Randomizing symphonies

[beckfield]

I wonder if the following can be done on a Phatbox:

I have a large collection of symphonies, which generally have 3 to 5 movements.  I've created a playlist for each symphony.  I would like to be able to Mix (randomize) these symphonies, but keep the individual symphonies together.  In other words, play all movements of Beethoven Symphony No. 5, then randomly go to a Dvorak symphony and play all of its movements.

Has anyone considered this?  Is there a way?

Thanks,
Ken

[judb]

AFAIK there is no way to do this.

What you are asking for is basically playlist random where each playlist is selected randomly but played through all the way before the next random playlist is started, right?

Somewhere I seem to recall a playlist feature that was designed for splitting one long mp3 into sub songs that could be used for something of this sort but wouldn't be random.

[S80_UK]

Hi,

I can't think of a way without a bit of work.    This is what I have done when I needed to get away from the CD track boundaries.  Use Apple's iTunes software for ripping.  It is possible to tell it to rip multiple tracks from a CD as though they are a single track (to AAC, Apple Lossless, MP3 or WAV).  So if you have two symphonies on a CD, you could rip tracks 1 to 4 and create a single file from them and also create another file from tracks 5 to 9, for example.  So you end up with one much larger file per symphony - and then of course the randomise function would work as you like.  I use FLAC and AAC, so I have used this technique in the past to get large WAV files made up from multiple tracks and then I use iTunes to convert to AAC and other tools to convert the WAV file to other required file formats.  If I need to combine WAV files ripped from two different CDs (for a few of the longer symphonies) then I use Audacity to stitch the WAV files as needed.  These techniques are good for audio books too, when a single book or chapter may be made up from many smaller tracks.

[beckfield]

Hi,

I can't think of a way without a bit of work.    This is what I have done when I needed to get away from the CD track boundaries.  Use Apple's iTunes software for ripping.  It is possible to tell it to rip multiple tracks from a CD as though they are a single track (to AAC, Apple Lossless, MP3 or WAV).  So if you have two symphonies on a CD, you could rip tracks 1 to 4 and create a single file from them and also create another file from tracks 5 to 9, for example.  So you end up with one much larger file per symphony - and then of course the randomise function would work as you like.  I use FLAC and WMA, so I have used this technique in the past to get large WAV files made up from multiple tracks and then I use other tools to convert the WAV file to the required file formats.  It's good for audio books too, when a single book or chapter may be made up from many smaller tracks.

Yeah, that's pretty much the conclusion I came to, but I thought I'd ask.  I don't think I'm really keen on ripping my symphonies as single tracks, though. 

Thanks for your input.

Ken

[beckfield]

AFAIK there is no way to do this.

What you are asking for is basically playlist random where each playlist is selected randomly but played through all the way before the next random playlist is started, right?

Yes, that's what I'd like to do.  But, as S80 said, ripping them as single tracks may be the only way.

Thanks,
Ken