Can Sansa (or any portable player) play lossless *as* lossless?

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Kavi777

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Apr 13, 2013
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Hi.

My Sansa gadgets (Clip+ and Clip Zip) are each happy to sync and play audio files that I've ripped to Windows Media Player as WMA Lossless. However, I recently clicked on "Track Info" on the Sansas and for most tunes they say 320 (or nearabouts) as the bitrate! So Sansa claims to support Lossless, which sounds like it would PLAY as such -- but no. Unless I'm missing a way to set that up.

Any help? Is it even possible for these players to NOT lower the bitrate? Seems everyone else on the Web is asking how to reduce size of files, but I don't care if I get only 10 albums on there, I want to hear it the way I ripped it...or as close to as I can get. If another player exists that does what I wish, I'd be interested in that.

Thanks much.
 
Note that the menu of a rockboxed Sansa can be a bit overwhelming. Outside of making a build yourself with the menus heavily edited it will be a bit of a nuisance.

I'd recommend just using FLACs. I'd experiment with what encoders it does and doesn't work. Settings too. Basic 44.1/16-bit will probably be more then enough for you.

Make sure your device has the most recent firmware too.

If you're interested in getting a different player I'd recommend a iPod Video 5th Generation (2nd revision, aka 5.5th generation). I'd recommend getting an 80gb. Just this generation and revision, Nothing else. Rockbox it so you don't have to use iTunes. The cost of parts are incredibly cheap with almost everything being under $10. Only things being more expensive are the headphone jack($15, but null since you should be getting a $10 Fiio LOD), and screen at $20-ish. For around $70 you can get a 240GB HDD too.
 
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So I'd have to re-rip all my CDs again? That's just too many, can't happen, just did that anyway. No experience w/ Rockbox. Can't I get a windows-based device if Sansa won't play it lossless? Don't wanna go iPod. Thx,.
 
Kavi777 said:
So I'd have to re-rip all my CDs again? That's just too many, can't happen, just did that anyway. No experience w/ Rockbox. Can't I get a windows-based device if Sansa won't play it lossless? Don't wanna go iPod. Thx,.
Click to expand...

No, you'd just need to use something like CueTools to re-encode all of your lossless music. If you'd like I can give you some points on how to split the re-encoded files based on meta-data. I have mine as Artist/[Year] - Album/ Track number - Song title. You'll get better compression and a significantly better folder structure. If you have an Nvidia GPU FLACCL/Flaccuda is amazing as far as speed goes. Even on my lowly GTS 450 it converts at a more then acceptable speed. If you're working with any lossy music i'd recommend dbPoweramp.

If you want bulk-storage with good audio quality i'm afraid that's your only option. At a reasonable price at least. Seems like you're just being obstinate. What exactly is making you want to avoid it?

Rockboxing a device is quite literally as simple as running the .exe, selecting the mount device, selecting the device under a dropdown and hitting 'run'. Uninstalling is just as easy.
 
Not being obstinate, just too much of this is greek to me. Really. All I've ever used is WMP and Sansa. The easiest way is if there's a device, which I'm in the market for anyway, that will take what I have and play it lossless. To show you how "dumb" I was, I ripped my massive CD collection over years not even knowing to change the default away from plain ol' 128 wma files. That arrow and little menu item I didn't even see! So: I reripped all last year to WMA-L. Guess I'll have to get into some new tech...instead of reading, relaxing with my music. Of course I can play the files from the puter at home, but the Sansa for all-day at work and commute, etc., may have to be happy w/ 320 bitrate.
 
What do you mean by "too much of this to greek to me."...?

To sync music with a Rockboxed iPod all you have to do is drag-and-drop the music folders onto the device directly(shows up in windows explorer). And remember, rockboxing is a 30 second processes.

I'd highly recommend ripping your music with an accurip-enabled program, encoding with CueTools/dbPoweramp, metatagging with mp3tag, and getting album art with the XUI Album Art downloader (which requires Foobar and the COM Automation server). Sounds like a bit of work but it'll save you a lot of trouble in the long run.
 
Hi again. I just meant too much that was hard to assimilate or understand quick enough. Call me impatient. But hey, today I downloaded Foobar and even though it gave me hell for about an hour, I ended up converting some WMA-Lossless to first WAV, then learned I needed the FLAC codec so I got that and I synced some flacs to my new Cowon portable device.

Question now is: I checked the size of my regular source WMA-L files I initially slapped onto the device, and the size of the files as they reside now in the portable -- and they are the same size! Yet the device is not supposed to support WMA-Lossless. So why the same damned size?? Like, maybe it IS lossless, and plays as such... Cowon is made in South Korea and they haven't emailed me back, but their New York retailer (and other websites) said it reduces the file and bitrate size. But I watched the sync: there was no "converting" and the sizes are the same. Any comment? Should I waste my time with foobar, flac, etc.?
 
Could you list the bitrates of your files? Compare a CD to FLAC (or CD to WAV to FLAC) file with your WMA-L to FLAC file if there are any size/bitrate differences. Both the FLAC files should have a similar bitrate. Use foobar to compare the bitrate, not your portable players.
 
But see, the thing is that when I look on the portable thru My Computer's reading of it, I see the wma-l to flacs I've synced there ARE the same size as the wma-l files where I got them from, which is thru Windows Media Player on my computer. I see this sameness also in hard the drive's Music folder as well as clearly on the Windows Media Player interface. So yeh, being the same SIZE, I wonder if it's still possible that the synced files on the portable nevertheless can be playing at a reduced bitrate, thus making them not truly lossless for my playing purposes. Hope that's clear. Thanks for response. And no, I can't list the bitrates of the files synced to the portable b/c there doesn't seem to be a function for viewing that info (like Sansa has in "Track Info").
 
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