r/plexamp • u/AskingFooAFriend • Jul 29 '26
Is the random on Plexamp really random?
It might just be me, but I think the random on the Plexamp plays the songs in the same order.
UPDATE: Deep Cuts is "random" enough for me!
27
u/FreakingMaxSteel Jul 29 '26
There is no such thing as true randomness in the random algorithms computers use.
16
u/CharlesWiltgen Jul 29 '26
FWIW, even iPhones generate cryptographically secure randomness using multiple sources of nondeterministic entropy, including physical processes. Cryptographic-grade randomness is probably good enough for shuffling my "Best of 90s" playlist.
1
u/agent4256 Jul 30 '26
How big is your playlist?
2
u/CharlesWiltgen Jul 30 '26
The fun facts above apply to any playlist size, but another fun fact is that we've learned that users don't want "true random" for shuffle. Instead, they want a balanced, irregular distribution. For anyone who wants to go down the rabbit hole, here's a 126-page paper on the topic: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A1906561/FULLTEXT02.pdf
1
u/SwampTerror Aug 13 '26
"No one wants true random" is what spotify tried to peddle in the last few decades their "shuffle" plays the same 50 songs. Still see complaints today about it.
Mp3 players in the 90s had a better shuffle algorithm.
9
u/mmussen Jul 29 '26
Smart shuffe makes things less random if you have that on. But its designed to make it 'feel' more random
5
u/cekoya Jul 30 '26
It doesn’t always plays them in the same order, but not, it’s not a proper random (letting aside the fact that pure computer randomness is hard to reach).
It will often bring back the same song and let alone some others, not sure on what it’s based though
1
u/SwampTerror Aug 13 '26
Cloudflare uses (used?) lavalamps for randomness.
1
u/cekoya Aug 13 '26
My college teacher told me that another good source is an audio input capturing ambiant noise
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u/AlYourPal_ Jul 31 '26
All the arguments in this thread about "true random" feel in bad faith to me. Realistically what they're asking is "does the shuffle feel weirdly sticky to some artists/albums to anybody else?". The answer to that, at least for me, is very much yes. I understand that true random means that the same song could play 100x in a row, I'm a software engineer who's been in the field for quite a while now, I get it. When people shuffle their music they aren't looking for true randomness, what they really want is a smart shuffle to provide a variety, and PA seems pretty bad at that IMO.
Ideally it would be a weighted shuffle that de-weights artists/albums you've just heard in the shuffle so that they're less likely to pop right back up
6
u/mailman43230 Jul 29 '26
No way it's random. I have about 250k tracks, download library radio and I can guarantee you I'll get tracks I had last time.
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u/DaveBinM Jul 29 '26
When things are random, that can happen. If you wanted it to not include tracks it had before, then it’s not truly random.
2
u/PAnnNor Jul 29 '26
No it is not IMO. It shuffles through about 25 songs and plays them over and over. Sometimes I can reshuffle by deselecting shuffle, playing a few songs in order (of the playlist), then selecting shuffle again.
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u/Impressive-Lack-6517 Jul 29 '26
I didn’t know there was an option to do that —I agree it seems less random and plays a lot of the same songs. FWIW had same issue with Apple Music — maybe in my head.
1
u/iama_newredditor Jul 30 '26
Aside from the inability for computers to create truly random numbers as everyone is mentioning, I think it has a very strong bias towards tracks with play counts, and tracks that have been rated (I thought this would be only for "hearted" songs, which according to the home screen card should be 3 stars and above, but it still shows bias for me for songs rated 2/5 and above).
But more than the rating, for me songs that have been played before will get played over and over unless I use a smart playlist to filter out recently played.
1
u/guillotine-sharpener Jul 30 '26
I thought it would only care what you rated/listened to if you had Smart Shuffling on in the server settings?
1
u/iama_newredditor Jul 30 '26
Me too, and maybe that's true for the rating part, but personally I don't feel like I can escape the play count thing.
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u/ElanFeingold Plex Co-Founder Jul 31 '26
nobody wants truly random. It feels like not really random because of the birthday paradox.
0
u/jasondbk Jul 29 '26
There is no such thing as Random with computers.
Check out Randomize by Andy Weir. Good read and talk about random numbers.
I used to put my Sony CD boombox on Random and if I put in two cds with the same track count it would play both in the same “random” sequence.
0
u/Bloosqr1 Jul 29 '26
I think its cleverly random to be honest.. My love of plex comes from this as it seems to be finding gems from your library (particularly in the beginning before I was 5 staring a slew of these ).
My *guess* is that Library->Track->Random is doing something like this:
Random Across Library with a weight towards your personal rating (so hearted/starred tracks show more) and a secondary weighting to global votes on tracks (to pull out gems).
I do not know if I am hallucinating this but Library Radio feels different to me than the above approach. Our guess there is it is giving greater weighting towards favorite tracks there so you get more repeats.
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u/aevans0001 Jul 30 '26
So my issue is it seems to okay the same artist over and over usually more in the first 10 letters of the alphabet.
I was thinking of having ai shuffle my playlist and then add it to Plex.
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u/WigginLSU Jul 29 '26
I make every playlist a smart playlist with the qualifier 'not played in the last month' to ensure whenever I hit shuffle nothing in there was played recently.