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ballfam Offline
#1 Posted : Friday, September 5, 2014 1:32:24 PM(UTC)
ballfam

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I have recently started using the "create mix" feature a lot because I can never think of anything to play, and maintaining playlists becomes a chore after a while anyway.

This is a really cool feature, but I can never quite understand how it generates the list of songs to play. Is there some description somewhere which describes how the songs are selected, and exactly what effect the "mix settings" have on this?

Sometimes I get an "outlier"; for example, I base a mix on AC/DC and end up with a pop track by One Direction. The mix generation seems to work much better on some artists than it does on others, and I can't really work out how it determines what is a "similar" song. If I had some insight into how it works I could try to base mixes on songs that will produce a better outcome.

What makes it harder I think is that I have around 20,000 songs in my server library, and they are placed there by all four members of my family with 4 completely different musical tastes. Needless to say, I don't have the same musical taste as my teenage daughter. With such a wide selection to choose from, there can sometimes be several outliers in the mixes.

It would be nice if there were more tuning parameters e.g.

- restrict the mix only to tracks that were released as singles (no obscure album tracks)

- Restrict the mix to a specific date range (e.g. only the '80s)

- Instant ban of an artist only for this mix when I thumb down. I noticed there is a setting for this, but is says "too many times"....how many is too many? And does it affect other mixes or just this mix?

- Use an input list of artists to make a mix...this one would be really useful; I can make a list of all the artists that I like, excluding everyone else's artists, and then restrict the mix to these. Since this can (will) be a wide range of genres, none of the other tuning settings can ever predict this since they can't read my mind.

Thanks for any insight into mixes.
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#2 Posted : Friday, September 5, 2014 4:02:47 PM(UTC)
Muzecast Support

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HomeDJ is using MusicIP mixer and it has some tuning features you mentioned which are not exposed yet, such as restriction by decade or years.

What mode did you use when you scan your folders: Full, Normal, or Fast?

In Full mode HomeDJ will analyze each song for better mixes, but it runs longer.

Also you can restrict mix to a specific Genre, if song you are selecting has Genre defined, let's say Rock. Later you can add another song with different Genre to playing queue or Mix you created and song similar to the song you picked will be added to the mix only for this Genre.
For example you want to create a mix based on a song from AC/DC with Genre Hard Rock. Before you click button "Create Mix" you can check the checkbox ON on the same screen to keep mix within the same Genre. In our case it would be "Hard Rock".
Once you click button "Create Mix" HomeDJ will create a mix with n-number of songs you configured to have in Mix Settings. Once mix is playing, after each song, up to 2 new songs added that similar to the song currently played. So if you restricted mix to a Genre "Hard Rock" 2 new songs would be added, which only have "Hard Rock" as a Genre.

Later you could add another song to this mix with another Genre, let's say "Rock", and once this song is played 2 new songs would be added, which are similar to that song and have Genre either "Hard Rock" or "Rock".
I am thinking to make it more user friendly with a feature "Add to Mix". What this feature would do:
While mix is playing, you click button "Add to Mix" somewhere on the Home Screen or Player Screen. It will show "Create Mix" dialog where you pick a song. It will work the same way as "Create Mix" but instead of creating a new mix, it will add songs to current mix.

About Mix Settings:
Style - Stronger style will keep songs, which are very similar.
Variety - Mix will try to have songs, which are similar, but might be, let's say faster bits and slower bits, or have wider range of leading instruments or voices, or have wider range of Bass power and bits.
Number of the same artists repeated in the mix - If set to 0, the same artist might appear for several sequential songs. If 1, then each second song will have another Artists, but Mix will try to keep the same style, 2,3 and so on.

There is another checkbox in Mix settings where you can disable automatic Artist rejection and once it is UNCHECKED, then every time you click "Thumb Down", you will be prompted to exclude all songs by Artist or Genre from the mix.

I have plans to expose more mix settings, which MusicIP allows, but some you mentioned are not available, such as list of Artists.

Some tips - The bigger number of songs is configured for initial mix, the greater variety of songs will be added to a mix.

I use the following settings:
Style - Strongest
Max Songs - 6
Variety - 2
Number of duplicate Artists within # tracks - 0
Auto block Artist and Genre - OFF

I am also not a fun of creating playlists and I use Mix feature all the time. With auto Preview I pick the song I feel listening at the present time, hit Create Mix and I am on my way to work or anywhere else. BTW, when HomeDJ is showing "Create Mix" dialog, picking songs (sliding left right) could be done via Bluetooth << and >> buttons. Preview also will be played over Bluetooth. Once you hear a song you would like to create mix for, click Bluetooth button Play/Pause and Mix will be created.

Another tip:
If you Thumb Up song in the mix, it will be used all the time for adding 2 more songs together with just played song. That would make Mix more tuned up to a songs you Thumbed up.

Mixes sometimes might be not that good if picked song did not have Genre in the tags at all.
Thank you.

Muzecast Support.
ballfam Offline
#3 Posted : Friday, September 5, 2014 7:49:25 PM(UTC)
ballfam

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Wow Thanks, lots of good info. I scanned in "Normal" mode and I had a few thousand songs that were not mixable...I am now re-scanning using "Full", it will be worth it because of my heavy use of mixes now.

I hadn't realized that I could add a song to a mix, I thought that only worked for hand-crafted play queues. This is really handy; now that you explained how it picks the next songs for the mix from the last one played, I see how the mix can drift far away from the original song after several songs (I have gone past 250 songs before creating a new mix recently)....adding a new song manually will help me to bring the mix back to where I want it...nice.

Its also good to understand the difference between style and variety, knowing this I have kept style at 0 and bumped variety to 2 (same as you).

I'm keeping auto-block artist/genre unchecked, and I'll try to thumb down next time I get an outlier to see what happens.

Thanks for all the good info; with all this, I think I can keep my mix in-line with what I want it to play.
Muzecast Support Offline
#4 Posted : Saturday, September 6, 2014 3:53:57 AM(UTC)
Muzecast Support

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Mix would be better if Style is: 5 - Strongly Prefer.
Thank you.

Muzecast Support.
ballfam Offline
#5 Posted : Saturday, September 6, 2014 6:06:44 AM(UTC)
ballfam

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Sorry, yeah, I meant 5=Strongly Prefer.....analysis is still running...on Processing 8% complete after 12 hours...maybe its time to upgrade my file server CPU (it's running an old Pentium 4 dual-core right now). Thanks again.
ballfam Offline
#6 Posted : Saturday, September 27, 2014 10:37:08 AM(UTC)
ballfam

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After almost 3 weeks of constant analysis 24x7, it actually completed, and it has made a noticeable difference. Suddenly new tracks are showing up in the mixes that were never there before, and the song selection is much closer to the sound of the root song, yet it is more diverse in it's selection of artists, and there are very few, if any outliers now.

If anyone uses mixes heavily, in my experience, it is definitely worth the time and effort to do a full scan.
 1 user thanked ballfam for this useful post.
Muzecast Support on 9/27/2014(UTC)
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