Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Portable Source Gear › Exactly how much of a hit on battery life is lossless on a portable player?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Exactly how much of a hit on battery life is lossless on a portable player?

post #1 of 3
6/25/10 at 4:20am
Thread Starter 

basically gunna take apple up on the macbook + £130 off an ipod offer before i go to uni. 

Currently i have about 1/3 of my music as lossless (not much since my hard drive broke and i lost a lot of music a year back)

So im slowly building it up with CDs borrowed from friends etc.

 

Basically gunna get the 160gb ipod classic and even if i had all my music at lossless i wouldnt fill it yet :( 

 

I really cannot be bothered to create a smart playlist or something to have compressed files for my ipod & lossless for at home (i know my current rig doesnt beneift from lossless atm but i intend to upgrade piece by piece)

 

 

how much of a battery drain is lossless on an ipod (i cant seem to find a figure or %)

 

Thanks

Reply
post #2 of 3
6/25/10 at 4:41am

How much of a hit?   The loss comes in read times for the larger files. Without doing a real test you could make a decent guess.  A 320kb version vs a Lossless M4A file may average a 3 to 1 size difference. Longer lossless read times are offset by longer processor time to decode/uncompress the compressed file. In my experience the processor can always win that race, so there is still a penalty for long lossless read times. Of course reading the system memory isn't all a battery has to do.  Power the amplifier.  Make the screen glow.  Update the screen as the song plays.  Wait for and respond to your inputs.  Etc..

 

I'd guess a 5% battery penalty for soley playing lossless files. It's a guess. Your actual experience will likely vary.  

Reply
post #3 of 3
6/25/10 at 5:22am
Thread Starter 

thanks

apple claims the classic has 36hours battery life playing 128 bit audio, 

i only really use my ipod when im walking to work and when im on the bus/train, so most i think il be using it is 3 hours at one time, 

so the lossless affect on battery life probably wont be a problem for me

 

thanks for your help

Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Portable Source Gear
Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Portable Source Gear › Exactly how much of a hit on battery life is lossless on a portable player?