[power142]

Hi All,

Forgive me if this has been asked before (I didn't see it), but I'm looking for hints on getting the most out of my iPod battery life.

I've heard conflicting reports on what is the best bitrate for music playback. On the one hand, higher bitrates cause more frequent accesses to the iPod's hard disk (or does the iPod load in an entire track into memory first?), on the other hand, surely lower bitrate tracks involve greater processing to recreate the actual music track?

I'm no audiophile, but I can tell the difference between 128kbps and 192kbps, at least when played back through an amplifier, though I think this is practically irrelevant since I'm using the supplied earphones when I'm on the move (although considering noise canceling set).

I'm also thinking of re-ripping my music collection into Apple Lossless for my computer, but exporting at the desired rate for my iPod. Space isn't important to me on either my Mac or the iPod as I don't have too many songs. I'm not going to bother with this though if using the lossless encoding files would significantly hinder better battery performance.

So which is best?

1) 128kbps AAC
2) 160 or 192kbps AAC
3) Apple Lossless

Thoughts?

[Chips G]

i believe that the lower the bitrate, the longer the ipods battery will last. The reason i believe this is because the ipod loads as many songs as it can into the ram, then plays them all. When the songs are all played the hd is spun up, sending the next batch of songs to the ram. This spinning up of the hd is a HUGE battery drainer, and i belive it would affect the battery life much more than more proccesor work.

[wataru]

Apple recommends smaller files.

From Apple - Batteries - iPod:
Use Compressed Songs: iPod’s cache works most efficiently with songs of average file sizes (less than 9 MB). If your audio files are large or uncompressed (including AIFF or WAV format), you may want to compress them, or use a different compression method, such as AAC or MP3, when importing them into iTunes. Also, consider breaking very long songs or tracks into shorter tracks that have smaller file sizes. If you encode your music at 128 kbps, your iPod will fill its cache about every 25 minutes.

[power142]

Great, thanks!