http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...p/japan_battery

"Reporters were also shown audio players powered by a regular battery vs. Oxyride. The one with Oxyride delivered a stronger, deeper bass, and Matsushita officials said some music experts express a preference for Oxyride."

I wonder if they were ABXing :-)

http://users.skynet.be/fa828592/Pics/deargod_stop.jpg

$5 says they used better headphones or different EQ on the player powered by their fancy battery.

Let's try to make this work..

1) there is no doubt that different batteries (whether different by mechanical layout or chemistry) perform differently under high current draw. The old standard zinc/carbon has more voltage sag than alkaline, alkaline worse than NiCad or Lithium.

2) Bass is a power hungry part of the spectrum.


3) A well designed player will allow some slack in voltage while still performing well, since it is intended to be powered by imperfect batteries.

4) If you are publicizing a new battery, it is in your interest to not pick one of those well designed players, because you want to highlight defferences in the battery.

5) You would also likely make sure the "regular" battery you are comparing to is a zinc/carbon rather than the better alternatives that people might choose.

Batteries can make a difference.

I've got this indoor/outdoor thermometer. The outdoor sensor can take any battery, but the indoor part must have alkaline, otherwise it cannot get data from the outdoor sensor.

I also got a digital bathroom scale. It is quite precise with fresh alkaline batteries but varies some 2-5 kg with used or rechargeables.

It's refreshing to see people around here trying to speculate about rational explanations to these experiments rather than going straight to "this is made-up bullshit!". Congratulations and thank-you, DonP and sshd, for your contributions to this thread.

Sounds like VooDoo to me, but ...

a given power supply will have an impact upon any device, including amplifier output stages. This is pure physics, but the differences between different power supplies (in terms of audibility treshold) are mostly limited to situations when high currents are needed to drive complex loads (e.g. critical speakers with low impedance, combined with phase shifts).

I seriously doubt that one can successfully spot a sound quality difference between lithium-ion and lithium-polymer (as an example) batteries in a portable player by means of double blind testing.

IMO, the battery quality is rather responsible for the device's running time (or general: charge density) and cold- or high-temperature performance ... at least, that's what physical chemistry teaches us.

Do not be so hasty in dismissing this article, it is quite badly written, but certainly not necessarily voodoo.

Different batteries do have differences in voltage drop when drawing high current. If you compare an older battery with a new technology that has better regulation than the old batteries, the newer battery will sustain a higher voltage. Low voltage will affect the power output of the amplifier, and indeed, under high current draw (such as loud bass signals) will cause the bass to rolloff.
A battery with better regulation will prevent or diminish the rolloff - hence giving the impression of better bass with the better battery.

As DonP said this would probably not matter in a good player, but in marginal quality players or marginal batteries this effect may be observed. I suspect what the article writers were trying to demonstrate what the superior regulation of the new battery. I would fire the PR guy who wrote the article, tho

Madman

I believe it's probably voodoo, but hypothetically speaking, if the batteries are of higher voltage and current, it is possible for them to drive the amp "harder"

Wouldn't a voltage drop cause distortion and not bass roll off?

In my proper experience as electronic designer I might say that voltage drop in a power supply of any audio power amplifier causes a very important power loss in the bass frequencies... as consequence, the more stable is the supply (low voltage drop) better resolution the bass frequencies...

In the real life any audio power supply have voltage drop..

It's probably that this article of the new battery is pure speculation,
but, maybe not...

Even if the load isn't enough to make voltage sag... most players max out int he 10's of milliwats output, just having a lower nominal voltage will mean less voltage out available. Note that nicads have a nominal voltage of 1.2 volts/cell, compared to the "standard" of 1.5 volts/cell. That's 25% more or about 2dB. The overhead of the output devices will be roughly constant, so the percent difference will be higher.

More voltage available to the phones will be most evident in bass, as that generally has the highest signal value.. depending on the type of music a rule of thumb is that half the power is below 200 hz (spread over 2 or 3 octaves) and half above (about 6.5 octaves)

The statement is questionable on quite a number of levels. First of all, "the reporters were shown" certainly implies that the supposed "test" was setup by the manufacturers of this device, certainly unscientific, and the reporters were sure to be fed suggestions as to what they were "supposed" to be hearing. To believe this statement just based on this article would be folly.

But...is it even possible that a battery could produce a better bass response in an mp3 player? I would argue no. As far as I understand it, a battery's voltage cannot dip and recover. Until the load is decreased to around <1 ohm, and the internal resistance of the battery starts to have an effect on the voltage at the output terminals, it is impossible to change the output voltage quickly and have it spring back. The battery's output will slowly erode, but once it gets to a certain low level, the mp3 player will shut itself off. The argument that the batteries last longer is a reasonable one, but the assertion that the quality of the audio changes with the strength of the battery is rather absurd.

I see no rational justification for this claim.

OK, let me just say that if I had a need to, *I* could build a battery powered amplifier that could play louder bass with a better battery (better meaning a higher nominal voltage and/or higher current capability). I'm sure Panasonic also has the expertise to do so.

It would also play treble louder, but it is not the norm for treble to be that loud.. note that it is typical to put 10 watt tweeters on 500 watt speakers.

It can. With fairly used alkaline batteries (4 x AA) in my Sony WM-4 Walkman, listening at loud volume, the battery light, a small red LED, gets darker at every drum beat and recovers instantly between them.



Maybe, maybe not. We needs measurments or blind tests to check this, according to the Terms of Service of the board.