[Clip+, Clip Zip, ClipV2, FuzeV2] Improve battery life, part 2

[asymsucon]

I'll test with the following cards (only ones I have):
Samsung EVO 128GB
Sandisk Ultra 128GB
Sandisk Ultra 200GB

[johnb]

clip+: A night and day difference with the Samsung cards: all the lagging is gone, UI very responsive, no stuttering with real life files so far (some with other hires files which I don't regard as relevant).
Now it makes sense to do thorough testing.

[Mihail Zenkov]

johnb:
Good. But can you first test another build with samsung cards?
http://knk.square7.ch/cvdd2/rockbox-clip+-cvdd2_scaling-4.zip
It should be slightly more efficient fix.

[johnb]

sure

[asymsucon]

johnb:
Good. But can you first test another build with samsung cards?
http://knk.square7.ch/cvdd2/rockbox-clip+-cvdd2_scaling-4.zip
It should be slightly more efficient fix.

Variant4
No apparent problems on Samsung 128GB filled to 98%.
Gapless and FLAC HiRes (24/48, 24/192) works without issues, opus with extra resampling in the way too.
BTW, this card works very erratically and glitchy on Fiio players, so it's a great candidate for this test.
Manual track change is a bit slower, sometimes it takes up to 1 second, but overall non-issue.

No audible distortion on 1k sine into 2000Ohm at +6dB. 100ms square wave distortion when going downwards from +6dB to 0dB that happens on +3dB and 0dB step - Non-issue.
Audible pops when approaching +6dB from 0dB on sensitive earbuds with no music playing.

[johnb]

clip+ var1 with -4:
seems to work fine with regular files on both Samsung cards. I had one shrieking glitch (no stuttering) with one of the hires files.

FuzeV2 var0 with -2:
Similar to what I reported for the respective clip version: long startup, huge delay in starting songs on one of the 64G Samsungs, for the 64 EVO I cannot even browse the SD.

[Mihail Zenkov]

Variant4
No apparent problems on Samsung 128GB filled to 98%.

Good.

100ms square wave distortion when going downwards from +6dB to 0dB that happens on +3dB and 0dB step - Non-issue.
Audible pops when approaching +6dB from 0dB on sensitive earbuds with no music playing.

I will try eliminate it later.

[Mihail Zenkov]

clip+ var1 with -4:
seems to work fine with regular files on both Samsung cards. I had one shrieking glitch (no stuttering) with one of the hires files.

Good.

FuzeV2 var0 with -2:
Similar to what I reported for the respective clip version: long startup, huge delay in starting songs on one of the 64G Samsungs, for the 64 EVO I cannot even browse the SD.

I update links in my first post - so you can try new build for FuzeV2.

[asymsucon]

59% battery left after 10 hours!
I'll update this post once it reaches 0%.

BTW, I do have this little issue with charging. For me, charging stops at 80%, once I reboot it starts back again and then concludes at 100%.

Final update: OK, I got a little carried away, it wasn't 20 hours, but really close. 19 hours, 21 minutes.
55mW average consumption, 64Ohm headphones, level set to -25dB, playback through folders, Opus - 140kbit at 48kHz
Very impressive! I think M3 just got pwned. 

Further savings could be delivered from dimming the OLED a bit more - I have it on 0 and it's still unnecessarily bright. Though the PWM dimmer could have been a bit faster, say 500Hz instead of sub-200Hz.

[johnb]

FuzeV2 var0 with -4:

tested with various cards, looks good. Responsive UI, startup sometimes delayed depending on card. In one session with the 64GB EVO card I had the effect, that mpc, flac, mp3 files started immediately, but songs from an album with opus 140kbit files had a 5s delay in starting.
Swapping different cards in and out I cannot reproduce it anymore.

What are further things we should look out for, like stressing the device?: High file I/O and or CPU load?

[johnb]

FuzeV2 var0 with -4: with a different card: Lexar 64GB

Both for a flac and mpc album I see a delayed start of the track (3-5s). However, for opus files and even hires flac files in each in one folder it starts immediately. No idea what is different.


Then I cross-checked with clip+ var1 with -4 and this card, no issue.

My daughter has got a clip+ var0, I will check this card when she gets home.

[asymsucon]

IT, S3M, XM and MOD modules takes more time to load and the position counter is out of sync. All of them plays correctly though.

[johnb]

clip+ var0: no problems at all with the Lexar card!

I tested some more with FuzeV2 var0 with -4 & Lexar and it got even worse:
It takes a while to display album art (folder.jpg) as before, but then it stays at 0.00. Seeking in the file, it plays then immediately. Again this is with one FLAC and one MPC album.

[asymsucon]

When changing volume from +3dB to +6dB with music playing, playback stops for 1-2 seconds (var. 4).
Also battery drain on +6dB is tremendous! I've gone from 59% to 44% in just 1.5 hours of listening.
On +3dB it's comparable to regular rockbox.
+9dB would have been awesome, but that'd likely fry the amp stage. 

[johnb]

The FuzeV2 var0 with -4 seems to be especially picky: yesterday I had some hangs of the UI and playback with the Sandisk Ultra 128GB that seemed to work ok earlier.
On the Fuze I have the database and auto-update active since this is the DAP I use for listening at home. I am going to turn this on on the clip+ to see if it makes any difference.