Ogg playback?

[bioxeed]

I've recently started playing with rockbox on my H340 and overall I must say I'm quite impressed.  I'll probably even get the cross complier set up so I can hack a bit myself.  But that aside right now all my oggs skip.  I rip them at Q8 so the average bitrate of them is > 250kbps.  Is this a limitation of rockbox on the H3xx or just a case of needing optimisation?

[ts-x]

I read in the logs somewhere that Q7(?) and above Ogg's are having issues related to the CPU frequency cap currently employed for the H3xx builds.  All my Ogg's are Q9, so I'm holding off installation for this very reason.  Judging by what I've seen so far from the Rockbox team, I'd imagine this issue will be resolved in the not too distant future.

[lostlogic]

Yeah, anytime the vorbis stream goes over 300kbps for extended periods, it can't keep up.  This is because 1) the Tremor decoder is not yet well optimized and 2) rockbox on the H340 only runs at 90mhz boost currently.  The other side effect of this is that when playing OGG/Vorbis files is BRUTAL on battery life currently.  Hopefully once we get some better profiling information from the decoder (see my thread on profiling for my progress in that arena), the decoder can be better optimized so that even at 90mhz it won't be skippy.

[moozooh]

All my Ogg's are Q9, so I'm holding off installation for this very reason

Why don't you use aoTuv beta 4.51 with less bitrate bloating settings, like -q5 or -q6? You'll get hard time ABX'ing them even on your desktop, anyway.
Not to mention the battery life of your DAP.

[ts-x]

All my Ogg's are Q9, so I'm holding off installation for this very reason

Why don't you use aoTuv beta 4.51 with less bitrate bloating settings, like -q5 or -q6? You'll get hard time ABX'ing them even on your desktop, anyway.
Not to mention the battery life of your DAP.

Well at the time I encoded them, only aoTuv b3 was available (and I'm definitely not re-encoding 2500 songs!).  Believe it or not, using the optical out (non-Rockbox) on my old H120 I could clearly tell the difference between Q6 and Q9 on my home stereo.  Subtle details like echo and reverb were missing from the Q6 as compared to the Q9.  I did however, notice very little difference between Q6, Q7, & Q8.  If I didn't have the luxury of 40gb on my new H340 I would have gone Q6 (it still sounds great).  Battery life is not really much of a concern for me - 99% of my listening is done in the car or at the office with external power the entire time.

[ANNO 1989]

Was this testing blind?
I mean has someone else changed the songs and you could tell the difference in almost every case?
If not do not belief in this test you were most likely fooled by placebo because it is really unlikely that you can really hear the difference most people already problems with ABXing files around 128K and AFAIK Vorbis is not well tuned for presets over –q 6 which makes it even more unlikely.
If you really could hear the difference you should check more songs if you are not able to ABX others you should report them as problem sample at hydrogenaudio.org…

Greats
ANNO 1989

[ts-x]

Was this testing blind?
…

When I tested, the files were randomly named and I tried ~20 different songs from varied artists and genres.  Since I was re-encoding my entire library, I did take several weeks to make this decision.  Throughout the test I consistently choose the Q9 files over the Q6.  The difference was not huge, but noticable to me.  I know this topic has been debated a million times, so I'm not here to continue that argument.  What's most important to me is that the end result was much smaller files (~30% of the lossless source files) with excellent sound quality.

Once the CPU frequency issue is resolved, the quality level of ogg's will be a moot point anyway.  I am very much looking forward to gapless, the customizable wps, and legitimate playlist functionality.  Many thanks to everyone involved in this project!

[ts-x]

Just an update for any interested parties - using the 12/09/05 build I am able to play most of my q9 ogg's without issue.  I few still do skip in specific parts though.  Also, for anyone who hasn't yet tried Rockbox - you don't know what you're missing!  It's great stuff!

[fizze]

yeah, i bet its related to the max CPU frequency, which was 90Mhz in prior builds, and is 124Mhz now iirc

[ts-x]

Another ogg update...with Lear/lostlogic's recent commit, all of my q9's that I could remember skipping no longer skip.  As always, excellent work!