@robisan wrote:
@marvin_martian wrote:
One biggie to remember is that I didn’t use the Custom EQ. That takes an additional toll on the battery too if you use it, FYI. 
Is this true if you have the Custom EQ selected and all set to flat/zero?
…Adding, at a minimum your test dispells the concern that just the mere presence of an external card is a significant battery drain, which is good to know.
Message Edited by Robisan on 05-22-2009 01:07 AM
It’s worth mentioning that the album I was repeating was on the external card.
@marvin_martian wrote:
@robisan wrote:
@marvin_martian wrote:
One biggie to remember is that I didn’t use the Custom EQ. That takes an additional toll on the battery too if you use it, FYI.
Is this true if you have the Custom EQ selected and all set to flat/zero?
…Adding, at a minimum your test dispells the concern that just the mere presence of an external card is a significant battery drain, which is good to know.
Message Edited by Robisan on 05-22-2009 01:07 AM
It’s worth mentioning that the album I was repeating was on the external card.
Indeed. What I don’t know is whether there’s a difference in power usage in repeat playing the same ~10 songs vs. having the player play songs at random from the entire memory/storage either a) all from an external card or b) from both the card and from internal memory. Maybe there’s no difference at all. However, there was some suggestion that the presence of the card itself could be a significant power drain and I think your 21 hour battery performance suggests otherwise.
If I might ask again – do you have any additional info about Custom EQ issue? As I understand it the only way to, in effect, disable the EQ is to set the Custom settings to flat/zero. I always assumed this was the equivalent of turning the EQ off, so I’d be surprised if this caused a extra power usage.
@robisan wrote:
@marvin_martian wrote:
@robisan wrote:
@marvin_martian wrote:
One biggie to remember is that I didn’t use the Custom EQ. That takes an additional toll on the battery too if you use it, FYI.
Is this true if you have the Custom EQ selected and all set to flat/zero?
…Adding, at a minimum your test dispells the concern that just the mere presence of an external card is a significant battery drain, which is good to know.
Message Edited by Robisan on 05-22-2009 01:07 AM
It’s worth mentioning that the album I was repeating was on the external card.
Indeed. What I don’t know is whether there’s a difference in power usage in repeat playing the same ~10 songs vs. having the player play songs at random from the entire memory/storage either a) all from an external card or b) from both the card and from internal memory. Maybe there’s no difference at all. However, there was some suggestion that the presence of the card itself could be a significant power drain and I think your 21 hour battery performance suggests otherwise.
If I might ask again – do you have any additional info about Custom EQ issue? As I understand it the only way to, in effect, disable the EQ is to set the Custom settings to flat/zero. I always assumed this was the equivalent of turning the EQ off, so I’d be surprised if this caused a extra power usage.
The reason I repeated the one album as opposed to “shuffle all” is that I have several different file types, and WMA and Ogg files require more power to decode than MP3, and I was looking for my lowest bitrate MP3, which was 160kbps. I do agree with you that the extra power draw of the card has been largely exaggerated, especially considering I had 5% left after 21 hours.
Using the “Normal” setting is totally no EQ. On the Custom screen , I think having all the sliders flat is identical to “Normal”…but if you even adjust one of the 5 sliders, notice how the overall volume drops? That is when the Custom EQ is activated, and I can’t say with 100% surety, but I think I remember reading that this could cause up to 10% extra battery drain. I have one set of 'phones that requires a Custom setting, and I definitely see a difference after a few hours. But I haven’t ever run a test to quantify how great the difference is for myself, with all my different file types, etc.
Ok, thanks. Now that I’ve listened closely to both, Normal and the flat Custom do sound about the same. Probably would be better if they re-labeled Normal as “Off,” which is what I wanted to achieve by choosing Custom set at flat/zero. And, yea, I understood why you chose the files used in your test.
@robisan wrote:
Ok, thanks. Now that I’ve listened closely to both, Normal and the flat Custom do sound about the same. Probably would be better if they re-labeled Normal as “Off,” which is what I wanted to achieve by choosing Custom set at flat/zero. And, yea, I understood why you chose the files used in your test.
It’s easier to compare the Normal and flat Custom on the Clip, because the EQ menu has wrap-around scrolling. On the Clip, they are clearly identical. Given the same main chip in both players, I think it is safe to say the same holds true with the Fuze. The Fuze does have more presets than the Clip, but most of them ■■■■, on both players, IMO. My 2 most used 'phones (the best ones) I use on Normal.
I have one set that I have used the Jazz setting with in combination with bass boosting FiiO,but that set has pretty much been relegated to TV/Movie watching hooked up to the home stereo… and then the one set requires a Custom…but that’s due to the ‘phones’ shortcomings, not the Fuze.
I just tested my new 4GB Fuze with an external card. I have an 8GB external card that is about half full, so with the card in it was playing 50/50 internal/external. I put the player in shuffle mode and had the custom EQ turned on in both tests with the volume level the same. All my songs are mp3s with bit rates from 128-256kb (1275 songs ~6MB each).
Here are the results:
without external card: somewhere between 20.25 and 20.75 hours
with external card: somewhere between 14.00 and 14.75 hours
@sfowler wrote:
I just tested my new 4GB Fuze with an external card. I have an 8GB external card that is about half full, so with the card in it was playing 50/50 internal/external. I put the player in shuffle mode . . .
Not to rain on your parade, but you can’t assume the shuffle mode is selecting from the internal memory 50% of the time and from the external memory card the other 50% of the time, even if the total memory used in both locations are the same (4GB). It just doesn’t work like this.
@tapeworm wrote:
@sfowler wrote:
I just tested my new 4GB Fuze with an external card. I have an 8GB external card that is about half full, so with the card in it was playing 50/50 internal/external. I put the player in shuffle mode . . .
Not to rain on your parade, but you can’t assume the shuffle mode is selecting from the internal memory 50% of the time and from the external memory card the other 50% of the time, even if the total memory used in both locations are the same (4GB). It just doesn’t work like this.
To my reading, sfowler isn’t stating that the play was 50/50, but simply that the contents were loaded/stored 50/50. That aside, shouldn’t shuffle selection over 15+ hours of play (200+ songs out of 1,275) be close to 50/50, within some small +/- range? (Assuming the number of files and average size of the files on each drive is about the same.)
