does buffer matter on a flash player?

[michael.conner]

I'm thinking about getting one of the refurbished 2GB Nanos that Apple is selling for US $99 and using Rockbox on it, primarily for audiobooks and podcasts.  

This is potentially a stupid question, but here goes: would having large files (in other words, larger than the buffer itself) adversely affect battery life on the Nano?  Or would the difference be negligible since it's reading from flash, rather than a hard disk?

[Llorean]

I know there was someone who'd reduced their playback buffer to nearly nothing (I'm not really sure why, outside of just wanting to try it) on an iPod Nano and never reported any noticeably worse battery life, so I would imagine that if there is a difference it's very small.

[michael.conner]

Cool, good to know.   Thanks.

[onkel_enno]

Can anyone please tell me where I can change the playback buffer size in the rockbox source?
I tried to change it in firmware/buffer.c but it still reads a long time to fill the buffer when I start playback.

Thanks in advance

[gnu]

I don't know if this still works, but I think you can set the dircache size in the menu VERY high, thusly reducing the playback buffer.

[onkel_enno]

hmm, that didn't work. The flash memory is still read for 30 seconds