Shuffle!

Agreed! I sent many a request for this feature as well and it was always one of the first things I would look for after receiving an update. Very happy to see it finally implemented!

youlikeadajuice said:

Agreed! I sent many a request for this feature as well and it was always one of the first things I would look for after receiving an update. Very happy to see it finally implemented!

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How is this new option chosen? I don't see it?

DrGuest said:

How is this new option chosen? I don't see it?

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Under the song that's playing, you should see the icon with two arrows crossing one-another, next to the repeat icon.

wk057 said:

As of v6.1, we now finally have shuffle in the media player.

Thank you, Tesla, for answering my incessant begging.

I'm pretty sure I like this more than all of the other cool new toys in the update. lol.

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Thank you Tesla!

With a Terabyte of Tunes on my USB drive, I had no way to fully enjoy them. I'd usually pick a genre, and hit a song randomly somewhere and let it play alphabetically from there. But I have lots of duplicates (from compilations and re-released albums, or alternate takes) and sometimes I'd be hearing the same song a dozen times in a row unless I manually kicked it somewhere else. Much better now.

Ahem...(never satisfied)...how about an iPod/iPhone USB interface, like all cars have now, so I can plug in one of my 160 GB iPods? And not have to be constantly copying my music over to my wife's Bluetooth phone? (We're out of streaming range a good part of our driving time.)

Or...there are USB analog audio input sticks for $5 all over the internet. How about some simple drivers for the USB ports to allow any audio device to connect? That would be great for the kid's audiobooks or visitor's audio devices without having to pair them to Bluetooth...

But in the meantime...thanks for the shuffle!

Chico said:

But in the meantime...thanks for the shuffle!

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Yes, just as long as you don't want to play your favourites, as there is no shuffle for them.

I hate to show my ignorance but just got 6.1 and I see the repeat and shuffle icons below the album art. How is everyone using these 2 options on a regular basis, I have never had shuffle on a music system so do not know much about it.

Merrill said:

I hate to show my ignorance but just got 6.1 and I see the repeat and shuffle icons below the album art. How is everyone using these 2 options on a regular basis, I have never had shuffle on a music system so do not know much about it.

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If you only press the shuffle icon, playing will stop after all the tracks have played once. The shuffle icon plays each song in a quasi-random order. I suspect, but don't know, that with each repeat a new random seed is chosen so that the tracks are played in a different order on each repeat.

jerry33 said:

Yes, just as long as you don't want to play your favourites, as there is no shuffle for them.

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Yeah, you're right. Although personally I don't want to hear the same stuff over and over, so I don't keep a favorites list or collection. But what I do is partition my Terabyte drive into a lot of smaller partitions (by "small" I mean maybe 50 gigabytes or so, not really so small unless you have a lot of music). Then I fill them with different collections of music, then go into them and use shuffle to hear a random playback of everything in that partition. Or first I select a particular genre within that partition and then run a shuffled mix from within that genre.

Definitely crude and unsophisticated, I admit. The music interface on the Tesla is undoubtedly the most crude and unsophisticated component of the car. (I love the car, just not the music interface).

If you were to create a "Favorites" partition on a USB memory stick or drive and drag all your favorites to that partition, you could then use the shuffle feature to hear your favorites in shuffled order.

As I said, way crude.

There should be a means to connect an iPod, which already has a sophisticated playlist/shuffle functionality built in, via the USB port, as you can with most cars these days. Or allow for the inclusion of standard playlists (".pls" or similar files) for use with the USB playback devices. Still hoping...

Chico said:

Yeah, you're right. Although personally I don't want to hear the same stuff over and over, so I don't keep a favorites list or collection. But what I do is partition my Terabyte drive into a lot of smaller partitions (by "small" I mean maybe 50 gigabytes or so, not really so small unless you have a lot of music). Then I fill them with different collections of music, then go into them and use shuffle to hear a random playback of everything in that partition. Or first I select a particular genre within that partition and then run a shuffled mix from within that genre.

Definitely crude and unsophisticated, I admit. The music interface on the Tesla is undoubtedly the most crude and unsophisticated component of the car. (I love the car, just not the music interface).

If you were to create a "Favorites" partition on a USB memory stick or drive and drag all your favorites to that partition, you could then use the shuffle feature to hear your favorites in shuffled order.

As I said, way crude.

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Agreed, but it just seems odd that the car's own favourites won't shuffle.

jerry33 said:

If you only press the shuffle icon, playing will stop after all the tracks have played once. The shuffle icon plays each song in a quasi-random order. I suspect, but don't know, that with each repeat a new random seed is chosen so that the tracks are played in a different order on each repeat.

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Thanks jerry33, how about the repeat icon.

Merrill said:

Thanks jerry33, how about the repeat icon.

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The repeat button will cycle through the tracks rather than stopping after playing all the tracks once (and will presumably play in a different order--I haven't actually gone through a set of tracks once).

jerry33 said:

The repeat button will cycle through the tracks rather than stopping after playing all the tracks once (and will presumably play in a different order--I haven't actually gone through a set of tracks once).

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I also noticed that if I hit the shuffle icon once it turns blue and if I hit it again it shows the number 1

I'm finding that the shuffle doesn't seem very random. I have approximately 4000 songs on my thumb drive and in just the past couple of days I've heard at least 4 songs off of one album and at least 2-3 from a few other albums. while many others haven't played at all, obviously.

efusco said:

I'm finding that the shuffle doesn't seem very random. I have approximately 4000 songs on my thumb drive and in just the past couple of days I've heard at least 4 songs off of one album and at least 2-3 from a few other albums. while many others haven't played at all, obviously.

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So if you choose the shuffle icon in will randomly play songs from all your albums on the usb.

efusco said:

I'm finding that the shuffle doesn't seem very random. I have approximately 4000 songs on my thumb drive and in just the past couple of days I've heard at least 4 songs off of one album and at least 2-3 from a few other albums. while many others haven't played at all, obviously.

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Yeah, so it appears to be random playback, not a shuffled list. Traditionally, with playback software, Random playback of songs is when the next song could be any one of the list of 4000 (even the same one as played previously). Shuffle mode creates a new list that is randomized from top to bottom, meaning that the next 4000 songs will be a mixed combination of the original list with no song repeated until the entire list is completed.

From a programming perspective, the randomization of playback is easier to do, while the shuffled list requires that a list be created at the start of playback, and adhered to until playback completes or is dismissed. And some decision has to be made as the when to recreate the shuffled list. Different playback engines typically use different algorithms. From your comments, it looks like the Tesla is using random playback, unless it's a true shuffle that creates a new shuffled list each time playback is dismissed or restarted, in which case you will likely hear the same song more than once before some ever get played.

Funny thing is, our memories really notice when a song is repeated, even once in several days. So a programmer is challenged to try to adhere to that shuffled list, keeping it in persistent computer memory somewhere, to draw from each time playback is restarted, to try to avoid repeats before all songs have played.

How do I know all these minute boring details? .... As you might guess, I wrote some of this kind of software years ago in another incarnation... ​

Thanks for that explanation, but whatever randomization algorithm is being used seems pretty poor. I had two songs from the same album play sequentially last night, for instance.

Not trying to be a Debbie downer, but I hope they continue to improve the algorithm rather than thinking that this is good enough.

So I have an early-ish car without parking sensors or Autopilot, so I was most excited about shuffle/repeat enhancements and Tune-In podcast fix in the v6.1 update. I just got the update today and was so disappointed with these features.

First off, as pointed out here, shuffle doesn't work with Favorites. And repeat doesn't exist with Favorites. Before v6.1, playing Favorites will be non-shuffled, but at least it will repeat (my daughter's favorite songs). Now, it just stops. Silence. And I have to hit the back button several dozen times to get back to the beginning. WTF?! Like 1/2 step forward and two steps back.

Secondly, I went to test the Tune-In podcast fix. I load up This American Life, and it doesn't work at all. The "scrubber bar" doesn't show up. But something like Science Friday works!? I noticed that TAL was "buried" further in the Tune-In menu. Could that be it? This one is like 1/2 step forward.

ken830 said:

Secondly, I went to test the Tune-In podcast fix.

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But does it play TuneIn podcasts past 30 minutes? That was what I thought the Podcast Fix was.
Sorry, off the Shuffle topic, but there isn't a whole lot of discussion on the TI PC 30 Min Cap bug.

As with others here, since I'm using the only playlist we have right now - the FAVORITES list, the newest release doesn't help any - because favorites are still played alphabetically.

This release is an improvement - still need playlists and shuffle in USB playlists.

Is it possible to shuffle all music on a USB drive? If so, a fallback option would be to create a separate USB stick with only the desired music and then use that as a playlist - with shuffle...