I've had my winamp list (~500 songs) on shuffle for 6 hours and I've heard Green Day - Coming Clean at least six times. I havent even heard most of my songs yet, but it keeps playing this one. There are a couple other songs I've heard 2 or 3 times. Is this typical?

Turn off the repeat song thing, that should stop it.

I haven't had much trouble with Winamp doing that, but I swear iPods favor certain songs.

Winamp's shuffle could, theoretically play the same song 100 times in a row. It plays a song then chooses another song from the complete list to play next. If you don't want that to happen, randomize the play list and turn shuffle off.

There's a way you can enhance track switching in shuffle; it's under preferences somewhere. This was under winamp 2.80 something, although I wouldn't think they would nix that feature.

This is in no way supposed to be an "OMQ iTunes r teh bettars then Winampz!" thing.

I like the way iTunes shuffles, and I swear Winamp does, or at least used to since I haven't updated it in over a year and hardly use it as is. It shuffles the list, plays each track, and never returns to it once it's played.

He stole my thoughts.

Preferences, Playlist, Playlist Morph Rate.

Winamp reads my mind.

I swear it plays exactly the kind of music I want, almost all the time.

Ideally, I think the best shuffle is one that removes a song from the list until all the others have been played. This way you hear each song exactly once, then it repeats (in a different order).

my mp3 player favors songs it seems too. It's quite annoying. I've never had problems with winamp's shuffling either. The guys are right about switching off the repeat function though

Or like was said above randomises the list and then steps through them. At least that way you can see what you've already listened to (should you require this random bit of info).

Sounds like random instead of shuffle

<3 Amarok's shuffle options.
You have the option to shuffle all songs or only albums.
Then you can tell it to shuffle without preference, favour songs with high scores or favour songs that haven't been played in a long time.

I believe shuffle is different than random in that the entire playlist will play through before any songs repeat, but the songs simply play in an random order. "Random" implies that a random song is picked every time with no regard to which songs came before, which raises the chance of repeats significantly.

[Edit: Or maybe Avenger is correct... hrm.]