Random playback is one of those things that is incredibly difficult to do in software. Computers by their nature are not random, have no concept of random and the question of how to program a good random algorithm is one that has been going on for years and there's still not a good answer to this. I've had the exact same problem you describe with just about every piece of digital equipment I have ever owned.
I believe that most programmers, particularly when using high level languages for programming do not bother themselves with such trivialities and simply use the 'random number generator' command that comes with the language development kit. This is fine for most purposes but as you've found when it comes to music and once you've used it a few times, you begin to establish patterns because the random generator itself isn't truly random. A lot of random algorithms are based on the current system time, which, if you tend to play music during the same time every day isn't very random at all. This is just an example but you can see where this comes from. Manufacturers have realised the need for a proper random algorithm and one in particular (or maybe there are more around now) came up with an ingenious solution. They put two ANALOGUE oscillators inside thier chipset which both run at different frequencies and were intentionally made with poor tolerance to provide drift. The two oscillators are then sampled at the time a random number is needed and summed together. Being low accuracy analogue oscillators which are sampled at indeterminate periods this gives you as close to random as you're ever going to get in a computer based system. But of course Logitech are unlikely to be using this solution anytime. -- lovejoy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ lovejoy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=47846 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=91009 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
