Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Denon 3808CI network question

I don't seem to be able to play my music library in ramdom mode through my network connection. Is there a way to do it? The manual says you can do it on the USB inputs but nothing about through your network.

hmmm.. now that you mention it I have never tried to do this... Which media server are you using and what are your file formats?

I am using Windows Media Player 11.0, most of my files are MP3s and WMA. I can see and play all the files with no problem. When my wife and I are doing projects around the house and yard it's just nice to be able to play the library in random mode. I wonder if its a memory issue since you are supposed to be able to do it with a flash drive or external hard drive connected to the USB port on the Denon. I have not tried that, I suppose I really should just to confirm that there is a random mode available. Thanks

Unfortunately the 3808 won't do Random mode when streaming from a media server, that mode is for use with iPods only, IIRC. What I do is run the 3808 in all music/file mode and start at different points then just let it grab the next song in the list, this offeres a very random playback as the list is done by Title in alphabetical order so the artist is usually never the same.

I was hoping that wasn't the case. Yes the all music/file mode and start at different points works pretty well. Thanks

Seems like electronics manufacturers always have shuffle/random play as a second thought. I have a universal changer that shuffles in disc order--it'll play a random song on disk 1, then a random song on disk 2, etc. In my car, I have a CD changer. It only shuffles by disc. It'll shuffle all the songs on disk 1, then move to disk 2...There was another universal changer I looked at where it didn't keep a memory of what tracks it had already played!

How hard is this? C'mon, people.

I like how my Onkyo changer does it. I doesn't scan the trays ahead of time. First it skips to a random tray. If it's empty it moves to another tray. When it finds a disc, it scans the index for the number of tracks, adds it to its disc/track index (so that it can keep track of the ones it has played), and then chooses a random one on that disc to play. When that track is done, it may play another on the disc or move on to the next random tray which may or may not contain a disc. It doesn't repeat tracks.

And Onkyo apparently thought this wasn't the right way to do it when it came time to make a universal changer. Bizarre.