Re: [mpg123-users] making sure the same song is not playing twice

[Thomas O. <tho...@or...>]

Am Thu, 15 Oct 2015 14:31:34 +0300
schrieb Aristos Vasiliou <ar...@ar...>: 

> Hi,
> 
> I am using raspberry pi's, running raspbian and mpg123, to play music
> in retail stores.

Are you using assembly-optimized ARM decoder? Just making sure that
your RPi doesn't sweat too much;-)


> Is there a way to be sure that mpg123 is playing all the mp3's before
> playing an mp3 that it has already played?

Well, of course;-) You might want to take a peek at the man page:

       -z, --shuffle
              Shuffle play.  Randomly shuffles the order of files
              specified on  the  command line, or in the list file.

       -Z, --random
              Continuous  random play.  Keeps picking a random file
              from the command line or the play list.  Unlike shuffle
              play above, random play never ends,  and  plays
              individual songs more than once.

You chose the endless random play, which has to repeat a song after
some time. There's some internal logic that avoids repetition within
half of the playlist (more would make the randomness predictable
again). So, it is _very_ likely that one song is heard twice a day with
9 hours of total playback.

When you know that your playlist is long enough to cover the day, -z is
a better choice. But that does stop playback after the list is
exhausted. You can alleviate that by putting a loop around mpg123,
though there is a chance that you repeat tracks soon when starting with
the same list freshly shuffled. Might be acceptable if more than 9
hours a day is the exception.


Alrighty then,

Thomas