[bigshot]

Larger file sizes will put more of a load on the hard drive, and subsequently, battery life. With MP3s, the DAP will go longer between charges.

 

[tjkohli]

Larger file sizes will put more of a load on the hard drive, and subsequently, battery life. With MP3s, the DAP will go longer between charges.

That’s definitely true, but most DAPs don’t play directly from the hard drive either. They have a flash buffer (eg. 128MB) which they fill up with the current and upcoming song(s) and then play from that, so ultimately the difference is negligible.

 

[bigshot]

If it’s filling the buffer from files that are ten times the size, it’s still using more battery. It isn’t playing the files through the DAC that drains the battery, it’s pulling big files off the internal drive and loading them into the buffer. It would be even worse with wav files.

 

[houaiss]

If it’s filling the buffer from files that are ten times the size, it’s still using more battery. It isn’t playing the files through the DAC that drains the battery, it’s pulling big files off the internal drive and loading them into the buffer. It would be even worse with wav files.

damn, guess I have some conversion to do

 

[houaiss]

Larger file sizes will put more of a load on the hard drive, and subsequently, battery life. With MP3s, the DAP will go longer between charges.

would a opus format consume even less battery too? I'd assume yes, because its smaller than mp3, right?
thank you!

 

[bigshot]

Yes, MP3, Opus, AAC… all are significantly smaller than lossless. Just find a setting that sounds good and doesn’t artifact.

 

[ScrofulousBinturong]

would a opus format consume even less battery too? I'd assume yes, because its smaller than mp3, right?
thank you!

Here's a test. Put, say, 20 albums in WAV, FLAC, decent MP3, and some low bit rate MP3 (all the same songs, in 4 formats) Charge up the player and play all the WAV files (and nothing else) on shuffle until the battery dies. Keep track of how long the battery lasts. Do the same with the other formats and see if there's a difference.

My guess is it won't be significant but I'm open to being completely wrong.

If your player uses solid state storage (e.g. sdcard, ssd, nvme) then there won't be much of a difference. If your player uses spinning hard disks, there might be.

 

[bigshot]

Most of the hit on the battery for a DAP is the hard drive access. It might be less with an SSD drive, but I know with an iPod the difference between lossy and lossless wasn’t insignificant.

 

[jase2k]

Brother… no, but in the circumstance you have suspicions these claims are true… toss them out the window! See how your gear performs.

 

[castleofargh]

Here's a test. Put, say, 20 albums in WAV, FLAC, decent MP3, and some low bit rate MP3 (all the same songs, in 4 formats) Charge up the player and play all the WAV files (and nothing else) on shuffle until the battery dies. Keep track of how long the battery lasts. Do the same with the other formats and see if there's a difference.

My guess is it won't be significant but I'm open to being completely wrong.

If your player uses solid state storage (e.g. sdcard, ssd, nvme) then there won't be much of a difference. If your player uses spinning hard disks, there might be.

MP3 (128 kbps), 30 hours, 25 hours. AAC (256 kbps), 27 hours, 23 hours. FLAC (96 kHz/24 bit), 26 hours, 23 hours. FLAC (192 kHz/24 bit), 23 hours, 20 hours. DSD...
From the manual for nw-ZX300 and ZX300A(the 2 values are for the respective DAPs)
Those values are while playing continuously screen turned off , zero DSP, and no shuffle. Any one DSP in those DAPs can and usually does cut the playback time in half. Changing the track often, or fooling around with the screen turned on will also massively reduce the playback time. So it's not a main variable at all even for battery life in general, but it's real.

I wouldn't say to expect the same ratios between format for all DAPs because some DAPs have massive batteries(historically not Sonys ) and other variables like op amps consume a much bigger proportion of it.



PS, Just in case, and in relation to the first post, I feel obligated to say that "battery life" means how many hours it plays on one charge, not that it's going to literally die faster.

 

[ScrofulousBinturong]

MP3 (128 kbps), 30 hours, 25 hours. AAC (256 kbps), 27 hours, 23 hours. FLAC (96 kHz/24 bit), 26 hours, 23 hours. FLAC (192 kHz/24 bit), 23 hours, 20 hours. DSD...
From the manual for nw-ZX300 and ZX300A(the 2 values are for the respective DAPs)
Those values are while playing continuously screen turned off , zero DSP, and no shuffle. Any one DSP in those DAPs can and usually does cut the playback time in half. Changing the track often, or fooling around with the screen turned on will also massively reduce the playback time. So it's not a main variable at all even for battery life in general, but it's real.

I wouldn't say to expect the same ratios between format for all DAPs because some DAPs have massive batteries(historically not Sonys ) and other variables like op amps consume a much bigger proportion of it.



PS, Just in case, and in relation to the first post, I feel obligated to say that "battery life" means how many hours it plays on one charge, not that it's going to literally die faster.

Interesting, thanks for the data! Personally I'll take the improved sound quality of a FLAC over a 128kbps mp3 over a 5-10% battery life bump.

 

[dunring]

I saw two claims that bugged me:


and

are those claims true? to what extent? I know very little about audio but I like to dip my toes a little in this world. Right now I use a flac library of albums. If those claims are true I'd be willing to change to mp3. If anyone could help me with that, maybe giving source or pointing to the right direction where I could read more about that I'd be really thankful!

Run from whoever said those things. They're so false, the only thing I've heard worse or more inaccurate than that was some idiot who swore that formatting his USB thumb drive with different sector sizes changed the way his music sounds. So much disinformation on the Internet, it's why the AI models learning from scraping the Internet are wrong half the time. Ask Bard or ChatGPT for a list of balanced DACs that output 5 volts or more and you can see the ridiculous list of wrong answers.