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Topic: FLAC vs MP3: battery drain? (Read 7801 times) previous topic - next topic
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FLAC vs MP3: battery drain?

Hi,

I have some file on FLAC and some on MP3.

On a modern Android device, FLAC use more battery that MP3 ?

Thanks!

FLAC vs MP3: battery drain?

Reply #1 –
FLAC uses a lot less CPU power than MP3 in general, but its hard to say for any specific device which will be more efficient.  You'd have to test it and see.

FLAC vs MP3: battery drain?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: saratoga on
You'd have to test it and see.

I agree that he'll have to test and see.

Quote
FLAC uses a lot less CPU power than MP3 in general

... assuming both are run on a CPU. But that would be a questionable assumption for a smartphone. I would expect most modern SoCs to have an hardware accelerator/fixed function unit for MP3 decoding. It will be extremely efficient (as compared to decoding on a CPU).

FLAC vs MP3: battery drain?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: audiophool on
... assuming both are run on a CPU.


Or DSP.

Quote from: audiophool on
I would expect most modern SoCs to have an hardware accelerator/fixed function unit for MP3 decoding. It will be extremely efficient (as compared to decoding on a CPU).


Hardware offload these days is a DSP, not fixed function.  I don't think anyone offloads FLAC, but it may not be worthwhile anyway since decoding is so fast anyway.

FLAC vs MP3: battery drain?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: saratoga on
Hardware offload these days is a DSP, not fixed function.

OK
Quote
I don't think anyone offloads FLAC

Right, that's what I had in the back of my mind. You tunnel the audio to some specialized, efficient unit to improve battery life. Presumably, you tunnel MP3 and perhaps some other stuff but probably not FLAC.

So, even though FLAC decoding is easier to do in principle, one could conjecture it yields worse battery life, simply because your (power-hungry) CPUs sleep less often or less deep when playing FLAC.
 

FLAC vs MP3: battery drain?

Reply #5 –
I believe originally, on the earlier portable devices, lossless would eat more battery because they had to load the files more often. That mattered if you had a small play buffer and spinning discs to load the files from. Full flash devices with larger play buffers removed this issue. The result is that it is now solely the CPU's playback effort that could make a difference.

It shouldn't be too difficult to test this in real life though. Just create two very long playlists, one with each format, and play until the battery is dead.
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead