Sansa Fuze updated to support Ogg and FLAC

SanDisk just released a firmware update for the Sansa Fuze -- pretty minor, except it adds in support for FLAC and Ogg, which should make fans of jam bands and lossless music encoding extremely happy. Nothing much else of note here apart from some UI tweaks and bug fixes, but Fuze owners will be appreciative, we're sure.

[Via DAPreview]

[ben @ Oct 4th 2008 5:21PM]

woooo! Sansa might get some of my money after all....

[oGMo @ Oct 4th 2008 5:39PM]

They'd get my money if they had a 60GB+ version.

(For all those who whine "but you don't need all that music" or similar: yes, you only need 10-120 minutes of music at a time. But you can never tell *which* 10-120 minutes.)

[Josh @ Oct 4th 2008 6:18PM]

@oGMo

A worthy point, but i think that the fact that you need around 5-10 times the space for lossless music. So, if you're into that sort of thing then you need a lot more space. A 4GB MP3 player filled would need 20GB if all the music was lossless. Especially if you're doing literally CD rips, so 700mb per album (80 mins?).

[innocenceisdeath @ Oct 4th 2008 7:08PM]

@Josh

It wouldn't be 700MB though, because it would be compressed as a FLAC. It usually compresses to about 2/3 of the original filesize I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong. You can normally fit an album that fills an entire CD in about 500MB. I find lots of albums don't fill the CD and compress to much smaller sizes. So you can expect an album stored in FLAC to be about 300-500MB in size depending on the length of the album.

[Josh @ Oct 4th 2008 7:53PM]

Either way, my point was that people who say "what do you want 160GB for?" don't seem to get that all your albums are going to take up a LOT more space than theirs. Most people store their songs at around 128kbs (personally i can't stand anything under 256), and if you're going to go lossless obviously file size increase.

Thanks for clearing up the specifics though!

And yeah, obviously a 10 track CD is generally going to take up less room than an 18 track compilation - unless they're 10 unusually long tracks (ambient/electronic artists for instance!)

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Oct 4th 2008 8:34PM]

Support for these formats is great news and I hope others (APPLE) listen up and do the same. It's just too bad that San Disk uses very cheap low quality DAC units that cannot take advantage of the higher quality lossless output from FLAC or OGG.

[msalivar @ Oct 4th 2008 9:47PM]

I can't say I've listened to them myself, but I've heard that the latest gen Sandisk players have much improved audio quality, approaching the likes of Cowon. I don't know how true it is, but I think we can assume that it's better than the past when it truly was awful.

[gad get @ Oct 5th 2008 5:59AM]

@ I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY

Actually, while the so-called "top-of-the-line" Sansa View and all previous Sansa generations have had less-than-stellar sound quality, the Clip drew rave reviews when it popped onto the market, with many saying that the Clip possessed the sound quality of a much higher-end unit. In fact, it sounds so good, it's even winning over self-professed audiophiles. And since the Fuze uses the Clip's same high-quality guts, it should also impress.

Personally though, I'm hesitant to get the Fuze, because it wouldn't be a capacity bump from my current Sansa e280 (Seriously, only 8 GB, Sansa?) and because, having owned an e280 for a year, I'm completely sick of that mediocre UI (part of why I have Rockbox on it), which is somehow also in the new generation, and also because I want longer battery life.

Hear that, Sansa? Boost the capacity to 16 GB, increase the battery life, and replace that lousy interface! Then you'll have my vote.

[mko @ Oct 5th 2008 7:42PM]

Well my entire music archive (mp3, ogg, flac) is 1.5 gb :)

[nicholaelaw @ Oct 4th 2008 5:29PM]

It's...great, fascinating. I like it.

[Imran @ Oct 4th 2008 5:33PM]

Bug fixes, not big fixes, otherwise that contradicts the article.

[OctaneZ @ Oct 4th 2008 5:35PM]

They updated the firmware for the Clip to support FLAC as well (it already supported OGG).
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2008/10/sansa-clip-firmware-010130-released.php

[sdfsdgf @ Oct 4th 2008 6:47PM]

Woooooow, great news, thanks!

[9bit @ Oct 4th 2008 5:38PM]

This isn't minor. It's great news for Ogg and FLAC.

[bradwjensen @ Oct 4th 2008 5:49PM]

True, this is great! I'm now just waiting for a large capacity player with these codecs supported. I may get a small capacity player anyways, if only to have something, and to promote the codec support..

[PeteC @ Oct 4th 2008 6:16PM]

I'm on the verge of converting or re-ripping all my ogg files to mp3, they're causing me so much hassle when having to select equipment that is compatible with them every time. It's good to see another manufacturer opting to support it, maybe I'll hold of a little longer.

[msalivar @ Oct 4th 2008 6:45PM]

If you have the hard drive space, I suggest FLAC masters with lossy concurrently. It's great when listening at home, and you can switch lossy codecs easily down the road with a fairly simple script.

[noyp @ Oct 4th 2008 8:26PM]

You can get rockboxed to support those codecs: 80gb ipod 5.5gen, a modded zen vision m with the capacity of your choice under 120 gb (I think) , and cowon x5l or iriver h340 with a bigger hard drive

[pretol @ Oct 4th 2008 5:44PM]

I'm a retard

[--------- @ Oct 4th 2008 6:18PM]

And I'm sofa king we toad ed...

[iEye @ Oct 4th 2008 5:50PM]

They probably did it because customers were giving them FLAC....

[Craig @ Oct 4th 2008 5:57PM]

So much for AAC support!!!!

My gosh guys.... I waited this long for no AAC support??? Yeah... No!!!

[JohnTitor @ Oct 4th 2008 10:42PM]

keep waiting buddy, AAC is a licensed codec that SanDisk would have to pay for, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis are free

[DarkLight @ Oct 4th 2008 6:08PM]

When will people stop calling Vorbis "Ogg"?

Ogg =/= Vorbis... It's like saying it supports AVI video. Pretty irrelevant.

Well, it's relevant as of right now... But it's just because Theora is still not a competent video codec. Once it gets better, it will be the same old .avi story all over again: People confusing a container with a format.

[ComradeZ @ Oct 4th 2008 6:33PM]

When will they stop calling it ogg? Try NEVER. Because the extension is .ogg, and that's how a normal non-geek person identifies their files. Same thing with .avi's. The average person has no reason to care that the video codec is XVID or DX50 or whatever random fourcc code.

[Zorque @ Oct 4th 2008 6:40PM]

Care a little more about filenames, please.

[DarkLight @ Oct 4th 2008 9:17PM]

Yes, and how many non-geeks read engadget?

[Goatee Man @ Oct 5th 2008 2:48AM]

You didn't say anything about Engadget specifically; you said "people". It's your own fault for making a generalized statement.

[Serenity @ Oct 4th 2008 6:32PM]

I still await the day that the Creative Zen gets .flac support.

It's never going to happen, is it? :(

[Benson @ Oct 4th 2008 10:12PM]

Rockbox, for some Zens.

[Ian @ Oct 4th 2008 7:26PM]

I never cared about support for either format, but I never understood why manufacturers didn't include support for these files as standard? It would be such an easy way to differentiate your product slightly.

[msalivar @ Oct 4th 2008 8:35PM]

Not to mention they're free to support, there's no licensing like with MP3. All it costs is a little bit in development time.

[Tom @ Oct 5th 2008 5:58AM]

A lot of them do actually. iPods don't have Ogg Vorbis - but then again, Apple have sold 5 billion MP3 and AAC files since they launched. No prizes for guessing the link there...

[Andrew T @ Oct 4th 2008 8:11PM]

Right after I got a Fuze a day ago... SWEET!

[Neebs @ Oct 4th 2008 8:53PM]

I wish my Zen played FLAC D:

[konshuss @ Oct 5th 2008 4:34PM]

i wish mine did too, but not yours.

[mrpoo @ Oct 4th 2008 8:58PM]

I have an 80GB Zune, which has enough capacity to make lossless media actually somewhat practical. OGG and FLAC are not supported, but lossless WMA is. At the end of the day, lossless is lossless. I'm with others who posted, wondering why you would care about lossless formats on flash-based players that could hold maybe a few dozen CDs worth of lossless media?

[tekdroid @ Oct 5th 2008 6:00AM]

1) not everyone has a huge collection
2) people with large collections don't necessarily need to carry every album
3) people don't just use crappy earbuds to listen to their portable. A go-anywhere portable with good headphones sure beats lugging the component stereo into the room you want to listen in (ie. next to the heater, on the couch, etc)

[Alberto @ Dec 31st 2008 1:53AM]

.flac compresses the lossless file without losing audio quality. It compresses it to about 57% from a .wav. I use .flac for all my CD rips, the audio quality from .wav and .flac is minuscule and the compression is great. The best from a lossless codec i believe...not to sure though

[TehNomad @ Oct 4th 2008 10:19PM]

The quality of the sound on any portable media player isn't good enough to distinguish between mp3s, oggs, or flacs

[tekdroid @ Oct 5th 2008 7:17AM]

This depends on:
1) your headphones (earphones)
2) your ears
3) your portable's hardware

[Sgt_Strider @ Oct 4th 2008 11:27PM]

I'm really impressed with this update.

[mykie @ Oct 5th 2008 1:35AM]

Uhh, the Sansa Fuze and Sansa Clip have supported ogm for months now.

And for what it's worth, the Fuze and Clips are awesome players that sound great (I have a few), sure would be nice if people realize there are quality players not made by Apple.

[Alexander @ Oct 5th 2008 2:32AM]

Who even buys this stuff? I wonder how these "news" are worth mentioning considering the 0,0000001 % market share.

[Juxtah @ Oct 4th 2008 6:11PM]

People who don't want to throw money at a fashion accessory, that does absolutely nothing special, let alone anything mediocre in the feature department?

[Robot Overlord @ Oct 4th 2008 6:15PM]

try 8.6%, according to apple
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/09/apple-lets-rock-031.jpg

[PeteC @ Oct 4th 2008 6:27PM]

Plus vorbis sharing was picking up a while back http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/10/2148246. Therefore players that can play it without transcoding, I would imagine, would always be interesting to people with those files. Anyone know whether OGG usage is still increasing? I had kind of given up on it as never going to be mainstream enough to be worth continuing with, despite the many possible benefits such as decent gapless.

[noyp @ Oct 4th 2008 8:28PM]

People that choose substance over style

[puhsitch @ Oct 4th 2008 9:19PM]

Generally people who don't care about iTunes integration.

[tekdroid @ Oct 5th 2008 5:51AM]

Ahh, my incessant FLAC and Ogg spam is paying dividends! ;)
Well done Sandisk.

Sony, Creative, Apple... time to move on that late-nineties codec support, thanks.
Add removable batteries and media, along with great-sounding hardware for the icing on the cake.
http://flac.sourceforge.net
http://www.vorbis.com
http://www.fsf.org/resources/formats/playogg