does MP3 bitrate effect battery life?

[crazzy88ss]

Say you have an 128kbs MP3 file, and a 256kbs MP3 file. Is there a significant drain on an iPod's (or any other MP3 player's) battery to process the larger bandwidth files?

[ViperAFK]

Higher bitrate will consume battery faster for sure, not sure how much faster though.

[crazzy88ss]

Anybody else have any input?

[+Mud W1ggle Subscriber²]

Say you have an 128kbs MP3 file, and a 256kbs MP3 file. Is there a significant drain on an iPod's (or any other MP3 player's) battery to process the larger bandwidth files?

Not having an iPod I cant say for sure, but I would suggest that it depends on how power conservative the pod's CPU is, if it runs at the same clock speed all the time, then I doubt it would matter, if it can throttle like the Intel CPU's do now, then I guess it could potentially use more battery for a higher bitrate file.

[QuarterSwede]

It does take more battery power the higher the bitrate. At least it used to a year ago. A good example would be to see how long a 128kbps mp3 lasts as opposed to a 320kbps. Then test that against a lossless file which will drain your battery fast.

When Apple released the Apple lossless format people soon realized that battery life takes a significant hit. How much it will differ between 128kbps and 256kbps I'm not too sure. I run 160-192kbps AAC files and I know my battery doesn't last as long as it's rated for.

[ShaneSparky_YYZ]

Yea it does make a difference, at least I noticed on my iPod. Probably because it uses more data per second than a lower bitrate.

Hope that helps :)

[New_Age]

sure it will. the higher the bitrate, and the bigger the file the more processing it has to do. i don't have to worry though. i have a COWON D2.

52Hrs of Battery Life (though my testing came up with around 47Hrs)

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