The real randomness of windows media player

[Murgos]

The random number generator for WMP really sucks ass.  For example in my collection I have both Metallicas cover of Tuesdays Gone and the original.  I don't recall ever having heard the original yet with 1500+ songs to choose from I hear the Metallica one at least every other day.

I have ONE Rage Against the Machine song (from a soundtrack cd) and I swear I hear it every day.  I have the entire two CD set of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, don't think I've ever heard a song off it.

Eminem?  Seems like every other song.  Bach, Brahms, Beethoven or Carl Orf who outnumber Eminem on my drive probably 4 to 1?  HA.  I've forgotten what they sound like.

I have several Pearl Jam CD's what do I get?  Dirty Frank and Bee Girl again and again and again.

Concrete Blonde?  No.  Blondie?  No.  Scorpions? Yes.

I'm seriously starting to wonder how random Windows Media Player really is.

[Righ]

Then it can join TCP ISNs and password keys in the long list of Windows software suffering from defective randomisation. You're only supposed to use it for playing games. Get a real OS or a stereo or something.

[Murgos]

Bah, I say, Bah.  I've been using Linux for various purposes for almost 5 years now but when I have certain types of work to do, say some MFC app, I gotta do it in windows.

I suppose I could do it in VI and just say screw visual studios until I'm ready to start compiling but thats sound like more of a hassle than hearing unrandom music.

Anyway I've already got all my music on a seperate FAT32 so I can listen to it in whatever OS I'm running at the moment and I've got Rhythmbox working quite well in Linux.  No, my issue isn't listening to random music under linux, its listening to random music under windows.  I suppose I could get off my lazy ass and write my own player but that would defeat the purpose of whining, now wouldn't it?

[Disco Stu]

Get Itunes. Works great for me.

[Murgos]

Get Itunes. Works great for me.

Fuck.  No.

[TripleDES]

http://www.foobar2000.org/

[Shavnir]

My friends swear by foobar, but only after winamp started crashing on them randomly.  Since then the random crashes have stopped (they also wear tin-foil helmets when listening to MP3s, but I'm fairly certain the two are unrelated)

[Sairon]

So there's actually people using WMP to play music?

[TripleDES]

Yeah, I do currently, but only because of the shinyness of WMP10 alpha.

[Paelos]

I can confirm similar problems with the randomizer on WMP. For some reason it seems to select the same files, and often it picks them in a cycle I remember. The only way I could stop it from doing that was to randomize my playlist and then randomize the song picks. I did that all the time on Winamp which gave me similar problems. I just think in general the randomize feature on song programs I've used is faulty.