iPod So I've Decided To Convert To Lossless...

[quackattack]

Only very slightly I'd think, the probelm is when the filesizes get to the point where the disc is spinning up during a single song to load the next section into memory, sure 256 is twice the size of 128, so the disc (theoretically) is worked twice as hard, but id doesn't equate to a 50% increase in battery use, as the disc is only a part of the total load on the iPod's power system.

Yeah, it has to do with the buffer. iPod's have a 32mb buffer. Which mean with 128 or 256 it can fit a few songs into the buffer. With lossless they are often so big that the iPod cannot use it's buffer. Meaning it has to read straight from the hard disk. This kills batteries. While with 256 it will have to read from the disk slightly more often, you should not notice a big difference.

 

[FrancisSawyer]

Umm, no.

"The lossless codecs work on the same principle (basically), so very complex musical arrangements can be "pruned" more heavily than sparse arrangements, so Motorhead will get reduced more than a solo guitar passage from Pat Metheny."

Incorrect. If that's how they worked, they wouldn't be lossless. Lossless means you can mathematically reconstruct the original file, bit for bit. These codecs don't throw away anything. I haven't studied their algorithms, but my guess is that they encode the slope of the waveform between each sample, instead of the sample values themselves.

The best you can hope for with lossless is usually about 50 percent compression.

The real question is why the hell Apple and others are still selling crappy 128 kbps music when we should be able to buy lossless. After all, it's still saddled with the same copy protection, so there's no excuse.

 

[WinterMute]

"The lossless codecs work on the same principle (basically), so very complex musical arrangements can be "pruned" more heavily than sparse arrangements, so Motorhead will get reduced more than a solo guitar passage from Pat Metheny."

Incorrect. If that's how they worked, they wouldn't be lossless. Lossless means you can mathematically reconstruct the original file, bit for bit. These codecs don't throw away anything. I haven't studied their algorithms, but my guess is that they encode the slope of the waveform between each sample, instead of the sample values themselves.

The best you can hope for with lossless is usually about 50 percent compression.

The real question is why the hell Apple and others are still selling crappy 128 kbps music when we should be able to buy lossless. After all, it's still saddled with the same copy protection, so there's no excuse.

Sorry, I was trying to make it a little less technical, when I say pruned, I don't mean stuff is thrown away, I mean the file-size gets smaller, and in fact it goes the other way in reality.

Truly lossless codecs are a thing of wonder, but only yield small reductions in filesize, and yes, the smallest you can expect is around 50%, many rock and dance tracks only reduce by a couple of hundred Kbps, hardly seems worth it.

 

[Loge]

The real question is why the hell Apple and others are still selling crappy 128 kbps music when we should be able to buy lossless. After all, it's still saddled with the same copy protection, so there's no excuse.

I would like to see this too, but the record companies would probably want to restrict the burn rights, since selling lossless would enable customers to burn an unprotected audio CD with the same quality as a purchased CD.

 

[Loge]

Yeah, it has to do with the buffer. iPod's have a 32mb buffer. Which mean with 128 or 256 it can fit a few songs into the buffer. With lossless they are often so big that the iPod cannot use it's buffer. Meaning it has to read straight from the hard disk. This kills batteries. While with 256 it will have to read from the disk slightly more often, you should not notice a big difference.

Can it not refill the buffer as the track plays? I have some very long tracks, which exceed 32MB, but I don't recall hearing the hard disk constantly spinning during playback (I could be wrong though). I thought that higher bitrate songs require more frequent disk access simply because 32MB represents less playback time. In practice I've used several different bit rates and not noticed any difference in battery life.