Playback pausing

[dtwilder]

I recently put RockBox on my Sansa e260 but when I play m4a files, it plays back for a few minutes and then there's a pause of about a second. Then it starts again but after a couple minutes, it again pauses for a second. It does this a few times before stopping completely.

I made sure the battery is fully charged. I'm a newbie to Rockbox and just a user of mp3 players.

Thanks for any help.

[dtwilder]

I have also noticed that when it pauses, the player controls seem to  freeze up. The controls may respond but very slowly. E.g, I hit a button and then upto a minute later (if at all) the screen responds to the button press. Same for scrolling. And the battery indicator suddenly drops to zero charge.

Please help.

[saratoga]

I recently put RockBox on my Sansa e260 but when I play m4a files, it plays back for a few minutes and then there's a pause of about a second. Then it starts again but after a couple minutes, it again pauses for a second. It does this a few times before stopping completely.

Are they AAC-He files?  And do you have an e260v1?  If so, the V1's CPU isn't fast enough to decode most AAC-HE files in real time without skipping.

[dtwilder]

Thanks for the feedback. I was thinking it might be a processor issue. It is a v1 e260 but I'm not sure about the AAC-HE (I don't know what that is). The files are m4a from The Economist magazine. I used to use a convert to convert the files to mp3 format but since learning that RockBox plays m4a, I installed that on my player. Do you think I need to go back to the original Sansa system? Or just keep RockBox but convert the files to mp3?

Thanks again.

[saratoga]

Do you think I need to go back to the original Sansa system?

The one that doesn't play AAC files?

[dtwilder]

Yes, the one that does not play m4a and forces me to do the conversion to mp3. That, or keep RockBox and still do the conversion. I'm not sure why I'd do that....

[Buschel]

Can you give us a link to one of those files?

[dtwilder]

Sure. Try:   http://audiocdn.economist.com/sites/default/files/AudioArchive/2013/20130112/Issue_8818_20130112_The_Economist_03_Leaders.m4a

[saratoga]

That it is not an AAC-He file, so it should work fine.  I don't have an e200v1 around, but my sansa clip plays it just fine. 

[dtwilder]

Hmmm. It does play the file for quite a while before the pausing begins.  I wonder why this is happening?
Thanks much for checking the file and helping me out. Greatly appreciated.

[dtwilder]

When I download a series of m4a files from The Economist such as this:

https://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Faudio-edition-podcast%2FmwIOU2N9t1FXl8WthJFIHA%2Findex.xml?hl=en

my Sansa e260v1 running the latest RockBox gets through playback of the first podcast ("Economist 02") but about two thirds of the way through the next podcast, the playback pauses several times before completely stopping.

I notice on the screen when this happens that the battery indicates a very low charge and then it throws the low battery warning even though I had just charged the device. When I shut down the Sansa and then restart it, the battery indicator again shows ample charge but I still get the odd pausing during playback before it again stops playing altogether and the battery indicates it is dead.


Any ideas?

[saratoga]

I tried that file on the e200v1 and it seemed to play fine.