Difference in Repeat behavior between Windows Media Player and Winamp

Most of you would have used at the Windows media player (WMP) or Winamp or both as your music player of choice. Both of them provide 2 options to control the sequence in which songs are played. These are Shuffle and Repeat. The definition of Shuffle is the same in both the players and basically means that instead of the songs being played sequentially, they will be chosen randomly from the playlist. However, there is a subtle difference in the definition of Repeat. Let me try to highlight this difference in this post.

There are 4 combinations possible between Shuffle and Repeat. The table below highlights the behavior of each player for the various combinations.

Shuffle/Repeat combination	Windows Media Player	Winamp
Shuffle – OFF Repeat – OFF	Plays songs in sequence. Cycles to the beginning of the list once the last song is played	Plays songs in sequence. Stops playing songs once the last song is played
Shuffle – OFF Repeat – ON	Plays songs in sequence. Cycles to the beginning of the list once the last song is played	Plays songs in sequence. Cycles to the beginning of the list once the last song is played
Shuffle – ON Repeat – OFF	Plays songs randomly. Cycles to the beginning of the list once the last song is played	Plays songs randomly and stops when each song in the playlist has been played once
Shuffle – ON Repeat – ON	Plays songs randomly. Songs can be repeated even when all the songs in the playlist have not yet been played at least once	Plays songs randomly. Songs can be repeated even when all the songs in the playlist have not yet been played at least once

 

As is evident from the above table, the difference in the behaviors of both the players comes when Repeat is OFF. This is because of 2 reasons:

• Repeat in Winamp means turning repeat of song and playlist on/off
• Repeat in WMP only means turning repeat of songs on or off. Repeat of playlist is not under the control of the user. Once the playlist is complete, WMP will automatically cycle back to the beginning of the list.

Given this understanding of Repeat, when using Shuffle in WMP, based on the playlist type, we should set the Repeat as on/off as follows:

• Playlist with few songs : We might want to set Repeat OFF so that all the songs in the playlist have an equal chance of being played. No song will be repeated till ALL songs have been played once
• Playlist with large number of songs : We might want to set Repeat ON otherwise we might have to wait a long time before a song we hear once gets played again

Hope this post helps in clarifying the difference in behavior of both these popular players and aids you in choosing the right setting when listening to your favorite songs.