Topic: How do you listen to mp3's on your Nomad? (re: biased randomized playback)

[ljsurfer2002]

So I've had my Nomad for over a year, and have used to to record shows, as well as put some mp3's on there to listen to at work and such. I can't though, for the life of me, figure out a good, easy way to playback the mp3's without a lot of work each time I turne it on... It seems like my friends with iPods have it so easy.. Am I just not doing some basic step? .. I've looked through all the FAQ's, searched here, read the Nomadness pages, and the Yahoo Group pages.. but no mention of just basic mp3 playback, they all deal with recordings..

Currently, when I transfer mp3's to my Nomad, I have to make a playlist of each album. 1 playlist for each album. Then when I load up the nomad, and then go to 'music library' -> 'playlists' and then i go through the albums there (since i've created a playlist for each album through the computer interface) and click once on an album, and choose 'add to play' from the pop up menu. it says 'please wait' the HD spins, and it adds that playlist to the 'selected music' list .. I go through a few albums, then when i'm ready to listen to the tunes, I back arrow out of there, go to 'selected music' and hit play .. that is the only way i've found to have the machine play songs one after another and actually keep going! It will play the songs in order, or if I'm in 'shuffle' or in 'suffle repeat' it does jump around from the selected mp3's...

My question is, in 'shuffle' or 'shuffle repeat' (what's the diffrence between those two anyway?) I've noticed a 'bias' in the song selections. I'll load say 15 albums (15 playlists) into the 'now playing area, hit play, and i'll notice a certain album or two coming up a lot more then others.. some albums will never be hit at all in the shuffle, where as other albums will have songs on them come up time after time in the shuffle.. anyone else notice this ? is there a bug in the firmware? i'm at the most recent I think (1.40.06) but yeah .. just wondering ... since I like to cue up a lot of albums and then shuffle with them (since going 'music library' -> 'albums' -> scroll to a certain album, and hit 'play' it will play that album in order, or if i'm in 'shuffle' mode it will choose random tracks from WITHIN that same album (won't jump to other albums / artists). 

going to 'play any track' under the 'music library' area is nice, it just puts a random track out of the entire collection on the HD ... but yeah, any tips for my selected album randomized playback? Thanks!

Tyler

[jeromejello]

i haven't noticed any sort of bias with the random feature... but then i have 20gigs on there [my zen 2.0, which uses the same id3 tag heirarchy for the tracks]

i view it like i do the lottery... 53 numbers 6 slots.... here are a couple of winning number pulls from here in florida, is it random, bias, or just dumb luck... i am thinking the dumb luck that you are noticing the randomness not appearing so random. look to the big picture grasshopper     +T

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