Request for feedback: Shuffle

Chiming back in. Not ignoring anyone, listening to the conversation. We hear you. I apologize for not making this more obvious (or obvious at all). We are going to make the experience of shuffle better. In fact, we have already started working on it. No timing to announce yet, but it will be soon and we will put it through it's paces in a public beta. Ben

Chiming back in. Not ignoring anyone, listening to the conversation. We hear you. I apologize for not making this more obvious (or obvious at all). We are going to make the experience of shuffle better. In fact, we have already started working on it. No timing to announce yet, but it will be soon and we will put it through it's paces in a public beta. Ben
Thank you for the update Ben.

Chiming back in. Not ignoring anyone, listening to the conversation. We hear you. I apologize for not making this more obvious (or obvious at all). We are going to make the experience of shuffle better. In fact, we have already started working on it. No timing to announce yet, but it will be soon and we will put it through it's paces in a public beta. Ben
Great news Ben

Thank you Ben.  Great to hear.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled SONOS - Playback Algorithm. I am frustrated with the way the algorithm appears to work when playing a playlist. If I have 250 songs in my Folk playlist, I will listen to a queue that I created up to several days ago, by hitting Pause or Play as my availability to listen dictates. The problem is that I keep hearing many of the songs I have already heard, even in the previous session, while songs I have not yet heard are not being played. At a minimum there needs to be a choice to not have SONOS re-play any song in the queue until all 250 songs have been played from that original queue. Please advise if this is a change you can make - thanks!

My opinion is that it should choose a random track (generated from a random number based off datetime.now) and then ensure it doesn't repeat a track until all tracks are played.... heres a c# class that would do the magic - you can keep it if you want :)

class Shuffle{

 private List<track> playlist;
 private List<track> playedSongs = new List<track>();

   
 public shuffle(List<track> playlist){
        //initalises object and sets playlist
  this.playlist = playlist;
 }

 public track GetRandomTrack(){
        //gets the random track and adds it to the played songs
        //this is random in terms of a different order and not played before, if all songs have been played
        //it re-randomises it
  int randomTrackNumber = GetRandomTrackNumber();

  playedSongs.Add(randomTrackNumber);
  return playlist[randomTrackNumber];
 }

 private int GetRandomTrackNumber(){
        //gets the random track number
        List<int> unplayedmap = getUnplayedTrackMap();

        //if there isn't anything then everything has been played, reset the shuffle
        if(unplayedmap.Count == 0)
        {
            ResetSuffle();
            return GetRandomTrackNumber();
        }

        //gets the random unplayed track index to play and returns the actual track index
        int trackIndexToPlay = getRandomInt(0, unplayedmap.Count);
        return unplayedmap[trackIndexToPlay];
 }
    private void ResetSuffle()
    {
        //resets the shuffle by clearing what has been played
        playlist.Clear();
    }

     private int getRandomInt(int min, int max)
     {
         //generate a random in between the two values
        Random r = new Random();
        decimal next = (decimal)r.NextDouble();
        return (int)(min + (next * (min - max)));
     }

    private List<int> getUnplayedTrackMap()
    {
        //creates a list of unplayed tracks, it contains the index of the track in the playlist
        List<int> unplayed  = new List<int>();
  for(int trackIndex = 0; trackIndex < playlist.Count; trackIndex++)
        {
            if (!playedSongs.Contains(playlist[trackIndex])){
                unplayed.Add(trackIndex);
            }
        }

        return unplayed;
 }

 }


talk about being proactive 🙂

I am amazed how upset people can get over something like a shuffle function, and i am not implying that it isn't a feature that couldn't need enhancement, but contacting the CEO over it?
You have to be kidding.

I spent $8,000 on Sonos, but i cant use the controller to play my playlists because i hear then same 1/50th of my music over and over when on random. Now i am forced to use iTunes to shuffle and input to Sonos as a TV in making the system a bunch of dumb speakers i can only control from my mac, not any handheld device. At least iTunes shuffles where Sonos does not appear to. If you were facing this issue, you would likely grow very tired of the 2 year wait for a solution. Just because you don't see a problem, does not mean others are being silly. If Sonos wanted to play real smart, they would release an SDK and let people help them evolve their software.

My wife, who is not technical gave a product review when i explained why she kept hearing the same few songs over and over: "well that's a bit crap then, isn't it"

Chiming back in. Not ignoring anyone, listening to the conversation. We hear you. I apologize for not making this more obvious (or obvious at all). We are going to make the experience of shuffle better. In fact, we have already started working on it. No timing to announce yet, but it will be soon and we will put it through it's paces in a public beta. Ben
yaay, any sort of timeline would be really appreciated!

wow good shuffle guys - just had a song repeat after 3 hours...... our playlist has 1600 songs!

Wait until you set a playlist for alarm with your 1600 songs and get woken by the same music every day...