Wondering- is it possible to be able to set play percentages in a multi instrument while still getting round robin style playback? I’d love to be able to set one or two sounds as very low percentage ‘easter egg’ results but keep my instrument from cueing any sound twice in a row.
is this possible?
There is a way to get the behavior you describe.
As you know, if you give any entry in a multi instrument’s playlist a play percentage, that instrument will become capable of selecting the same playlist entry to play twice in a row even if the playlist is set to shuffle.
You can trivially avoid this limitation by using nested multi instruments, since only play percentages in the multi instrument’s own playlist directly affect its behavior.
For example, suppose you have a multi instrument whose playlist contains eleven audio assets. You want ten of these audio assets to play with equal probability, but for the eleventh to only play a tiny fraction of the time, and for the instrument to never play the same asset twice in a row. Simply remove the almost-never-play audio file and one of the other audio files from the multi instrument’s playlist, add a new multi instrument to the multi instrument’s playlist, put the two removed audio files in the nested multi instrument’s playlist, and set the almost-never-play audio file’s play percentage to 1%. The parent multi instrument will select all of its playlist entries with equal probability, and will never select the same playlist entry twice; when it selects the nested multi instrument, that multi instrument will select one of its playlist entries to play, obeying their play percentages. The result is that the almost-never-play audio file will be selected only 0.1% of the time, the other audio file in the nested multi instrument’s playlist will be selected 9.9% of the time, the other audio files will each be selected 10% of the time, and no audio file will ever play twice in a row. (As a side effect, this means that the almost-never-play audio file will never play immediately after or before the other audio file in the nested multi instrument’s playlist, since that would require the parent multi instrument to select the multi instrument playlist twice in a row. This is unlikely to be a significant problem for most events.)
This works perfectly! Using a 10% play chance on the nested event and then a 10% on the almost-never-play should give me a %1 play chance (if my math works out).
Thank you!
That’s exactly right.
Of course, you shouldn’t actually set any play percentages in the parent multi instrument, so the only way to ensure a 10% play chance for every entry in its play list is for it to have exactly ten playlist entries.
I spent a long time thinking this was abug. Is it something you are planning to change? Enabling shuffle really makes me expect that it is shuffling as long as it is enabled. If you are not going to change it, it might be smart to grey out the shuffle button when play percentage is set
No.
I understand your confusion, but there is actually a useful difference in behavior between random and shuffle modes even when a play percentage has been set:
Because of this difference, having both modes available is useful even when play percentages have been set.
Ok, I am still a bit confused about this 
So play percentage + shuffe, essentially just means that play percentage is still taken into account, but the instrument doesn’t actually shuffle, so you can still risk the same sound playing 3 times after each other - is that correct?
And how does play percentage + randomize then work together, I don’t think I understood that from your explanation above?
Yes and no. The instrument is still shuffling its contents, but selecting an entry to play doesn’t drop the chance of that entry being selected again all the way to zero.
Think of it like this: Using shuffle mode without play percentages is like drawing one card at a time from a deck of cards in which every card is unique: As you go through the deck, you can’t ever draw the same card twice in a row, because any card that’s already been drawn has been discarded and so is no longer in the deck.
If you assign play percentages to any playlist entries, you’re still drawing from a deck of cards, but now there are multiple copies of every card in the deck - and some have more copies than others. As a result, you can draw the same card twice in a row - but drawing a particular card does makes it less likely that you’ll draw the same card again in future.
If shuffle mode is like drawing from a deck of cards, random mode is like rolling a die. With the deck of cards, each card you draw and discard alters the probability of drawing additional cards - so if you draw the Queen of Spades, you’re less likely to draw another Queen of Spades and more likely to draw any other card. With the die, the probability of getting any given result is the same every time you roll it - so even if you roll a “6” ten times in a row, the odds of getting a 6 on your next roll are unchanged.
Play percentages make certain entries more likely to be selected than others (adding cards to the deck or weighting the die), but do not otherwise change how they function.
Thakn you for the explanation Joseph - I understand how shuffle works with play percentage now 
But I am struggling to understand the difference between adding cards to the deck or weighting the die (the difference between shuffle and randomize)?
The weighting with either method is initially the same: If you give an entry a play percentage of 18%, that entry has an 18% chance of being selected the first time that instrument selects an entry.
The difference between these methods only affects the second and subsequent time the instrument selects an entry:
The former method allows the actual frequency with which playlist items are selected to drift away from the theoretical frequency specified by their play percentagers; whereas the latter method automatically corrects the chances of each entry being selected to ensure that the actual and theoretical frequencies always stay pretty close.