Hi Guys,

Just got a new Trekstor Vibez and wondering whether to load it with .ogg or .mp3.

Only thing is - posts from around 2003 & 2004 seem to state that whilst OGG sounds better, it chews the battery life real fast.

Is this still the case?

Cheers!

Quick response: yes it does

OGG also did this with my short-lived Rio Karma. It was slated to get 12 hours (or 14 hours) of battery life when playing back mp3 files. It would get about 8 hours when using OGG. This is still the case as OGG requires more processing power to playback the files.

That is why I switched to the Lame mp3 encoder all those years ago (back in 2003) and have stuck with it ever since. Lame still provides very good results but does not require all that much processing power to play the files back. You also get the added benefit that mp3 is the "universal" lossy file format as pretty much every DAP (digital audio player) under the sun supports mp3 while few natively support OGG.

8 hours isn't really that bad for battery life. Plus, if you use lower bitrates for Vorbis (like -q2), the penalty shouldn't be as great.

http://www.clarkspur.com/app.htm
MP3 Decoder
Worst case MIPS (48KHz,320bps,JS) 26MIPS
Data Memory (24bit/word) 12.5Kw
Program Memory (16bit/word) 20Kw
Ogg Vorbis Decoder
Worst case MIPS (48KHz,500Kbps,2ch.) 24MIPS
Darta Memory (24bit/word) 43Kw
Program Memory (16bit/word) 25Kw

I agree I was Using Ogg, then WMA, but last year went to Lame-Extreme mode VBR and I like the sound I'm hearing and it definately is easier on the Battery.

My iRiver iHP-120 (Rockboxed or otherwise) lasts for a very long time with ogg. I rarely use mp3 so can't compare, but the ogg battery life is more than acceptable on this DAP.

Seeing as this is a forum for objectivists, I will talk about my objective tests.
Rockbox, iPod 5th Gen, I encoded the same album with LAME APS and OGG Q 6.99 (found through testing) so that bitrates were identical.

While MP3 showed about 5% longer runtime through repeated tests, I feel this number is insignificant as the 90%-10% battery discharge numbers indicate only a 1% runtime benefit for MP3.
Scroll to the bottom for my runtime tests

I have no reason to doubt the anecdotal numbers Karma owners have reported, but at least with Rockbox on ARM targets, you should expect no runtime differences.

What about low bitrates? Would aoTuV b5 -q2 encoded files suck battery out noticeably faster than, say, LAME 3.97 -V6 --vbr-new ones? I was just requested to put as much music as I can into a tiny 512 MB player...

I don't know, but it'd sound better.

Onto my tiny 512 MB player I even squeeze aotuV beta 5 Vorbis files encoded with the -q0 and -q1 settings. Using typical, cheap earbuds (mine are €20 Sennheiser ones) I'm hardly ever able to distinguish these encodings from the -q2 ones I use for PC playback, saving lots of storage space on the portable thing. Of course, -q0 vs. -q2 is another thing being played back on decent hardware, but in this case we're talking about a portable thingamabob that's usually used in the comparably noisy environment outside the privacy of one's home .

Dependant on the earbuds/headphones the one who made the request is gonna use to listen to the music, I'd suggest trying these two quality settings as well before sticking to -q2. -q0, for instance, eats less batteries and only 2/3 of the limited space available on the player, while possibly still maintaining a quality level that's undistinguishable from -q2 being listened to under the earbuds/headphones.

That would explain the results from Rockbox. Since most modern players have 64-128k of 0 latency IRAM built into the CPU, the extra memory from the Vorbis decoder doesn't actually penalize decode time.

http://www.tensilica.com/products/ogg.htm

This decoder is for Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine.
Anybody knows where Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine is used?

Today I used the lower quality settings for the first time to use on my DAP. Previously I've been using higher quality levels and as for battery life I cannot compare it to MP3 as I don't do MP3 but battery works good for my needs so I don't feel any need to compare.

I was actually amazed by how even quality minus 2 sounded almost okay-ish. Far from perfect and I wouldn't use it but a lot better than I had expected. I settled for quality 0 in the end. I would reckon it's ABX-able for many people but when you're not busy comparing to the original, it sounds great for typical DAP usage. Actually it sounds great on my PC speakers too (cost ~500 bucks hmmm 5 years ago or something so they're a little decent at least I would hope).