Request for feedback: Shuffle

wow 
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.

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.

Ben, 1 question. Why do you not have the "Official Rep" title like all the other Sonos employees? It certainly would add more weight to your question.

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?

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. 
@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! 

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. 
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.

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. 
I agree with your statement Edward, but this doesn't explain the duplications and the fact that it selects some artists/albums more than others does it?  In other words if you have a list of 1000 songs - even if if the shuffle order is pre-determined, there should not be any duplicates.

Is part of this problem our interpretation of the repeat button?  On my ipod, repeat allows my playlist or what ever I'm playing to start over once it is finished.  This works with the shuffle feature on as well.  Doesn't repeat work that way with Sonos as well?  Or is it possible that the repeat function allows songs in a playlist to be repeated during the shuffling/randomizing?  I'm playing over 2600 songs non-stop in one group with the occasional pause then play again and I'm constantly hearing songs from the same albums and the same songs and it's a very small subset of the whole.  There are many albums I'm not hearing anything from.  I'm turning off repeat to see if I notice a difference although maybe I need to reshuffle now.

Looking forward to improvements.

Is part of this problem our interpretation of the repeat button?  On my ipod, repeat allows my playlist or what ever I'm playing to start over once it is finished.  This works with the shuffle feature on as well.  Doesn't repeat work that way with Sonos as well?  Or is it possible that the repeat function allows songs in a playlist to be repeated during the shuffling/randomizing?  I'm playing over 2600 songs non-stop in one group with the occasional pause then play again and I'm constantly hearing songs from the same albums and the same songs and it's a very small subset of the whole.  There are many albums I'm not hearing anything from.  I'm turning off repeat to see if I notice a difference although maybe I need to reshuffle now.

Looking forward to improvements.


Well that didn't take long, I just heard a song for the third time since Friday (three days ago).  Total play time since then was maybe 30 hours at best.  That was with repeat now turned off so I have reshuffled the deck.  Now of course it will be harder to recognize dupes again but I'm still listening for songs from all the albums I'm not hearing. 

It's pretty straight forward....play tracks in a given playlist randomly without repeating a track until all tracks have been played regardless of how many times you switch off or change to another playlist. How many Sonos customers do you need to repeat this simple request? Enough "threads"....time to write some code!

They asked for feedback 3 months ago.  Historically about every 3 months is their release cycle (although we have had a few more lately interim updates working on interface improvements).