Creative Shuffle

[BEANFro Elite]

I was wondering how Creative's mp3 players randomises playlists, as whats happening is really baffling me.

I'll elaborate; I've owned a Creative ZEN Vision: M and I own the Creative ZEN (the one thats a lil bit smaller than a cedit card) they're both corkingly brill products however, I've set it to play my playlist at random, so this is where the confusion begins.

My playlist obviously contains various artists the majority of which are Muse songs from all the albums plus an arseload of b-side tunes, Muse make up at least 50% of the playlist's tracks, Cradle of Filth takes up about 15%, Marilyn Manson about 15%, System of a Down 15%, Slipknot 10% and the remaining 10% is just filler tracks from here and there.

My original thinking is that it obvously does what it says on the tin and plays the songs random without any bias meaning that due to probability Muse's songs would be played most often considering their domination of the playlist, however, to my astonishment, it manages to play Cradle of Filth and Slipknot most often whilst occasionaly playing a song by Muse, Marilyn Manson or any other (Band or) track for that matter.

So either Creative's players are hopelessly crap at randomising the playlist or theres a bias on whats played based on the player's own discretion much like how it decides what the 'Album of the Day' is which of course is another feature this player has.


I'd like to point out that I'm not angry about this, just baffled as I just can't think of what method of randomisation it uses, LOL

What are your views guys?