Author Topic: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?  (Read 6286 times)

ravishingruwooba

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MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« on: November 11, 2009, 10:05:55 pm »
Hi, I read somewhere that someone had what I consider to be a pretty serious problem with the Dingoo's built-in native mp3 player.

He said that the random/shuffle mode doesn't actually play random songs next UNLESS you allow the current song to play ALL the way through.  If you don't allow the song to play all the way through and hit next, then the next song played is just the next song on the list rather than shuffle. 

I'm a bit shocked that an oversight like this could make it through to production, as I just assumed that pretty much everyone would understand the importance of getting this most BASIC of mp3 features right. 

To me, random/shuffle play is everything.  I don't bother with playlists, never have, too lazy.  I just dump my mp3 collection onto my mp3 players and set it on random/shuffle, and I'm good to go. 

I asked Dingoo USA about this, but they said that they've never heard of this problem before.

Could I get clarification from any recent owners of Dingoo to see if this problem exists or not (perhaps it did in the past but has since been corrected during later production runs/releases?)?

Thanks in advance for any input into this matter. 
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eule

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  • Posts: 889
Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2009, 10:13:44 pm »
Same for me and it drives me nuts!  :'( My old MP3.player has the same behaviour though. You could try gmu on dingux, it has a good shuffle function, but my card is to small for lots of music.
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joepie91

Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2009, 01:26:06 pm »
Actually, a lot of media players running under Windows have the exact same problem. It's a pretty common mistake for developers not to implement shuffle code in the next/previous song events.
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Consequence_9

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Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #3 on: November 16, 2009, 02:24:11 am »
are you running the latest firmware? They made the equalizer real finally, maybe this has been fixed.
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ravishingruwooba

  • Guest
Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2009, 12:19:44 am »
Hmm, any confirmation if the latest firmware has corrected the random/shuffle problem?  Doubt it, but doesn't harm to ask.  Thanks again for any info.
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Meneer Jansen

Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2009, 12:01:10 pm »
Unfortunately, this strange behavior is still there in firmware 1.20.

The way I see it, and the way I use the strange shuffle option on the Dingoo, is as follows. For one, the shuffle only works in the current folder if you use the "folder once" play option. If you use the common play option it shuffles everything in the music database (the "Jukebox"). Beware that the music database sometimes has some in-game sounds from games that have the wav or MP3 extension. Very irritating. I have a folder on my Dingoo w/ a lot of songs from various artists in it. All filenames begin w/ the Artist name and then the song name follows (use an ID3 tag editor on your computer to generate those filenames). If I play that "Folder once" and I press 'next track' the next track of that same artist plays. I kinda like that. If you really want song from a different artist, there remains nothing else than to use the fast forward button (i.e. keep left pressed on the D-pad) until you reach the end of the song. Then it will play a next random song.  :)

I realize that this is not ideal. Like somebody else said, for a real shuffle function, one must use GMU on Dingux. Beware, however, that Dingux cannot read the 4 GB of built in memory...  :'(

Good luck in using your Dingoo.

P.S. If you've got an SD card w/ a lot of music files on it, the building of the Jukebox database sometimes results in a corrupt database. This causes an other irritating error too: you cannot play games anymore on the Dingoo's native firmware. To correct this update the Jukebox without the SD card.
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Finally got me a new Dingoo after I Kentucky ~~::fried::~~ the other one. Yippee! [edit] And lost it!

ravishingruwooba

  • Guest
Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2009, 10:59:14 pm »
Cool, thanks for the info.  It's about as I expected.  Dingux for me seems a bit like overkill just for mp3 random/shuffle as other than that I'd have no other use.  I'm considering a Dingoo again mostly as a portable .txt ebook reader with TTS so I can listen to/memorize study lists on the go, review/refresh my memory, whenever/wherever basically...that and the FM radio believe it or not, I no longer have one, and to be honest miss trying to fall asleep to one (prefer listening to a little bit of idle chatter than my mp3s for this sort of thing).  And also, of course, the games on the go.   
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Meneer Jansen

Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2009, 02:11:21 pm »
Dingux for shuffle play does not have to be an overkill. It is very small, if you delete all the things that you do not need/want. Realize that it does not have to be more than the Linux kernel and a small image-file of the root file system: those two files are only ~22 MB. If you bu a micro SD card (they usually come w/ the necessary mini SD adapter) for ~7 USD (~6 Euro) then you've got about 1970 MB left for MP3's. :)
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Finally got me a new Dingoo after I Kentucky ~~::fried::~~ the other one. Yippee! [edit] And lost it!

ravishingruwooba

  • Guest
Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #8 on: December 12, 2009, 02:14:15 am »
Hmm, well, I'm only really interested in using the GBA emulator so that's why I figured it wouldn't be worth it to install Dingux.  I remember briefly looking into the option, but saw a lot of people having issues with cards corrupting or something or other.  In any case, if I were to just use the Dingux for mp3 playback and no emulation would I be able to escape the problems that others seemed to be having?  Thanks again for any info. 
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Meneer Jansen

Re: MP3 player random/shuffle problem?
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2009, 02:23:18 pm »
The problem w/ SD cards becoming corrupt, having you to re-format them, might even be solved already. Thought I heard something about that. I upgraded my kernel (i.e. the file called "zimage") and I have not had any trouble since. I think I encountered that corruption problem once (a few files became unreadable): copied all files from SD to PC, reformatted SD, copied files back.

Some people have trouble installing a firmware version that enables the Dingoo to dual boot. I.e.: boot Dingux or the original firmware. This has something to do w/ Win Vista and Win7 (Linux and WinXP: no problem). Also, I found that some people have serious trouble with following the tutorial to the letter. If you're a little handy w/ computers it will not be a problem for you.

By the way. Dual boot means: if you press "select" during the Dingux logo you'll boot into Dingux, otherwise your original Dingoo firmware will start.

Only caveat: the original 4 GB of internal memory can't (yet) be read by Dingux (= Linux for Dingoo). You'll have to restart your Dingoo and let it boot into the original firmware ('operating system') to read the 4 Gig  of int.mem. Alas...

Succes w/ searching for thet opic here on installing Dingux and w/ installing Dingux. :)

P.S. The necessary "root file system" (a file of about 22 MB that needs to be copied to the SD card together w/ the "zimage file") is in the so called "local pack" by Toddler. That pack is a zip file of about 200 MB. If you're only interested in GMU music player and the rootfs than you'll have to download that zip file anyhow. But after installing it on your SD card (folow the tutorial on this) you can delete a whole lotta unwanted games and software.
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Finally got me a new Dingoo after I Kentucky ~~::fried::~~ the other one. Yippee! [edit] And lost it!
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