Shuffle-induced headaches!

I do this a lot, but being a tech cavegirl I only have a low-capacity mp3 player which means I can't carry my entire collection around my neck.

still, anything serious and melodic (PFM being one of the best examples ever) followed by The Residents is just nonsensically jarring. even outside of prog I can randomly roll a show tune/torch song immediately followed by a twenty-two minute Merzbow skree-suite ;P

I have an iPod and have tried the shuffle mode a few times.  I actually don't mind the Genesis to Meshuggah hop.  What gripes me the most, the shuffle does not recognize an epic with all it's parts 1,2, 3, etc. etc.   So, I may get a 2 minute part of the epic then off to an Opeth tune.  However,  one can make playlists which solves the problem.  A little more time consuming but worth it in the long run.  I would assume you can make a playlist with a Zune?  I do most of my iPod listening it the car.  So a playlist is a must for me.  Cheers! 

shuffle never seems to play songs i want to hear at that moment, so shuffle doesnt always work for me...

I love shuffle. both in my iPod (though this really messes with my audiobook folder) and in my MP3/CD changer.

I didn't know about making playlists, so I got around the epic problem by ripping my own CD's and joining the wav files together before converting.  I also try to normalize the entire album (not individual songs because some are supposed to be quieter) to level the playing field a little, but the newer material is more compressed so it sounds louder anyway unfortunately.

This brings up the question for producers out there.  We live in an age of digital media.  Why not cater to it?  Why break an epic up into sections that won't work on random mode.  And why have two otherwise unrelated pieces fade into one another without a break? I don't care so much about movements of a piece, but if they flow directly into one another, there's that annoying abrupt cutoff.  It takes me a lot of time to splice them together to get around that.

And please - we've all heard the trick where you have a song fade out and then 5 minutes later it fades in again at the end of a CD to startle us after we think the CD is over. Or there's a "hidden" track stuck on the end.  It was cool the first seventeen times that happened.  But enough already!

I find shuffle can be hard on the brain,especially with no sleep and your walking around town.I sometimes find a certain song will slowly get me in a certain mood then be completely ruined by the next which will play then get you in another mood etc

Well, quit using the shuffle, foo.  Whadda I gotta do?  Smack y'all upside the head? 

Yeah don't get me started on the default headphones that come with those, I've never heard a set that wasn't a piece of crap.

I never shuffle.

I would use shuffle all the time on my Winamp, then one thing happened. Me and my girlfriend were having sex, and this popped on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSBp2zC6CY Talk about a mood spoiler. After that I secretly pick a better playlist or we have no music at all, it's not like I always plan it that way. But no more of Ron Moss, for god's sake!

It seems I'm never satisfied with shuffle functions.  usually I listen to a song and then if I like it I'm in the mood to listen to the rest of the album, and if I don't like it I want to change it immediately.... but the mathematical randomness of it all never seems to be in touch with my listening mood so I end up skipping around to find the right thing... only to find that the next song ruins it all.