Shuffling music is always constrained by the active sort

[brothom 224]

This one's a little difficult to explain. I have a library of 10k+ songs and when shuffling, only a portion of the items (given it's sorting) are played.

My goal is to press shuffle, and have my complete library be shuffled, without the shuffled playlist being restricted by the current sorting.

Reproduction is easy:

1. Go to Songs tab
2. Set sorting to title (arrow up)
3. Press shuffle

Expected result
Items are shuffled regardless of their title.

Actual result
Only items that have a higher sorting results (starting with numbers, special characters, etc) will be played.

This can also be reproduced by sorting by year.

1. Go to Songs tab
2. Set sorting to year (most recent first)
3. Press shuffle

Expected result
Items are shuffled regardless of their year.

Actual result
Only items that have a "higher" year are played, older entries are completely skipped.

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Update

Looking at the request, it seems like Emby filters the first 300 items when shuffling: 

XXXXX/emby/Users/XXXXX/Items?IncludeItemTypes=Audio&Fields=BasicSyncInfo%2CCanDelete%2CCanDownload%2CPrimaryImageAspectRatio%2CProductionYear%2CStatus%2CEndDate%2CCommunityRating%2COfficialRating%2CCriticRating&StartIndex=0&SortBy=SortName&SortOrder=Ascending&ParentId=109144&EnableImageTypes=Primary%2CBackdrop%2CThumb&ImageTypeLimit=1&Recursive=true&Limit=300&X-Emby-Client=Emby+Web&X-Emby-Device-Name=Google+Chrome+Windows&X-Emby-Device-Id=60ceb367-6fcb-4be3-bbea-025a12a39fc6&X-Emby-Client-Version=4.9.3.18&X-Emby-Token=XXXXX&X-Emby-Language=en

Where "&SortBy=SortName&SortOrder=Ascending" seems to be the culprit. Replacing it with SortBy with "SortBy=Random&SortOrder=Ascending" or just simply selecting the Random sort, seems to resolve the issue.

Conclusion

Why has been decided to use the current sorting when pressing the Shuffle button. Shouldn't this ALWAYS SortBy=Random?
What's the point of sorting at all when shuffling?

Edited February 26 by brothom

[user24 395]

Exactly - the same as what I discovered several weeks ago...

 

[brothom 224]

@user24looks like we at least know the underlying cause now.

As a workaround we can use "Random" sorting.
But what is the use of a Shuffle-button, if the sorting has to be "Random".

When sorting by "Random", you could just hit Play anyway, because the contents are then already random.

[user24 395]

@brothom Yeah, the usual expectation (from everyone who has raised this) is that "Shuffle" will automatically shuffle the whole selection and then play it, even if it is then limited to the first 300 from the whole shuffled list. It should be an intuitive one-step process, not the current two-step process. It's easy enough to work around the current limitation, once you know how, but likely most people wouldn't get far enough to figure it out. 

Hopefully we'll get a fix at some stage...???

[Luke 42780]

Hi, we are working on improving this. Thanks.

[HouseOfCards 110]

I just came here to report the same thing, but found this.  I noticed that my "frequently played" were all songs starting with "A", "B" or "C"...  I looked more and realized shuffle always started at the beginning of the alphabet, which wasn't very random.  I set that tabs sort to "Random" and I'm hearing songs I haven't heard in years.  LOL

[musicman1980 0]

I came here to see if there was any limitations to music library size. It matches up with my experience testing across different client devices and even from two media servers. Shuffle when looking at the library in alphabetical order for example will only populate the queue with artists A-C or D.

A not so elegant solution I use is randomising the song list before playing shuffle. It gets a little more variation in the playlist but still not across the entire library.

When playing by genre for example, just now I had two songs in a row from a two song single and both songs were the same (original and extended versions) while shuffling. Also a number of times there have been 4-5 songs in a row from the same album when shuffling.

So this is my +1 interest in expanded music player options/functionality.

Edited 41 minutes ago by musicman1980