come on! Other samples only used as low as 93kbps...so it all doesn't matter...you have to see it in the full picture. And the overall difference is 6kbps, which is totally ok.

Jojo: Busemann is an iTunes/Apple zealot that deliberately misinterprets my tests in order to make iTunes AAC look better than it really is. Don't waste your time feeding him.

pff.. thats a grown ups response I guess..

btw. if you think this is a apple-zealotry you should check out the macforums

EDIT: well, it was only a matter of time before rjamorin used the old "dig up old threads" tactic because I pointed out the little side-note to jojo's claim. funny

yeah, I've noticed that since he can't accept the fact that AAC needs more CPU power over mp3 and therefore AAC drains the battery much faster than mp3 on DAP such as iPods...

That's a realistic response from someone that has grown tired seeing you madly spread bullshit about iTunes AAC quality around. I tried to respond to your wild claims several times pointing out why your conclusions didn't correspond to reality, but you keep using the same old beaten arguments again and again.

Sigh...

* Ipod Shuffle: small, sleek, ergonomic, cheap, and simple, with AAC support. UMS (if it works with DRM content, how can it be a UMS)? Did I mention cheap?
* iRiver iFP: ergonomic, good SQ, gets reasonably loud, long battery life, AAs. UMS firmware available, no DRM when used as such.
* Rio Forge: unbeatable ergonomics (seriously, the feel is near perfect), expandable w/ MMC slot ($110 128MB to $170 512MB, then $70 for a 1GB MMC), normal battery...but seems to have durability issues, and you may need to shim the battery. Should work as a UMS, includng with the MMC card. However, it also made for 'sport' use, and so doesn't have a simple neck strap. Supposedly the belt clip works pretty well.
* Creative Muvo TX: small. Technically 512MB ones exist, but not too avilable. Poor ergonomics, but small, and use AAA.
* Creative n/v200: 1GB ones not too available. Smaller than the TX, similar ergonomics.
* Creative flash in general: do not seem to work as a UMS device under all OSes, and the n/v200 appears to not read more than one directory deep.
* iAdudio U2: ergonomic, good SQ, nice display, looks to be a real UMS, somewhat small, and enough battery life to keep the LI from dying too soon (really getting ~15 hours means a full workday won't fully discharge it, and most people could go for near a week between charges). Cheaper than iRiver, but not by much.

Decisions, decisisons!

Plus: Plays Ogg/Vorbis (midrange q values)
FM receive/record
line in and mic record

* Neuros flash: Good UI, excellent sound, no DRM, recording (mp3, wav to 48 khz), FM transmit and receive, quasi sealed in battery, but cheap to replace if it goes bad, can add HD backpack, Ogg/vorbis playback. edit: relatively large.

linky

I guess it is silly to make bold claims either way

rjamorim is the master of the forum search function

It's simply is a law of physics that a higher clock rate will use more power. I posted a technical report from ARM before that shows AAC requiring more MHz for decoding than MP3 so Apple's claim that AAC decoding is somehow more efficient than MP3 is bizarre at best and misleading marketing at worst.

Back to the original thread, I hope the iPod shuffle doesn't use the same plastic finish as the iPod. My 4G iPod is so scratched

That really sucks The magnesium casing on my iRiver H120 has exactly zero scratches and I've had the player for many months now.

The Shuffle is not the player for me because I like to have more than 1 gig of music and don't like using shuffle features. I listen to whole albums at a time usually. A screen is essential for me because I need to be able to select what I want to listen to.

Right. You can also see that here:
http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/techinf/a..._dsp/index.html

The MP3 decoder needs as few as 20mHz for real time operation on DSP. The AAC LC decoder needs at least 25mHz

Please, help me understand how that thread helps your argument. From what I understood, some guy mixed several albums encoded in MP3 and AAC and got a battery life of 7,5 hours playing them, instead of the 12 hours he was more or less expecting.

I'm so glad you posted that . I didn't get it either...I've tried everything...but Busemann is just ignorant...he refuses to accept my tests, nor does he accept comments made by many other people with lots of knowledge in that field...but rather believes some people (very few) that just got their new iPod and posting battery life "results", which you cannot even call results (posting some estimates, without any direct comparison or test backgrounds)...

It's simply a fact that AAC needs more power and therefore drains the battery faster. There's actually no test needed to prove that, since it is in the AAC specs...but I did a test anyway and he's still not satisfied....he's afraid to do his own tests and probably wouldn't even believe it if Apple made such a statement (which they did, by the way...but they have made that comment less obvious by now)...

There are plenty of threads about this with many facts and tests...here's a post with some links to key-quotes: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=261642
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=261186

use the search function for more

thank you so much for posting this again! Since Frauenhofer was involved in mp3 AND AAC they know what they are talking about!

The last post in that thread is the one i linked to, odd it didn't scroll down.

Now, look around at various threads where people actually test the battery life and not just do guesswork based on tech docs. You'll see there are basically three major determinators for iPod battery life; HD usage, backlight usage & EQ/sound enhancer-settings. There's really not a clear tendency that shows something else. Now, let's say format A uses 5mhz more on average than format B. How can that be nearly enough to reduce battery time by over an hour which is something jojo alleges... As far as I know, it is 4G iPods, not the mini, that actually does power cycling.

fwiw I still get close to 8 hours on my 3G iPod when playing all AAC's, which is just the same as I got when the iPod was new and I tested it with --preset extreme VBR mp3's. So for me at least, this is a non-issue.

When they write that it is more efficient, they are probably talking about quality levels instead of bit-rate levels. So let's say 128kbps AAC equals 160kbps mp3, then the aac will use more CPU in decoding, while the 160kbps files are a little bigger so you get increased disk usage and hence more battery usage there. As jojo so gloriously put it earlier, you need to look at the whole picture.

just my 2¢

I did a life test...but the specs speak for itself. It's like predicting the filesize a song will have when encoding in 128kbps...


nope, that's wrong. iPod mini does power cycling as well. And you know that since I was not the only who posted _show_speed info's...you just like to forget certain stuff...


that's because 3G iPod's don't do power cycling! But all newer iPods do...



...therefore, you'll get similar battery life when using AAC 128kbps or mp3 160kbps. ..but that applies to hard drive based iPods only!

Therefore, the difference on iPods shuffle will be even bigger. So even a AAC 32kbps will drain the battery faster than mp3 320kbps!

Also, since Apple's AAC was just slightly better than LAME mp3 in the 128kbps listening test it's worth a consideration what you use.

I also noticed that you have to charge iPod shuffle on USB since it doesn't come with a power adaptor like the other iPods do. Personally I think that sucks...there's a power adapter available but it costs $29 extra...also, you can *not* use other iPod adaptors for iPod shuffle!

This might have been posted before, but here is a review of the iPod shuffle:

iPod shuffle exceeds expectations

Well, Apple says "Improved decoding efficiency, requiring less processing power for decode" here. So AAC decoding efficiency is the subject here and the claim is that it requires less processing power for decode than MP3. That is untruthful marketing.

Another interesting quote from that link: "...brings true variable bit rate (VBR) audio encoding to QuickTime." So ABR is "true" VBR?



Yeah, it really sucks. Apple was famous for introducing titanium casing in their previous powerbooks....now if they only did that for the iPod

One item NO ONE seems to be discussing - the sound quality!!!!!!! Is it the same as the iPod??? If so, that would be quite a feat. My Rio Nitrus and Cali (cannot speak for the Carbon or Forge) sounded nowhere near as good as the Rio Karma. And the Creative Muvo???? The Muvo's sound is very poor. Especially considering the Creative Zen line is the best sounding DAP in the business.

If this player sounds as good as the iPod, then it deserves the flash market domination it will likely achieve regardless. Hoever, I do not see how this tiny device could have the same sound processors and power as the iPod. Anyone test yet?

FYI - I think this is a LOT more important than the very non-productive batery life argument that has taken over this thread.

do you have any link for that? I mean, you're saying that it sounds better than the iPod...so I'd like to get more information

For those that have both a shuffle and a HDD iPod (I've got a 3D iPod), how does the power ouput (volume) compare? I'm interested in driving some Koss KSC-35s.

Just what I thought, but I'll wait until owners confirm it handles (seeks) LAME vbr mp3 correctly.
1 GB without harddrive, mhmmm Juicy

another review: from macworld

It's good to see the battery times are better than advertised, and also good to get confirmation it actually has a hold mode

I'm interested in the decoding need of apple lossless files. If it is lower then mp3's then i would use them instead of pure mp3s, of course if the reading is not much of a battery eating procedure on the shuffle.

It doesn't play lossless, only wav.

A local magazine announcing the iPod Shuffle:

"To store the musics, it uses a hard drive instead of a flash memory card, which guarantees better performance and higher sound quality"

Awesome.

LOL

Indeed awesome.

Is it true that the sound quality is as good as the standard iPod?

What happens when you allocate more memory for music, does it actually reduce the space available for data?

And that is not all!

From the same article, this time discussing the Mac Mini:

"The basic version has only 256Mb of memory, the minimum needed to write documents, browse the web or read e-mail"

Now, I understand that 256Mb isn't an awful lot for today's standards, but I can do all that (write docs, browse the web and read e-mail) on my mom's PC, a Pentium166 with 32Mb of RAM :B

The magazine, Veja, is Brazil's biggest weekly information mag. They are pretty good overall, but when it comes to technology, they are very clumsy.

when talking about OSX, that is scarily not far from the truth

Interestingly enough, it'll optionally re-encode lossless and high-bitrate files to 128k AACs on transfer to the Shuffle:

http://transient.moltenglobule.org/past/20...e-downsampling/

If there was a display you wouldn't want to wear it around your neck
The iPod suddenly became more visible people, not only the white earbuds but now the iPod itself is worn as a fashion statement! Good marketing.

There is a Hold button, keep the Play/Pause button depressed. Forget about replacing the battery.

There were some comments early in the thread speculating that the iPod shuffle would be quiet and lower quality than the (generally regarded as good quality) iPod and iPod mini.



http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1753026,00.asp

It seems one of the reviews has been updated with some battery details;



just some uneducated guessing, but perhaps one of the reasons they made it incompatible with other encoders was because they did certain optimizations to extend the battery-life?

...that thing is a mess and doesn't deserve the name 'iPod'...

http://www.ipodlounge.com/ipodnews_comment...id=6185_0_7_0_C

Quoting slashdot:

"PC Mag has a great review of Apple's iPod Shuffle. It covers the quality of the audio output saying that it is has dead-flat frequency response, less harmonic distortion, and most notably, better bass response than its bigger siblings. The older iPods, especially the Mini, have been rightfully criticized for being somewhat deficient in bass, and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes."

Meh. The only real problem I see there is the lack of interoperability with other AAC encoders, and as explained already, that's because Apple holds a virtual monopoly on the AAC market.

Lack of internal clock was to be expected given its tiny dimansions, and I don't think it's Apple's fault if manufacturers make USB ports with too limited outside space. I don't see people blaming USB ADSL modems (the ones that plug directly into the USB port) for making devices too wide near the plug.

Duh. Even if you use it several hours each day, it will probably last 5 years and more.

By then we all should have gotten our iPod implants, so don't worry about the battery.

hehe... this backfires in many cases.

i've heard warnings for people to NOT wear the white earbuds because muggers were rolling people for their iPods.

this thing looks almost worth getting, if it is what they say it is. but i don't really have a reason to replace my CD based crappy panasonic mp3 player. with --aps files it'll give me much battery loife on 2 AA's. it's a little quiet, but on max volume it's certainly enough on my cans.

i never ran it continually to see how long the battery lasted, but with casual usage it lasted me over a month on 1 pair of AAs (maybe it's because my favourite songs were on the second, slower spinning half of the CD?).

nah, 5 years is too much. Lithium Ion batteries tend to loose capacity even if you don't use them. So even if you've never used it, it'll die eventually. That's why you should always try to get those right after they were manufactured. Also, every time you charge it, it will loose a bit of it's capacity, which results that you have to charge it more frequently, which leads to another capacity loss and so on. Sure, you won't notice that right away...It might still work in 5 years, but there's a point when it's a pain to use the battery...for instance if the battery is dead after 2 hours...

That's the point, goof - use it regularly and wisely (not leaving it in the cold or exposed to heat) and it should last for years and years and still give good battery times. Probably a little less if you run it down each time. Lithium Ion batteries made today are also better in terms of life expectancy than those made 5 years ago.

How sweet

I thought this player could play apple lossless ???

Non.

I don't think there would be much point, since it would hardly fit two albums losslessly compressed inside the 512MB unit. It's more interesting, IMO, to have iTunes encode your lossless files on-the-fly when importing audio to the player.

On the topic of batteries:

Battery University
Battery type comparisons
Lithium Ion batteries in particular
Charging Lithium Ion batteries
Prolonging the life of Lithium Ion batteries

There's lots more info out there, but this info is some of the more concise and up to date stuff.

I've ordered my 1 GB shuffle, and have accepted that by the time it needs to be replaced due to poor charge retention I will be able to get something far better at the time.

Apple players are as much of fashion statements as players. Who cares if the battery won't hold its charge at 100% capacity after a couple years? Apple will always be releasing new DAPs and everybody will always upgrade because everyone wants to be up on the latest fashions.

I think it looks OK although it could look a bit slicker.

I have to say though that I'm quite dissapointed that it would require a dock/usb extension cable to work with the eMac. Strange that Apple chose not to make it compatible with it's own products.

But at least I'm looking forward to the 1gig unit I'll be receiving courtesy of my employer

(I assume the gift is connected to the extremely good quarterly result that was published not too long ago, )

"Aging of lithium-ion is an issue that is often ignored. lithium-based batteries have a lifetime of 2-3 years. The clock starts ticking as soon as the battery comes off the manufacturing line."

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

At least I'm not the only one who was wondering: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/