this purpose.

However, if you are just looking for free consumer software, I'd also recommend going with iTunes. But I would say that it has a huge failing as far as being able to act as a fully-fledged jukebox for a media PC. Namely the narrow range of formats it supports. Personally I'd want my media PC to be able to play anything I can throw at it, be it FLAC, musepack, OGG, MP3, AAC and so on.

On balance it does have an excellent and intuitive interface for such a system, so if format support is not a priority then I'd say it was the best bet for the requirements. In particular, its Smart Playlists will be good for generating playlists that need to fit a particular mood or atmosphere without becoming stale.

It's a shame your media PC is XP-based, as I would say the ultimate free jukebox application is Amarok. It's very similar to iTunes but frankly blows it out of the water. Supports the same kind of randomiser functions, playlisting but comes with way more format support (audio-engine dependent). If you get the chance, I highly recommend giving it a whirl. You can also run scripts internally, allowing you to automate pretty much anything e.g. scheduled playlisting.

Clarkey · 19 Jun 2006 at 01:55

Augmented said:
However, if you are just looking for free consumer software, I'd also recommend going with iTunes. But I would say that it has a huge failing as far as being able to act as a fully-fledged jukebox for a media PC. Namely the narrow range of formats it supports. Personally I'd want my media PC to be able to play anything I can throw at it, be it FLAC, musepack, OGG, MP3, AAC and so on.

If you were using it with all legitametly(sp?) owned music then this is a non issue.

50/50 · 19 Jun 2006 at 02:04

I have a music collection of just over 700 full albums and I use nothing but Itunes. Its nearly pefect, which definately cant be said for any other jukebox software.

ballistic · 19 Jun 2006 at 02:59

the best jukebox software is Amarok imo, it's only available for Linux at the moment (till KDE 4 is released) but it craps on anything available for Windows. Also, yes all decent music players have a randomising option - at least as a plugin.

Sic · 19 Jun 2006 at 09:51

Clarkey said:
If you were using it with all legitametly(sp?) owned music then this is a non issue.

how does that make even the slightest bit of sense? it's now legal to rip cds for your ipod/personal copies. some people choose to rip using different compression techniques because they believe it gives a better sound quality at a better compression. it has nothing to do with legitimacy/source of the music

Augmented · 19 Jun 2006 at 10:06

As far as I am aware it is not actually legal at this current time. It's merely that private users making digital copies for private use are not likely to be pursued. Until there's an official amendment to the Acts governing copyright (i.e. C,D&P Act 1988), I believe we're still on the wrong side of the law. But, yes,

Clarkey said:
If you were using it with all legitametly(sp?) owned music then this is a non issue.

is rubbish. A licence for mechanical copyright (see relevant MCPS/PPL licences) does not mean you have to convert to an Apple-approved format, or have downloaded it from iTunes.

Sic · 19 Jun 2006 at 10:41

Augmented said:
As far as I am aware it is not actually legal at this current time. It's merely that private users making digital copies for private use are not likely to be pursued. Until there's an official amendment to the Acts governing copyright (i.e. C,D&P Act 1988), I believe we're still on the wrong side of the law. But, yes,

ah yes, you're quite right. i remember reading the finer points of the article and discovering that it wasn't actually legislated yet.

JimmyEatWorms · 19 Jun 2006 at 12:28

Sic said:
how does that make even the slightest bit of sense? it's now legal to rip cds for your ipod/personal copies. some people choose to rip using different compression techniques because they believe it gives a better sound quality at a better compression. it has nothing to do with legitimacy/source of the music

But why would you have lots of different compression methods in the same library? I don't see any point. If you're ripping your own discs then surely you don't use more than one compression method?

Sic · 19 Jun 2006 at 13:44

JimmyEatWorms said:
But why would you have lots of different compression methods in the same library? I don't see any point. If you're ripping your own discs then surely you don't use more than one compression method?

well, if you rip 50 CDs to mp3, then discover FLAC, and think it's better, you're going to have to have a pretty big window of time to re-rip those CDs to FLAC. either that or you aren't going to bother. personally, i would...but i'm very anal about my music collection.

this is all beside the point...the purpose of this thread isn't to point fingers at filesharers, is it?