ipod battery life v bitrate

mmmpiemmmpie
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
Has anyone done any experiments to see how bitrate affects battery life?



I have a mini disc player which is capable of LP4 ( quarter bitrate ) recording. I never used because I thought it would sound like crap. However, its battery life on normal is about 8 hours ( same as the new ipod ), which just isnt long enough. When I use LP4 I get 24 hours battery life. It is the killer feature of LP4. I can live with changing discs, but being to forget to recharge at the end of the day doesnt leave me music less at work. It rules.



So, if you use say, 32 - 64k AAC files, do you get longer battery life?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Battery life is related to bit rate and if you think for a second it's quite obvious. The numbers Apple quotes are based on basically just hitting play and a straight play through (ie. minimal use of the HD and maximum buffering). At higher bit rates you are forced to access the HD more often so you are going to use more power. How much the effect is though I couldn't tell you.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    mmmpiemmmpie Posts: 628member
    Thats the hope. But untill someone can post some experience on the matter its just a guess.

    Certainly in the case of my mini disc player it is accessing the disc a quarter as often, and that is the main power drain.

    Im not sure how well the ipod optimises disc access, it might buffer songs on a per song basis, or it might buffer as many as possible ( I dont know ). If it only buffers one song at a time, the power cost of spinning up the drive might make a significant dent in the power saving.

    My mini disc player also determines the amount of buffering required. If it isnt suffering from skips, then it uses a quarter the buffer size, and powers down the rest of the memory.



    There are certainly a lot of areas where Im sure the ipod could save power for low bit rate music. But does it? Maybe it is only optimised for typical bitrates ( 128k ).



    On top of that, how does low bitrate AAC sound? Ive found the power savings of low bitrate ATRAC far outweigh the loss of quality that it brings, and as Im only using it for casual listening I thinks its quite acceptable.



    Also, is there a plugin for itunes that allows a track to automatically have a low bitrate copy made? I do want higher bitrates on my computer, where power isnt an issue.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    jeremiah richjeremiah rich Posts: 853member
    I do remember that when the 5gig model first came out, there was an issue with skipping using AIFF. I think I remember some users complaining about how short the battery life was with AIFF, but I really am not sure. I use 320, and when I had my 5 giger, it seemed to do fine...
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