How OGG and FLAC lossless playback type files consume more battery life?

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Boris_yo

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 22, 2011
Messages
224
Hello,

Here's a piece of information I quote from Sandisk Sansa Clip knowledge base:

"OGG and FLAC lossless playback type files will significantly reduce playback time. These files types consume much more energy in processing."
Click to expand...

Can you explain how lossless playback consumes more battery life than lossy playback? Isn't in lossy playback more processor power is required
to decode compressed audio?

Thanks
 
It's probably because of hardware acceleration. MP3, being a very common format, has dedicated hardware for decoding it efficiently in a lot of devices. OGG and FLAC are less common, so may have to be decoded in software, which is less efficient.
 
Being lossless while still being a smaller file size means the magic inside the algorithm was even more complicated/fancy/resource intensive.
 
OGG is lossy, although generally higher quality than mp3 at a given bitrate (depends on the encoder though). It's almost certainly that mp3 decoding has hardware acceleration, and the other supported formats are decoded using the cpu. Dedicated hardware is gonna be lower power than a cpu, but inflexible.
 
Its the decoding/decompressing processes that consume power.
For least power playback use WAV.
 
Boris_yo said:
Mr Evil So even being lossless does not help OGG and FLAC due to software decoding?
Click to expand...
The difference between software and hardware decoding is much bigger than the difference between codecs, yes.
longblock454 said:
Being lossless while still being a smaller file size means the magic inside the algorithm was even more complicated/fancy/resource intensive.
Click to expand...
FLAC is easier to decode than encode.
 
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