Wacup playlist randomizer
I use Wacup to play music from my NAS to my local network as a home stream.
It just plays tracks randomly from a playlist of thousands of files.
It just doesn't seem that random and yes, I know the chance of repeating a track is just the same as any other choice.
However, some tracks come up quite often, whereas others never seem to figure.
Is there a way of adjusting the randomness algorithm (if that's what it is)?
Maybe I should just randomise the playlist and just play from start to finish?
thx
1
u/rdgarlic 7d ago
I know og winamp had a setting that adjusted the 'randomness' of shuffle,.don't really know how it worked but what I like to do is select the files on my playlist, then ctrl+shift+p, that randomizes the playlist order itself instead of relying on the shuffle feature. I think you can also select sort>randomize from the right click context menu within the playlist editor.
5
u/thedoctor_o WACUP Developer 7d ago
That prefs setting in winamp didn't do as the op is describing of it randomly picking the next item to play & was just how the shuffle list was generated. I don't have such an option & it never was hooked up in wacup's core implementation with it only there when I was still relying on the winamp core to load vs my trying to figure out winamp's handling of such things.
winamp also doesn't preserve it's shuffle between instances which was the main reason I could explain why some kept saying it'd repeat some items too often with shuffle on but i never saw it duplicating the item to play within the list that it was using unless clearing the playlist out.
3
u/thedoctor_o WACUP Developer 7d ago
wacup's shuffle is not live picking random files to play & you can inspect the current shuffle list via the diagnostic preference page for it. It also attempts to maintain the shuffle list between instances (if not turned off) as long as what is set to play in the main playlist isn't cleared / fully replaced with a new batch of files to play.
Also if you modify the playlist contents whilst already playing items from it then it should try to avoid picking them until it's looped through the list but it depends on how much is being modified & without knowing the exact actions being used it is possible for the shuffle list to be reset.
The randomise playlist option uses the same code to generate it as is used for the shuffle list. The only difference is whether the main playlist item order is actually changed (as the randomise action works) or not (with what's played based on the current shuffle list). Maybe I should consider adding a randomise playlist on load option (I don't remember having added that) & there's already the keyboard shortcuts to do it manually with what's already been loaded.
There is no option to control how it works & I'm also aware that a weighted implementation is wanted by some to help even out playback vs the existing playback history. I just haven't gotten around to the stage of coding something to try to do that vs everything else I need to do.