That was fast, Apple. I’m especially pleased because this release fixes the only crash that I know about in AlbumMixer. Thanks to Dave Cody for the excellent problem report.
That was fast, Apple. I’m especially pleased because this release fixes the only crash that I know about in AlbumMixer. Thanks to Dave Cody for the excellent problem report.
Just loaded AlbumMixer 1.5. Great app.
I did notice that when I first tried to run the app, (on iPod Touch 3rd Gen with 3.1) I saw the message that it was starting the iPod player but nothing happened. I started the iPod player by starting a song and then when to the AlbumMixer and it worked.
I would love to see a new feature that would show you the location in the album play list that the current song is playing, like in the iPod player without having to switch back.
Thanks for the praise and for the problem report, Dave. I’ll follow up with an email.
I agree that the album location feature would be nice. I’ll add it to my little list.
I was pretty excited to find this app, but it’s not actually working for me. If I try to apply a Playlist filter, it seems to just shuffle that playlist by song, rather than album. Any ideas? It seems to work alright with Genre filtering.
Kurt, the most likely problem is that the songs in your playlist don’t have an album artist field (or it’s different for each track within an album). Apple doesn’t directly enable grouping playlists by album, so AlbumMixer uses both the Album Title and Album Artist fields from each track to group the tracks into albums. Note that the Artist field doesn’t matter: AlbumMixer is looking at the Album Artist field.
Thanks for the app. It significantly improves my iPod experience. :)
On early iTouch, there’s no external volume control, so the only way I have found to adjust volume is to navigate back to “music” where the song is playing, then navigate back to album mixer.
I think it would be nice to view elapsed/remaining time for a track, unless I’ve overlooked how to do this in version 1.5.
Kelly, thanks for the feedback. I didn’t know that about the Touch G1. I’ll look into adding volume control and elapsed time.
What happens if you lock the Touch, then double-press the home button? Or double-press the home button while on the home screen? On my 3GS, both of these actions bring up a simple audio controller. That might be a useful workaround.
I’m having the same problem as kurtadb. I’m quite sure my songs don’t have Album Artist filled in, although all of them certainly have Artist filled in. I have 3500 songs, so it will take me a very long time to go back and fill in Album Artist, could the app use the Artist field instead?
Also, on a different subject, I’m still hoping to be able to shuffle my albums by artist without having to create playlists for all of them, eg. to shuffle all my Waterboys albums.
Lori
Lori, I’m sorry to hear that you are having problems. Thanks for letting me know about it so that I can take a closer look. AlbumMixer was designed to work without the Album Artist field, but it may get confused if multiple albums have the same title. It may also have trouble if one album contains tracks by multiple artists: that’s why it tries to use the Album Artist field. It sounds like I need to do some more testing in that area.
I, too, am having a problem in that I am shuffling albums against a specific playlist and the first time I shuffle the list contains, say, only 1 track from album XYZ, and then when the shuffled playlist finishes and I shuffle again, another 1 track from album XYZ is played. Am I to assume that this is related to the Album Artist issue that has been mentioned previously?
Another question: Is it possible to look at the shuffled playlist that was created from AlbumMixer?
@ddb: I think that’s likely, and I’m sorry to hear that it’s a widespread problem.
But I’m not completely certain that both problems are the same. If you keep listening to the same playlist indefinitely, do more tracks from the XYZ album eventually show up? Does the XYZ album have tracks by multiple different artists?
Here’s an experiment you could try: create a playlist with just three albums, where one of the three has have tracks by multiple different artists. Sync that playlist, and see what happens when you shuffle it. Then go back and set an Album Artist for the album that has tracks by multiple different artists.
When I perform this experiment, I see odd shuffle results the first time. After setting the Album Artist field (just for the album that has tracks by multiple different artists), the problem goes away.
I am experimenting with ideas to work around this issue, but it appears to be rooted in Apple’s MediaFramework implementation. Until I can figure out a robust solution, I hope that setting the Album Artist field will be a useful workaround.
Michael-
“If you keep listening to the same playlist indefinitely, do more tracks from the XYZ album eventually show up?” Yes, I’ll hear trackX from albumA and then a few tracks/albums later, another track from albumA will play.
I updated some of the albums so that Album Artist matches Artist and it seems to be working correctly, so it looks to me that it’s the empty Album Artist that messes things up.
In case you missed my last question in my last post: Is it possible to look at the playlist that AlbumMixer creates?
@ddb, I’m glad to hear that the workaround was effective.
It isn’t possible to see the playlist that AlbumMixer creates, because it doesn’t actually create a playlist. Apple doesn’t provide any way for an iPhone/Touch/iPad app to do that. Instead, AlbumMixer queues the tracks onto the built-in iPod player. Unfortunately Apple also provides no direct way to read the iPod player’s queue.
I have considered keeping a copy of what AlbumMixer most recently added: that could be useful while AlbumMixer is running. But it could easily drift out of sync when AlbumMixer is not running. That would result in an unpleasant user experience. I have also considered pausing the player and stepping forward and backward to build the list. This could be tricky, and would definitely interrupt music playback.
I’ve been using this App on a daily basis and have only run into the following two problems.
1. If using “no filter” in the filter settings, albums with the same name (e.g., Greatest Hits) are not handled properly. The App will load every song from every album with the same name and then play the 1st track of each album in order followed by the 2nd track of each album and so on until it has cycled through the list. However, if a filter is selected, the albums with the same name are handled correctly. I have all fields in iTunes updated so the problem is not related to a missing album artist field. I have set-up a handful of test filters and can only recreate the problem when “no filter” is selected.
2. If only one album is selected and the UP or DOWN arrow is pressed, the App will cycle through all songs looking for the next album. However, since there isn’t another album it just keeps cycling endlessly. The only way to stop it is to close the App and restart.
Besides these two issues, the App has been great and very much appreciated.
While I am here, below are few items for the wish list for upcoming versions.
1. In the settings menu it would be nice if the user could select a criteria for the frequency of replaying an album. For example, I have had the same album play back-to-back on two occasions in the last month. If there was a way to implement a “do not repeat same album within x albums” feature that would be useful.
2. I frequently find myself switching over to the iPod player so I can view the upcoming tracks on an album. It would be nice to stay in the App and have that same feature available.
3. I wish the song indicator at the bottom of the screen were a larger font. My 42 year old eyes are having problems reading the tiny font currently used.
4. How about the ablility to select multiple filters at the same time?
Thanks again for an incredibly useful App and taking the time to read and respond to our feedback.
@mrbooboy: Thanks for the feedback. I’ve reproduced your bug (2) and the fix will be in 1.6. It’s nice to find a bug that’s so easy to fix.
Unfortunately the other bug you reported (1) seems to be one that I can’t fix as easily. I was able to reproduce it, but it seems to be in Apple’s code. For now, the best workaround seems to be to shuffle on a playlist instead. Another possibility is to edit the album name: for example, change “Greatest Hits” to “Anita O’Day’s Greatest Hits”. Neither one is particularly beautiful, sorry.
Turning to your RFEs, (1) and (4) are both interesting ideas. I’ll have to give each some thought. I discussed (2) in my earlier comment to ddb, today: that’s an area where Apple simply doesn’t allow third-party apps to access enough functionality. For (3), I’ll bump the font size up a few pixels for 1.6, and think about more flexible approaches for the following release.
Regarding mrbooboy’s wish list item #1 about not repeating albums, I’ve been using a workaround for that. I created a smart playlist in iTunes that randomly selects albums with a criteria of “LastPlayed is before” a certain date. I sync this playlist to my Touch and choose this playlist as the filter for AlbumMixer. As albums/tracks are played the LastPlayed field gets updated and so it will not play again.
Hope this helps.
Hi,
I primarily use Album Mixer with smart playlists, and find it really fills the hole that Apple left, so thanks for that.
One minor thing that does bug me however is that when queuing the resultant tracks they seem to be ordered in decending order (eg track 8 will play before track 7 etc..).
Could you please implement this functionality/fix the annoyance on a per album basis, or at least give the option to the user of enabling it if it is already there for a reason?
Re ddb’s comment on smart playlists, unfortunately I’ve never managed to get this working. Maybe because my smartplaylists on my iphone are a subset of a smartplaylist that loads the iphone with music (eg music collection = 50gb, smartplaylist [named "iphone collection"]of 30gb is chosen to load tracks to iphone, multiple smart playlists (eg “5* songs” that are in smartplaylist with name “iphone collection” will contain all 5* songs on iphone, and it is this I may use Album Mixer for. I guess this is an apple issue however… any ideas on resolution most welcome.
Cheers & keep up the good work. I look forward to all new releases.
@Darren – thanks for the feedback. I could teach AlbumMixer to re-sort the playlist entries at playback time, and I will look into that. Meanwhile, could you check the mis-sorted playlist in iTunes, to see if you have a sort column selected there? I believe AlbumMixer will see whatever playlist order iTunes sets.
I have a strange issue when I pick albums from a smart playlist. If I select the smart playlist in the filters, then select number of albums to 3. The smart playlist is scanned and 3 songs are selected. Not the full albums…just 3 songs from 3 different albums. Any ideas what I may be doing wrong? I have no issues when I use a standard playlist that I create manually. Thanks!
Figured it out! The problem was “live updating” was selected in iTunes for this particular smart playlist. If I remove the check box for live updating, the app works fine and full albums are selected at random. This isn’t a big deal, since the latest version of the iPod Touch doesn’t apparently work with the live updating feature anyway.
Why would “live updating” break the app? It seems that this is my problem, too. If I don’t have any filtering on, the app works as expected. However, if I choose a smart playlist that has live updating selected in iTunes, the app does not play the entire album. I specifically would like to use the smart playlist because it only contains tracks that haven’t been played from a certain date. Any chance of a fix for this?
That’s odd: I don’t have a problem with any of my playlists, and several have “live updating” enabled. However, the problem might be specific to the smart playlist options that you are using. I’ll contact each of you via email and ask for a screen shot of a problem playlist.
Quick heads up: version 1.6 should be available soon, with a fix for playlist selection in iOS 4.0.
Hello Michael,
Thanks for the great app. I use it every day to shuffle albums while I drive to work. Most of my albums are playing fine. With other albums, the songs are not playing in order, or one song is missing from the album (the lone song gets shuffled as its own album). This seemed to be worse with filters, so I am currently not using filters.
I believe this is due to metadata not being set correctly on the songs. Can you post a recommendation of which fields of metadata should be set for AlbumMixer to work perfectly and which fields can be blank? I’m thinking of the album, artist and album XYZ fields (especially for compilations), as well as settings for the playlists used as filters to make sure the songs play in the correct order.
I hope my question is clear enough. If not I’ll repost to clarify. Thanks.
For playlist filters, the important fields are Album Artist and Album Title. With no filter or with genre filters, AlbumMixer relies on iTunes to group the albums correctly (Which I believe relies on Album Title alone).
Blank values for “Album Artist” seem to be the most common problem. With 1.6 (released yesterday), I have added a setting that tells AlbumMixer to ignore the “Album Artist” field. However, that means albums with the same title will be shuffled together.