Hello. My name is Ben Smith and I head up Product Management for Experience, Software, and Developer Programs at Sonos.
I wanted to get more feedback from you all on your expectations for Shuffling tracks in your queue. I have reviewed the feedback on ask.sonos.com and received e-mails from a few of you (via our CEO John MacFarlane), but I wanted to get a better sense from those of you who use Shuffle, how your really want it to work.
When you select shuffle what do you want to happen? What don't you want to happen?
Thanks!
Ben
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Userlevel 1
It doesn't matter if I use pause from my iPhone or PCs either; works the same way.
Totally agree - left hand acknowledging there is an issue and 'listening to our views', right hand arguing case. How about a united response from Sonos? Ben?..... Any comment?
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Hi guys,
Yes - I know Ben, and that we're working on the improvements to shuffle, as Ben said. In the mean time, I thought it would be helpful to clear up some shuffle misconceptions in the thread and explain how shuffle on Sonos works at present.
Userlevel 1
@John M - this is flat out false:
"The way shuffle works on Sonos is that hitting shuffle will randomly order all the tracks you have in the queue. Each track will play once, in that shuffled order, and then at the end playback will stop."
Userlevel 1
Hi John Shuffle doesn't work the way you describe for me. Sonos always opens my playlist of 5,000 songs at the first track (alphabetically), regardless of where I got to the day before. That's annoying for a start If I then hit play, the shuffle then goes through all the tracks in seemingly random order. However, this order is predetermined somehow and is the same EVERY time. So I have to scroll down to a different track each time and then hit play. Ed
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@Scott
Thanks for the reply. When you add your playlist to the queue with shuffle on (repeat off) and then start playing, Sonos has a shuffled ordering of those tracks and will play each one of them once before reaching the end. Playing / pausing those tracks will not affect the ordering of the shuffled queue.
What can affect the ordering is toggling shuffle on and off, clearing the queue and then adding that playlist back, or using the replace queue option for that playlist (which is a one-click clear and add function). Each of those things will generate a new shuffled order, including tracks that have already been played.
If you occasionally listen to queues other than that 7388 track playlist and then re-add it, that would explain the repeats. If you have an alarm setup for this playlist every day, that would do the same thing (alarms always clear the queue). Does any of that sound likely?
We hear from the comments in this thread that the way shuffle works isn't intuitive. I'm sure that's obvious just from how long it takes to me explain it. We're working to make shuffle make sense while you're using it.
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@Scott
Thanks for the reply. When you add your playlist to the queue with shuffle on (repeat off) and then start playing, Sonos has a shuffled ordering of those tracks and will play each one of them once before reaching the end. Playing / pausing those tracks will not affect the ordering of the shuffled queue.
What can affect the ordering is toggling shuffle on and off, clearing the queue and then adding that playlist back, or using the replace queue option for that playlist (which is a one-click clear and add function). Each of those things will generate a new shuffled order, including tracks that have already been played.
If you occasionally listen to queues other than that 7388 track playlist and then re-add it, that would explain the repeats. If you have an alarm setup for this playlist every day, that would do the same thing (alarms always clear the queue). Does any of that sound likely?
We hear from the comments in this thread that the way shuffle works isn't intuitive. I'm sure that's obvious just from how long it takes to me explain it. We're working to make shuffle make sense while you're using it.
Userlevel 1
The only thing I may do is take a specific track and say "Play Now" from Favorites - but maybe only every other week.
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Hi Edward, I'm thinking about why this would be the case, and I'd venture a guess that you don't often clear the queue.
What's non-intuitive about Sonos shuffle is that it isn't a random play mode. When turned on, it shuffles the queue into a new, random order. That order isn't reflected in the queue itself, but it's there. You'll notice this if you skip / reverse a few times as you don't get a random track each time, you get the same tracks in a randomized order. That's also why you notice the same order each and every time.
What this means is that if you always start the queue with the same track, you'll always get the same order until you 're-shuffle'. You can do that by clearing the queue, or by toggling the shuffle button off and on.
John - when can we expect a sonos upgrade? Where are we with development ?
It seems that there is a huge difference between the behaviour that John M. says we should be experiencing and what we are actually experiencing. I did a bit of testing yesterday with a playlist of ten tracks and it did indeed behave like John said. So why I have and I and others experienced problems with actual playlists?
Could it be that there is at least one other variable that is causing the Sonos shuffle to break?
1. Number of songs in playlist?
2. Playlists created outside of Sonos and then imported??
Just thinking aloud really.....
I really hope this upgrade is realeased soon!
Could it be that there is at least one other variable that is causing the Sonos shuffle to break?
1. Number of songs in playlist?
2. Playlists created outside of Sonos and then imported??
Just thinking aloud really.....
I really hope this upgrade is realeased soon!
Userlevel 1
Hi John,
Why would I want to clear my queue every time I want to use Sonos? I want to come in the house, press play, and listen to my entire music collection in the queue from where I left off. Simple.
I don't want to faff around with clearing queues, toggling shuffle on and off or scrolling to a new start point to make up for the system deficiencies.
I, along with many others on this thread, am simply staggered at how such a simple tweak has taken over two years to get to this point - whatever this point is. You could *literally* build a whole new product in that time.
Ed
I agree Stuart. I did similar testing by loading a single album with 8 songs and it behaves perfectly as you would expect. But when I have my 1800 song playlist I try to play each day it does not.
My hunch is it is in the grouping/ungrouping. If you have several players grouped and ungroup one it goes back to where that queue was loaded. That I have experienced multiple times. So when you re-group them does that affect it?
My hunch is it is in the grouping/ungrouping. If you have several players grouped and ungroup one it goes back to where that queue was loaded. That I have experienced multiple times. So when you re-group them does that affect it?
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@Scott
Got it. Using Play Now will insert that track into the shuffled order of you queue (and immediately skip forward) to it, at which point the rest of the tracks will continue on in the shuffled order. Playing Now doesn't 'reset' the position in the queue though, tracks that have already played once should not play again.
One thought - do you ever pick a specific track out the the queue and play it? That would basically jump position in the shuffled queue and would move you up or down in the list of shuffled tracks. If you moved up, you'd be replaying tracks that have already been heard, if you moved down, you'd be skipping over tracks you haven't heard yet.
Ultimately, none of this is obvious while you're using the product, which is part of the issue. I'm asking these questions and explaining some of this behavior so that we can make sure what we're working on meets everyone's expectations of what shuffle should do in the future.
We may want to revisit what you're seeing in your home when there's an opportunity for you to use the updated version in the future. As Ben said above, when that's an option via a public beta, we'll let everyone in this thread know.
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@Gary H
Hi Gary, we don't communicate release dates for software updates or public beta programs in advance. I know that can be frustrating sometimes, but it's our policy to make sure our new stuff is 100 percent ready before we communicate when it's coming out.
We'll let you know here as soon as the opportunity to get your hands on the next version (via public beta) is available.
The entire group management needs a major overhaul.
We should be able to define virtual groups and save those including equalizer settings, calibration profiles and playlist information.
This is something that should have been implemented years ago, The easy Sonos experience really goes south once one has to fiddle with all those settings over and over again.
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@Edward Sylvester
We hear you and we want to make it simpler for you too. Right now it's not at all intuitive what shuffle actually does, so I understand why it's frustrating.
It sounds like what you're doing right now will do what you want. Add the music to queue, and play / pause whenever you need to turn your music on or off. You'll get all your music in the queue played in a set, shuffled order. If you want to change that shuffled order, toggle shuffle to create a new ordering of the same tracks.
We're working to make this more intuitive to use than it is now. We'll keep you posted.
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@Stuart
Thanks for thinking out loud, it's helpful. I don't think either #1 or #2 should be impacting the shuffle mode, but I am verifying that this is the case and will report back here to let you know.
Thanks for thinking out loud, it's helpful. I don't think either #1 or #2 should be impacting the shuffle mode, but I am verifying that this is the case and will report back here to let you know.
Userlevel 1
@John- That's not how I feel it's working...
Userlevel 1
I never pick a track from the que... There doesn't seem to be an order to what's in the queue, so even if I wanted to it's difficult to find it. I look forward to running a beta version... It would be nice to be able to back this up with some real data about what was played… even if all it had was some kind of guid for the song so we could see what did duplicate... along with what other events might be jostling the que.
Userlevel 1
If your tracks are stored on a file server with a web-based management console, you maybe able to conveniently access a log for file IO which will list which tracks were accessed by a Sonos player.
Userlevel 1
It would be nice to be able to back this up with some real data about what was played... even if all it had was some kind of guid for the song so we could see what did duplicate... along with what other events might be jostling the que.
Anyway, I think User500327 above sums it up the best. New random order each time you play a list or press the random icon, shuffle albums, and (not as important to me) show the queue in the order it plays.
Keen to see some changes here along any of the lines of the other excellent feedback and ideas. Could we have an update as to whether anything is happening?
@sands904
I suspect it is something like that, but it is really frustrating me that I cannot find a reproducible reason for this.
In fairness to SONOS, all they have is our anecdotal evidence suggesting something is wrong. Most of the people on this thread have experienced some kind of duplication or dodgy algorithm behaviour, but I don't think anyone yet has managed to provide a rock solid reproducible event.
My overwhelming concern with this is that the new version of shuffle (when it is available) will also be affected by the same anomaly!! Welcome to my current nightmare!
Userlevel 1
I have to disagree Stuart. John M from Sonos has confirmed that the shuffle play is not random - it is a predetermined order, and is the same every time (if you start from the same point in the queue each time). This is one of the key problems, and in my opinion is a very simple fix.
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