[Flac] I'm listening to FLAC on my ipod!

[Ognjen Bezanov]

Eric Wong wrote:

>Eric Wong <eric at petta-tech.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Josh Coalson <xflac at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>--- Eric Wong <eric at petta-tech.com> wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Just to let you guys know, I've been listening to FLAC (compression
>>>>level 2 or lower) tunes on my 3rd generation ipod running ipodlinux
>>>>(modified uCLinux) for the past few days.  No skips or slow-downs
>>>>whatsoever using MPD to play music.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>how loaded is the cpu with a -2 FLAC file?  also, how does the
>>>battery life compare against regular ipod use?  not sure how
>>>much would be due to FLAC vs. MP3/AAC and how much due to
>>>ipodlinux vs. native ipod OS.
>>>      
>>>
>>Not sure about CPU load, but I suspect not a whole lot.  I have -8
>>playing comfortably (slows down a little during UI (what little UI I
>>have) interaction if it's reading from disk at the same time).  I
>>haven't been able to get plain-old telnet to it working the past week or
>>so, but I can telnet into MPD.  I optimized a few functions a little in
>>libFLAC and MPD in C and it was enough for now.  I'll post those to the
>>-dev mailing list in a bit, but I haven't been able to get very far with
>>ARM asm (though reading it has given me great insight on how to optimize
>>my C).
>>
>>Battery life: >= 2 hours, that's the longest I've left it unplugged and
>>playing.  No idea compared to the Apple software, I've only used the
>>Apple software it for a few minutes to make sure the hardware was
>>working right when I got it.  I'll run a test this weekend and see how
>>long it takes to drain.
>>    
>>
>
>I guess my battery is dying.  I only seem to get 2 hours +/- 15 minutes.
>I only get that much in disk mode or idle, too.  I've never had power
>management on my ipod, so it was probably plugged in and at full charge
>for too long.
>
>  
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Flac mailing list
>Flac at xiph.org
>http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac
>  
>
Well, Flac is more bandwidth intensive then mp3/ogg/etc...  and from 
what i read about linux on ipod this means that the hard disk is on 
constantly (with the apple firmware the songs are held in ram and the HD 
is off most of the time) which drains your batteries faster.

As such you will find that your batteries are probably wearing out 
faster due to increased usage (faster discharging and charging)

+ the lackof power management is an issue as well, as flac is less CPU 
intensive potential power savings could be had as soon as they get it 
working (fully)


just speculating...