Playlist is playing in random order since updating microSD card on Sansa ClipZip

[fduniho]

I keep an exercise playlist on my Sansa ClipZip, which is stored in the main memory. So, after I replaced my 200GB microSD card with a 512GB microSD card, it was still there and working. However, it has been playing music on shuffle since I did this. Normally, I would shuffle the playlist once and gradually go through it in order. Now, when I try to go to a specific song in the playlist, it ignores that and continues playing another song, then it skips to a song that doesn't come immediately after it. For example, I tried playing #671, but it played #674, then skipped to #692. I have gone to Settings and selected No for Shuffle, but it hasn't helped. Is there anything else I can do?

[Bilgus]

we have some patches recently submitted on this  can you try the very latest dev version?

[Carlo]

I have the same issue: even if I'm positive shuffle is disabled, Rockbox doesn't follow the alphabetical order of the files in a given directory anymore and plays them in a random order. The issue happens with both the internal memory and a SD card.

I went back to my usual last good bug-free Rockbox build (the 12 january one). It really saddens me to see all those playlist bugs crop up every time its code is modified. Rockbox used to be rock solid (pun intended), nowadays I stopped updating my devices as I don't trust new dev builds anymore. I'm grateful to the devs for all their hard work, however for one reason or another such glaring bugs have been slipping through their testing.

[rockbox_dev123]

This was fixed some time ago.

I had this bug as well, I thought I had broken something in my fork, but I can confirm that this was fixed on 2023-07-12 (the last time I compiled my own build). In reality, it was definitely fixed earlier than this, I just can't remember the relevant commits.

[bahus]

Just tested latest 20230913 dev build using Sansa Clip Zip simulator. And I can confirm that something is terribly broken with settings handling.
 
I started without config.cfg file. But shuffle was ON for some reasons. Attempt to switch Shuffle to ON/OFF  and also changing Repeat to All lead to some garbage added in config.cfg.new file:

shuffle: ÞÞÞÞހ·È A
repeat: 3034113
playback frequency: 256
follow playlist: on
warn when erasing dynamic playlist: off
keep current track when replacing playlist: off
start in screen: previous
qs top: -
qs left: shuffle
qs right: repeat
qs bottom: -

The only settings I explicitly modified 1) follow playlist, 2) shuffle and 3) repeat.  Not sure why other settings were added.

And attempt to open Quickscreen gives me Segmentation Fault.

[Bilgus]

ill check this out in the next few days

[Bilgus]

ok I think I have it
https://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/c/rockbox/+/5325

the flag I added was in the range of NVRAM (emulated) so its hard telling what it was reading and writing

[bahus]

ok I think I have it

Yeah no more weird settings for me. Thanks!

[fduniho]

As a test, I had it play #671 again, and it started playing #674 again. I tried having it play #1, and it played #4. I tried #671 again, and it played #674 again. Also, the last time I played the playlist by trying to start with #671, the tracks it played when I went to scrobble it looked the same as the tracks it had played before when I tried starting from that number. Since it seems to be playing tracks in a consistent order, it might not be that it is shuffling the tracks. Rather, what may have happened is that when I saved my now larger MP3 collection to the new micro SD card, something about how it recognizes files internally changed between this micro SD card and the other one. So, it is still playing tracks in a fixed order, but in one that is unpredictable to me and doesn't sit with my purpose of going through the whole playlist only once before rebuilding and reshuffling it.

For my next test, I have switched back to my previous micro SD card, and when it is done initializing, I will see if it behaves normally.

I'm thinking the solution might be to build and shuffle a new playlist, but that will take more time than what I'm doing right now.

[Bilgus]

functionally the actual shuffling hasn't changed I just overlapped the flag for the setting with another and all hell broke loose
fduniho it numbers the files as their original position in the directory when shuffled it'd start higher and unshuffled in its directory position
#4 and #674 respectively

[bahus]

As a test, I had it play #671 again, and it started playing #674 again.

Broken build can change your settings in some strange way. So check your config.cfg file in .rockbox folder. Or simply remove/rename old .rockbox folder before update and start clean.

[Bilgus]

Thats a good point if you have it you should delete the nvram.bin/nvram.bin.new file(s) as well just to be sure