'Loop Track' Gets Toggled Off when Switching Tracks in Multi-Track Playlist

[hairycactus]

Current Behaviour:

1. Right-click Track X in a multi-track playlist

2. Select Loop Track. => Outcome: Winyl plays Track X repeatedly.

3. Double-click Track Y in playlist (or: click the Previous/Next button on the graphical controls). => Outcome: Winyl starts playing Track Y (or the previous/ next track adjacent to Track X), & then continues down the playlist without looping Track Y.

Affected Versions: v3.3 (02 Mar 2018) & previous versions

Expected/ Preferred Behaviour: Winyl should respect the Loop Track choice & loop the newest-selected track, even after switching tracks in a multi-track playlist. (This is the standard behaviour in all other audio players I'd tried, regardless of whether they are playlist or folder players.)

For easy access, it is better to include a Loop Track button in the graphical controls & Loop Track option in the menu for native skins.

(Note: The existing ambiguously-named Repeat button in the controls replays the entire playlist instead. And from a practical point of view, since a playlist probably consists of numerous tracks that can take a long time to go through before repeating itself, this Repeat button is not frequently used -- be it to toggle the repeat playlist function on or off.)

And for clarity's sake, the respective controls buttons' tooltips & menu labels could be as follows:-

Controls Button: Turn on/off Loop Track Menu: Control > Loop Track

Controls Button: Turn on/off Repeat Playlist (currently: Turn on/off Repeat) Menu: Control > Repeat Playlist

Thanks !

[alexkx]

This is the correct behaviour, Loop Track auto disables when you change the track.

Note: The existing ambiguously-named Repeat button in the controls replays the entire playlist instead. And from a practical point of view, since a playlist probably consists of numerous tracks that can take a long time to go through before repeating itself, this Repeat button is not frequently used

Repeat is much more important than Loop Track. It is a very powerful tool with Shuffle for example, if you want to listen your playlist in random order continuously.

Do people even use Loop Track often for different tracks? Basically you need to loop only one track. I add discussion tag, feel free to comment on the issue if you think the current behaviour is incorrect and should be changed.

Or just thumb up this my comment if you think the current behaviour is fine, thumb down if should be changed.

[hairycactus]

Do people even use Loop Track often for different tracks? Basically you need to loop only one track.

USE CASES

1. The playlist is made up of language-learning tracks consisting of phrases or sentences. User may want to listen to each track several times, until one is ready to start with the next or next-selected (not necessarily consecutive) track.

2. The playlist consists of multiple tracks containing speech or songs that user wants to transcribe. After the transcription, user may wish to listen to the same track at least once again to check the accuracy of the transcription, before moving on to the next or next-selected track.

USER WORKFLOW

Current Workflow:

1. Right-click selected track in the playlist pane.
2. Click Loop Track.
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 again for other tracks.

With 2 steps/clicks per track, user has to click numerous times per listening session.

3 Additional Pain Points:

• After clicking Loop Track, Winyl plays the selected track from the beginning again, even though it already started playing when Loop Track is being clicked.
• There is no visual clue as to whether Loop Track is in an ON or OFF state -- either by way of a tick symbol or bold text in the playlist's right-click menu, or via a status indicator somewhere on Winyl's GUI.
• Even after Loop Track is definitely enabled, Winyl always reverts it to OFF at the next launch.

With Suggested Change: If Loop Track always remains ON despite switching tracks, user just has to click on any subsequent track to play it on loop -- ie. 1 step. And a responsive Loop Track button on the player controls would be a helpful visual indicator of its current state.

IMPACT OF SUGGESTED CHANGE Keeping Loop Track as always ON when enabled does not negatively affect user who wishes to loop a single track infinitely. If this user wishes to play other tracks normally, simply click Loop Track again to toggle it off -- ie. 1 step.

COMPARISON WITH INDUSTRY STANDARD So far, Winyl is the only audio player I'd encountered where Loop Track exhibits such an unusual behaviour. In other players such as 1by1, AIMP, fmedia, Foobar2000, Hokrain, Nemp, Resonic, Trout, Winamp, XMPlay, etc., Loop Track (also variously called Repeat or Repeat Track/File) always remains ON once it is enabled, regardless of how many times user switches tracks. And neither do they exhibit any of the 3 additional pain points as described above.

Thanks !

[alexkx]

USE CASES

These use cases are too specific actually. Winyl designed as a music player, these use cases are not for a music player.

There is no visual clue as to whether Loop Track is in an ON or OFF state If Loop Track always remains ON Keeping Loop Track as always ON

Loop Track is not a switch, it just starts playing a track in a different mode it's even located in the same menu where Play for that reason.

If someone wants to reimplement it as a switch or add an option to handle Repeat as Repeat Track, feel free.

I think I can add Ctrl+Enter shortcut to play a track in the loop mode if it will be helpful. This change should be pretty simple.