Does Ogg Suck your Battery Life ?

I’ve been torture testing two clips,  fully charging them and then playing an album repeatedly and measuring how long the battery lasts.   My Ogg bitrate tests are significantly shorter than the mp3 VBR tests, as much as half the battery life for Ogg Q8.5 vs mp3 V0.  

Can someone replicate the test with the Fuze.    I suspect the results will be similar.   My guess is the Ogg decoder runs the Arm processor at a higher clock frequency.

Here is my link to my clip test:  http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clip&thread.id=14326

I’d do the same, but I have loaned out my Fuze, and it doesn’t look like I will get it back  >.<  LOL

I will buy another one. It just hasn’t been a priority the Clips my preferred player atm.

Here is the summary that’s shows the difference.

Playing Time - Comparing the Silver Sansa Clip 4GR1 vs… Black Sansa Clip 8GR2:  1/4 Volume

 

  Silver Flac Lvl8            : 09:02:00  * Silver wins lasting an hour longer than the Black 8GR2 *
  Black  Flac Lvl8            : 07:46:00    I don’t understand why???  I’m going to retest again

 

  Silver Ogg q8.5 ~256k       :           * Going to retest - Silver died while I was away *
  Black  Ogg q8.5 ~256k       : 08:05:00  * Black was still playing so it wins but not sure by what *

 

  Silver Ogg q5 ~151k         : 10:15:00
  Black  Ogg q5 ~151k         : 12:12:00  * Black 8GR2 lasted 2 hours longer than the Silver 4GR1*

 

  Silver MP3 v0 ~252k VBR     : 15:07:00
  Black  MP3 v0 ~252k VBR     : 17:18:00  * Black 8GR2 lasted 2 hours longer than the Silver 4GR1*

 

  Silver MP3 v6 ~128k VBR     : 17:40:00
  Black  MP3 v6 ~128k VBR     : 20:47:00  * Amazing.  lasted 3 hours longer than the Silver 4GR1*

Controlled testing results preferred, vs guesses and speculation.  

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Correct, Ogg requires more processing power and higher clock rates than MP3.

SansaFix,  

Could you ask or find out if there is any reason, why my Rev 1 clip gets an hour longer play time vs… The Rev 2 clip,  while playing back FLAC files?  All The other tests The Rev 2 clip is getting better battery life.      Is it possible in The rev 1 code vs. rev 2 code that FLAC is clocked at a different rate?   Could it be something intentional?    Or an inconstancy in the software?    Or are my results just showing something weird and unexplainable? (I’ve tested them twice with simular results).

Just curious and thought I would bring that up, incase its something that might be changeable to make The rev 2 get The same battery life as The rev 1 (for FLAC files).

As I mentioned in another post there are battery capacity variations and power consumption variations from unit to unit which explain minor differences in the results.

Yes I read that and appreciate your response.    The reason I asked was, I am wondering if the firmware versions have a difference in clocking speed for decoding FLAC.     The only reason I wonder about this is,  the one clip consistently out performs the other, except FLAC playback.     My first guess would be the two are clocking differently on this file type,  this maybe incorrect assumption,  but I figured I’d ask you to check it out and see. 

It’s just a heads up.    If there is nothing different, then its just something strange :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks SansaFix :slight_smile:

I wondered why my battery didn’t last long…I think I have the answer now…

I had converted my flac files to ogg vorbis for my fuze because of the said superiority of this lossy codec over mp3 but now i think I’m just gonna reconvert everything to mp3 v0.

Is there any chance that the batterry life using vorbis could be enhanced in a future firmware update? 

No, unfortunately.

@ace107 wrote:

I wondered why my battery didn’t last long…I think I have the answer now…

I had converted my flac files to ogg vorbis for my fuze because of the said superiority of this lossy codec over mp3 but now i think I’m just gonna reconvert everything to mp3 v0.

Is there any chance that the batterry life using vorbis could be enhanced in a future firmware update? 

I’m going to bench mp3 v2 ~ 190k VBR and see what i get for battery life.    v0 is great,  but I think for my own listening v2 will be good enough.  Save some space and still have long battery life and decent quality.    Does anyone know what people perceive mp3 v0 and v2 quality wise for the corresponding ogg bitrate / q level?.   Maybe a decent review on the net.   I guess i can goggle that tomarrow.   I don’t want to lose about 33 to 40 % of my playing time/battery.   Will post my results and add final comments tomarrow.