FLAC and battery life on clip+

[ferundu]

Hello everyone,

I'm new owner of clip+ with a question
What is best format to use on OF clip+ regarding battery life?

I'm sort of loseless freak and all my music is FLAC. I searched and read through forum but can't find definite answer. Some posts mentions FLAC sucks up battery others say it can play for 17 hours. I checked rockbox codec comparison, but I'm unsure how to interpret data. It looks to me like FLAC is way better than anything else regarding decompression time, but does that translate to battery life or not, does FLAC file size kill any advantage, or maybe that table is relevant to rockboxed clips only...

So I would ask someone that plays FLACs on OF clip+ to give me definitive answer, I have no problem in compressing my music but really won't listen anything below V2 and that table shows some weird decompression times.

Thanks

[CrowdAds]

[Marvin the Martian]

If you are just going to use the SanDisk firmware, then use LAME....I use V2, but sounds like you would prefer V0. That table you saw on the rockbox site only refers to players running rockbox. Battery life with FLAC is terrible with the OF.

[ferundu]

Thanks, but does that table mean rockbox gives you better playtime for FLAC then V0/V2 (and maybe even OF V0/V2)? If so I'm flashing right away, better quality for less price, that one's a no-brainer

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by ferundu

Thanks, but does that table mean rockbox gives you better playtime for FLAC then V0/V2 (and maybe even OF V0/V2)? If so I'm flashing right away, better quality for less price, that one's a no-brainer

I can't say if it gives better playtime for FLAC than V0/V2 because I don't use FLAC on my players, only on my computer. But I would definitely say Rockbox is worth using on the Clip+....I have it on both of mine.

[Satellite_6]

I guess you need to test it yourself, if FLAC gets bad battery life, encode to mp3 with LAME.

P.S. mp3gain is awesome.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by ferundu

Thanks, but does that table mean rockbox gives you better playtime for FLAC then V0/V2 (and maybe even OF V0/V2)? If so I'm flashing right away, better quality for less price, that one's a no-brainer

I don't think anyone has tested flac, but it should last an hour or two longer then MP3 in the OF I think.

[eboyer93]

Originally Posted by saratoga

I don't think anyone has tested flac, but it should last an hour or two longer then MP3 in the OF I think.

In the OF or Rockbox, because FLAC killed the battery for me on the OF.

[Timar]

On the OF, flac definitely drains more battery than MP3 (they must have hacked a very messy implementation of the flac decoder); on rockbox it's exactly the opposite: flac should give (marginally) more runtime.

You'll get more runtime with rockbox anyway!

[ferundu]

Originally Posted by saratoga

I don't think anyone has tested flac, but it should last an hour or two longer then MP3 in the OF I think.

Thank you very much, that's what I hoped I'll hear

Rockbox it is then

[bertrik]

FLAC is probably the least CPU-intensive codec on rockbox. Maybe for hard-disk based players, FLAC consumes more power than low-bitrate codecs because of the more frequent harddisk spinups. For a flash player like the Clip+ it should be very efficient.

[ferundu]

Great, I really hoped that was the meaning of those codec tables

The size/bitrate kinda bugged me for exact reason you mention, but i really don't know anything about inner works of flash technology, thanks bertrik for setting my mind at ease

And just a little offtopic, I got to play my ancient commodore sids on Clip+ with rockbox. How cool is that? - It's frakkin unbelievable

[hdablin]

I'm going to buy Clip or Fuze (shipping to me costs about $30-40, so the price difference beetween them is not very high for me).

So, one of the most importaint things in player for me is battery life. I want be able listen music all day at work (about 15-17 hours) without need to recharge the player.

And one thing more: almost all of my music collection is in FLAC, and I don't need to convert it to mp3 / Vorbis or smth. else.

Which of the two will be better for me: Fuze or Clip+?

[saratoga]

The fuze has a bigger battery.

[Mikerman]

The Clip has a bit under the battery capacity you're looking for--12-15 hours, generally, with the original firmware. If that's a killer, you'll be better off with the Fuze. Of course, you also could get an inexpensive auxiliary battery supply for the Clip (like the Lenmar Powerport Mini: http://www.amazon.com/Lenmar-PowerPo...5170023&sr=8-5) but that adds one more thing to your kit.

[ted209]

Originally Posted by Mikerman

The Clip has a bit under the battery capacity you're looking for--12-15 hours, generally, with the original firmware. If that's a killer, you'll be better off with the Fuze. Of course, you also could get an inexpensive auxiliary battery supply for the Clip (like the Lenmar Powerport Mini: http://www.amazon.com/Lenmar-PowerPo...5170023&sr=8-5) but that adds one more thing to your kit.

I use this one:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30251
it runs off 2 AA batteries, and I get about 2.5 charges from a pair of eneloops.

[Helium314]

I did some battery tests with rockbox.

LAME MP3 V3: 15:30
OGG Vorbis q5.5: 15:57
FLAC: 16:53

With replaygain and somewhat louder:
MP3: 15:24
OGG: 15:53

All tests except for FLAC were done without touching the Clip+ after starting playback, so there are no differences in backlight time, volume or whatever. Music was stored on a microSD card.
With FLAC there were some volume changes, resulting in an overall Backlight time of about 5 minutes, so under the same conditions, FLAC runtime might be even better.

Conclusion:
1) if you really need 17 hours of playback, use FLAC and hope for a good battery.
2) for some reason faster decoding (according to codec performance comparison) does not always translate to longer battery life (Vorbis vs MP3). Maybe I should try some more codecs or different settings...

[Mikerman]

Thanks for the test results! And great to see.

Has anyone tested recently on the original Clip?

[Mikerman]

Originally Posted by ted209

I use this one:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30251
it runs off 2 AA batteries, and I get about 2.5 charges from a pair of eneloops.

Nice find and great to see--thanks for posting! I really like the fact that you can use AA batteries in this, and that it's just a bit bigger, it seems, than the batteries.

As to the Lenmar Powerport Mini, note that Amazon has some great prices on different colors of this--the green at under $4, and the black at just over $5.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by Helium314

2) for some reason faster decoding (according to codec performance comparison) does not always translate to longer battery life (Vorbis vs MP3).

Vorbis did get longer batter life, so it looks about right to me?

[lestatar]

Hey Helium, excellent, great work! So FLAC yields around +1 hours? Saratoga and company were indeed correct [no doubt there actually].

Great info...

Hey, have you posted your results on the RB/Sansa Runtime wiki?
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaRuntime

I am sure current Clip+ info would be very appreciated, both by users and RB devs.

cheers,
-lestatar