Bugzilla – Bug 5254
Shuffle by album should always play tracks in album order
Last modified: 2009-07-31 10:14:32 UTC
I'm a classical music listner. So I rip my CDs assigning the same "album name" to all the parts of a single musical piece; "Beethoven: Sympony n°5 / Karajan" is the album name and the 4 movements are the 4 tracks of the album. I’m pretty sure it’s the commonly agreed on solution. Now, when I’m shuffling "by album", I do appreciate to have a random choice of different sonatas or different symphonies (i.e. different albums), for example, but I would like the movements of the same work to play in the correct "natural" order, not at random. I'm reporting this as a bug, because both iTunes and the iPod do follow the logic I'm mentioning. What I would consider a feature would be to have the choice to keep the current behavior through a preference, for when I'm listening to jazz albums, for example. But again, when listening to the recording of a live performance, I don't necessarily want to have the tracks shuffled inside the album. The preference might be labelled something like: Also shuffle songs inside albums: YES / NO Or there could be a further choice for the SHUFFLE options: OFF / SONGS / TRACKS by ALBUM / JUST ALBUMS Before your ask: "Track number" tag is assigned correctly AND I've instructed iTunes to also begin the filename with the track number. I thinks that's why (and how) the iPod behaves in what I feel like the "correct way". Thanks for your kind attention. Olivier Spinnler :-{)
If I understand you correctly, then I'm not seeing this behavior. When I shuffle by album I see the albums mixed up, but the tracks within each album are kept in the original/correct order within the album. Try queueing up and shuffling some non-classical CDs that you've ripped and tagged in the standard way and see which behavior you see.
I see the same behaviour as Jim. Are your movements given an actual track number tag or are they in order simply due to the track names being alphabetically in order?
[KDF] I've mentioned it in my first post: > Before your ask: "Track number" tag is assigned correctly AND I've instructed > iTunes to also begin the filename with the track number. I think that's why > (and how) the iPod behaves in what I feel like the "correct way". [Jim] Thank you for your prompt answer. You pushed me to make some further testing, that's why I haven't been as quick as you. I've discovered different things: 1) it seems to happen right after I've updated the iTunes library, either adding or changing tracks. It happens again while SlimServer is updating its database from iTunes. So I guess it's an "out of sync" issue. No big deal, it's kind of self corrected right after the update. It kept happening because I kept updating my iTunes library. So enthusiastic was I… 2) still, I could reproduce and track this misbehavior to a certain Playlist from iTunes. It's a smart Playlist, called "High Quality", whose only criteria is "Bit rate > 192". Any idea? Thanks again. Olivier :-{)
QA can you reproduce and see if you can figure out what the trigger here is?
I'll take a look.
ping
ping steven.
I don't think this is a bug but I have figured out a way to duplicate the described behavior. The key is to start with a saved playlist that has tracks from an album together but not in album order or add tracks from an album to the current playlist not in album order. When one activates Shuffle by Album function using said playlist the album tracks will stay together but will continue to be in what ever order they were in before, and in this example not in Album track order. For example a playlist that looks like this: Track 2 Album A Track 1 Album A Track 3 Album A Track 1 Album B Track 3 Album B Track 2 Album B Track 1 Album C Track 2 Album C Track 3 Album C Could become the following with the Shuffle by Album enabled: Track 1 Album B Track 3 Album B Track 2 Album B Track 1 Album C Track 2 Album C Track 3 Album C Track 2 Album A Track 1 Album A Track 3 Album A This seems correct to me since someone may want said album to play in a different order but still have the ability to shuffle it among other albums. Assigning to unassigned for review.
(In reply to comment #8) (I’m the original reporter of this bug.) For some times, everything worked fine for me and I thought it was either an intermittent problem or it had been remedied for in some way. But now, it strikes me again. EVENTS: • I upgraded to SqueezeCenter Version: 7.0 - 17793 - Mac OS X 10.4.11 (8S2167) • I added a Transporter to my wifi network • I moved the iTunes library to a network server • I did a complete re-import of the Music folder and subfolders into iTunes • I pointed SqueezeCenter to this new position (Music Folder, in Basic Settings) • I made a full rescan of the library (Basic Settings > Rescan Music Library > Clear Library and rescan everything) Now WHAT HAPPENS: • on the right side of the interface, I start with an “Empty” list and the Shuffle selector is set [By Album] • on the left, I select Genres, then click the [+] on one of the genres —> OK, albums shuffled, tracks in order inside the albums. It’s the way it’s supposed to work. • the problem appears with Playlists. Whichever playlist I select, the tracks are out of order inside the albums, when [Shuffle by album] is ON. This definitely looks like a bug to me. With classical music listening, it’s most unwelcome to hear the movements of a work in the order 4-3-1-2! Sorry about that. Could you provide at least a workaround?! I’d be very grateful to whoever comes with a solution. Thanks very much in advance. Olivier
Olivier, you are using iTunes as a playlist source for SqueezeCenter correct? If this is the case could you go into iTunes and select one of the playlists in question and then sort the playlist by order number? You can do this by clicking the header above the playlist order number, you will see a triangle with the point at the top when this is done properly. Once sorted ctrl click on the playlist name and choose 'Export Song List...' and attach the resulting text file to this bug so I can take a look.
Created attachment 3174 [details] iTunes smart playlist export This playlist has been exported with the random function OFF. Hence the suffix "RAW".
Created attachment 3175 [details] iTunes smart playlist export This playlist has been exported with the random function ON. Hence the suffix "random". Here, one can see that iTunes has shuffled the albums, but has kept the tracks in order, inside the albums.
Created attachment 3176 [details] Creation rule for the "Matin" smart playlist. This is how the playlist is collected by iTunes.
Created attachment 3177 [details] iTunes playlist rule This is an example of an iTunes "sublist" from which the "matin" playlist is assembled. The albums in this present "smart playlist" aren't played in the correct order by SqueezeServer either.
(In reply to comment #10) Yes, Steven, my playlists are assembled through iTunes. They are actually somehow complex "Smart Playlists". Following are some screen captures of the rules used in iTunes. I think we're getting somewhere. From my current understanding (but I don't know SqueezeServer under the hood at all!), it appears that SqueezeServer is just reading the "raw" iTunes playlist and then shuffling the albums "as they are", i.e. without sorting the tracks inside them. So, if it's too complicated to add a sorting step in SqueezeServer, we'd need a sure way to sort the iTunes list beforehand! And it would also avoid the possible speed penalty imposed by a sorting step. Unless SqueezeServer would do the required sorting somewhere during the import scan.
(In reply to comment #15) > I think we're getting somewhere. From my current understanding (but I don't > know SqueezeServer under the hood at all!), it appears that SqueezeServer is > just reading the "raw" iTunes playlist and then shuffling the albums "as they > are", i.e. without sorting the tracks inside them. Yes, this is the same behavior I described in comment #8. > So, if it's too complicated to add a sorting step in SqueezeServer, we'd need a > sure way to sort the iTunes list beforehand! And it would also avoid the > possible speed penalty imposed by a sorting step. Unless SqueezeServer would do > the required sorting somewhere during the import scan. SqueezeCenter imports the playlist in whatever sort order it was set in iTunes during the import. So if the tracks were out of order in iTunes they will remain out of order in the playlist once imported to SqueezeCenter. Since SqueezeCenter maintains the album sort order based on the playlist when shuffling albums they remain out of order. So my suggestion for now would be to sort the playlist in iTunes in such a way that the album tracks are in order then do a 'Only rescan playlists' in SqueezeCenter Settings to reimport the playlist. I changed the severity to enhancement, updated the summary and assigned to unassigned for review.
Users can set the iTunes sort order, right Steven? Why should we re-sort (or un-sort) their sort?
(In reply to comment #17) > Users can set the iTunes sort order, right Steven? Why should we re-sort (or > un-sort) their sort? > Well, for you, developers, some things are evident because you know the inner working of your creation. But it's not necessarily the case for the common user. I do have a FileMaker background. So, what happened to me is that I had really no reason to assume the sort order of the iTunes playlists was kept outside of iTunes. I understand smart playlists as being kind of a filter through which you see the underlying music database. Then, you can display the extracted data in different ways — choose columns, sort, further filter through a browser. I assumed the "underlying order" of the data was kept unchanged. So it came to me as a surprise that the __displayed order__ was transferred over to SqueezeServer!! You might say the "FileMaker type" of behaviour — where you have to physically sort the database records to have them in a particular order — is not familiar to many. But I'm pretty certain I'm not the only one to think this way. That's why I keep thinking it would be a good idea to have SqueezeServer store the smart playlists in a logical order (Albums > Disk number > Track number), so that when we'd play them without shuffling, they would appear in a logical (classical) order. Why would we want in SqueezeServer a particular "iTunes order"? Altenatively, we should at least document somewhere the current not-so-obvious behaviour, shouldn't we?
Reduce number of active targets for SC