CD Player's "RAND" not really random

What I typically do when designing a system like this is power up the counter when the device starts, then use some other effectively random event to set the seed. Obviously you have to be careful to avoid anything that is likely to have a predictable pattern. For example, two related button pushes are likely to be done consistently by the same operator, so that reduces the randomness of the operation.

In practice it doesn't make any difference if the counter speed is high enough. Human reflexes are too slow to anticipate a counter moving at several million cycles per second.

All of this discussion still produces a pseudo random sequence. If we want something truly random we need to work at the quantum level.

Tom