Petition for lossless compression codecs on Zen Xtra, touch and micro

[HatRix]

Please add a message to sign this petition for the addition of the ability to playback a lossless audio codec on the Zen touch and Zen Xtra through a firmware upgrade (preferably FLAC but Wavpack, WMA lossless, Monkeys audio would be appreciated). At the moment i have all my music saved as wav files, but if i could save them as a lossless compressed format i would get about 35% more play time out of the battery and 35% more songs on the hard disk. The main problem for me is battery life, i only get 4-5 hours playing wavs and i would have at least 6 playing compressed lossless files

[Operatorr]

In fact I’ve found another big problem, wavs don’t have ID3. If you rip to wav and then import to your Zen you get none of the ID3 data (that would have been on an mp3) and have to put it all in yourself when you add the file to your player. This would be solved by using a codec like flac that does support ID3. The quality of the audio through the Zen series makes it a shame that you have to compress your files using a lossy codec.

[Sasuke Uchiha]

I'm really amazed that Creative hasn't already put lossless compression into these players. From my experience with Creative products in the past, they seldom put "new" features into their old hardware via driver updates (EAX 4 may be an exception). Part of the reason, as someone here has alluded to, is the fact that the hardware, as designed, was not intended to play lossless. I've got quite a collection of LA-encoded audio, which AFAIK is the best-compressed lossless format. It is, unfortunately, very taxing on the CPU while playing back. Now, I know that it's possible to encode with a codec that requires as little as 1/4 as much power, but even that is a lot. Look at what happens when these Creative products play a non-compressed (WAV) format: battery life dwindles.

[DaaruWala]

I think that saying that lossless format playback would save battery life compared to uncompressed playback, that is, battery life playing lossless would fall somewhere between lossy and uncompressed formats, is wrong: lossy requires 1/10th the HDD power and (I'm guessing) 2-5 times the CPU power of uncompressed; whereas lossless requires 1/2 the HDD power and probably 25 (or more) times the CPU power of uncompressed. While HDD power is the most significant drain on battery power, decompressing lossless audio either 1) makes the CPU load significant or 2) makes the CPU incapable of playing back lossless formats. I (and I guess everyone else signing this petition) am/is giving the Creative products the benefit of the doubt when we assume that the CPU is capable of decoding lossless within design specs of these players.

[Illinois]

Apple has the enviable position of having a product that needs to only play one lossless format, and have probably designed it to be very efficient power-wise but not necessarily space-wise. The PC has so many lossless formats available that it's difficult to choose just one. If Creative does indeed have the power to add a lossless decoder to their products, I think their decision will be directed likewise. I find that FLAC is the fastest format, with only around 8% more storage space required, and only 1/6th the processing time to decode, than the best compressor, LA. Seems like the ideal candidate to me.

[Fox28]

There’s a lossy and lossless compression. With lossy compression you are taking out some data, but the idea is to take out enough without prejudicing the quality too much. With lossless compression you don't remove any useful data, but you compress duplicate data. Lossless compression in audio can achieve about a 50% compression rate, so you're looking at relatively large files and low battery life.