Ipod use question

[bradsmith]

Ok I have a 30g ipod and I havent figured out how to do this. I have about 400 songs downloaded so far. If you use the shuffle feature it plays different songs but different artists. I love this. But my question is I will listen for several hours and then turn off the Ipod. Then tomorrow I want to start where I left off. If everytime you start your ipod it starts from the beggining It looks to me like there are lots of songs you will here over every day or so and some songs that you will never hear.
I hope I made this clear for you to help.

Thanks Brad

[dmatson]

I set mine to shuffle all the time to. Mine is a 60 video and every time I start it, it starts from a different point so i don't hear the same songs all the time.

[jhsonderb]

My 3G iPod also returns to the same initial song after I return to one of the playlists that I use for riding.

I generally scroll from the first song that the iPod shows in the playlist (which is listed in the order I selected songs in iTunes when I created the playlist) to another song and it provides a different shuffle sequence.

I'm not sure if I need to change from the first song displayed to get a different shuffle sequence. I change from the first song to any other because I am tired of that first song.

[jhsonderb]

One other thought. My iPod will return to the same song that I was playing after I paused my iPod and it timed out and went to sleep. For example, the next day when it wakes up by me pressing a button it starts playing the same song that I was listening to the night before.

[bradsmith]

Im not using any playlist. I just click on songs then shuffle. I figured that way it will go through every song in the ipod before repeating any. but it doesn't seem to do that. Now the order that they play will always be different but seems like I hear a lot of the same songs and Lots of songs I never hear.

[strsout]

I have the 60Gb Photo (one generation old) and when playing a music, I just press the pause and let it turns off by it self.
Next day I press play and it will continue from the same music it was playing, and move on on the shuffle.
I'm almost sure it plays different musics from yesterday.

[meese]

The iPod's shuffle logic isn't truly random. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes it repeats several songs that have already played. It's a limitation of the onboard processing power of the iPod.

In iTunes the shuffle works better (in fact you can adjust the "randomness"), plus you can tag each song with # of times played, and create a Smart Playlist that pulls from the songs that have been least played, but your PC has much more processing capability.

So the best bet is to pause the iPod and let it sleep rather than shutting it off, as others have suggested. It still beats that huge CD changer though. :)

[midwilshire]

I hit "pause" before locking the buttons with the slide-switch.

The iPod then turns itself off automatically, and when I unlock it to hit play the next day, it picks up mid-song where it left off.

Hope that helps.

[bradsmith]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I was hoping that was the answer. I had thought about just pausing it and letting it turn off but wasn't sure if that was the right way.
Again Thanks

[Schweintechnik]

...and create a Smart Playlist that pulls from the songs that have been least played...

I have a smart playlist that plays only songs that I haven't heard in the last two weeks and are rated at three stars or higher. I almost NEVER take it off this playlist - it's set & forget. Every commute, I can just hit play and get my favorite tunes commercial-free with basically no repeats.