Chapter 13. Advanced Topics
188
components – for some of those there are settings available. Another area of savings is
avoiding or reducing CPU boosting through disabling computing intense features (e.g.
sound processing) or using effective audio codecs.
The following provides a short
overview of the most relevant settings and rules of thumb.
13.5.1. Display backlight
The active backlight consumes a lot of power. Therefore choose a setting that disables
the backlight after timeout (for setting
Backlight
see section
8.4
(page
68
)). Avoid to
have the backlight enabled all the time.
13.5.2. Display power-off
Shutting down the display and the display controller saves a reasonable amount of power.
Choose a setting that will put the display to sleep after timeout (for setting
Sleep
see
section
8.4
(page
68
)). Avoid to have the display enabled all the time – even, if the
display is transflective and is readable without backlight. Depending on your player
it might be significantly more efficient to re-enable the display and its backlight for a
glimpse a few times per hour than to keep the display enabled.
13.5.3. Replaygain
Replaygain is a post processing that equalises the playback volume of audio files to
the same perceived loudness. This post processing applies a factor to each single PCM
sample and is therefore consuming additional CPU time. If you want to achieve some
(minor) savings in runtime, switch this feature off (see section
7.8
(page
62
)).
13.5.4. Peak Meter
The peak meter is a feature of the While Playing Screen and will be updated with a
high framerate. Depending on your player this might result in a high CPU load. To
save battery runtime you should switch this feature off (see section
4.3.2
(page
32
)).
13.5.5. Audio format and bitrate
In general the fastest decoding audio format will be the best in terms of battery runtime
on your player. An overview of different codec’s performance on different players can be
found at
Z
CodecPerformanceComparison
.
Your target uses flash that consumes a certain amount of power during access. The
less often the flash needs to be switched on for buffering and the shorter the buffering
duration is, the lower is the overall power consumption. Therefore the bitrate of the
audio files does have an impact on the battery runtime as well. Lower bitrate audio files
will result in longer battery runtime.
The Rockbox manual
(version rUnversioned directory-150220)
Sansa e200 and e200R Series