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Topic: Rockbox for the Ipod finally working (Read 114726 times) previous topic - next topic
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Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #75
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Is there any news on how the 5G audio driver is advancing?  How long did other rockbox developments last?  A few years before becoming stable? or less than that?  If I read correctly, Rockbox on Ipod has only been in dev for a month now -- The dev' speed is just impressive : is there an ETA on a more functional version?

Thanks (and sorry, if you get this all the time)
Shade
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As far as I know, no-one from Rockbox is working on a 5g audio driver.  Maybe some people from the ipodlinux project are, and if they release an audio driver for ipodlinux, then I'm sure it will quickly be ported over to Rockbox.

New versions of Rockbox with new features or bug fixes are created almost hourly - every time someone commits a source code change to the Rockbox CVS.  Recent CVS activity is displayed on the Rockbox home page:

[a href="http://www.rockbox.org/]http://www.rockbox.org/[/url]

It's impossible to predict when things will happen in Rockbox - individual developers do what interests them, when they have the time and motivation to do it.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #76
Just a quick question.

Have volume control and battery readout been fixed yet?

I tried it and nearly blew out my eardrums!!! It's not actually in a useable state for listening with good IEMs because of the volume. It also switched off with an empty battery warning even though it's full.

Keep up the good work! I'm really looking forward to gapless playback.

Oh and one point why do they not use the select button for accessing submenus like the apple firmware? Just makes sense to use the same control.

Ta

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #77
Quote
Just a quick question.

Have volume control and battery readout been fixed yet?

I tried it and nearly blew out my eardrums!!! It's not actually in a useable state for listening with good IEMs because of the volume. It also switched off with an empty battery warning even though it's full.

Keep up the good work! I'm really looking forward to gapless playback.

Oh and one point why do they not use the select button for accessing submenus like the apple firmware? Just makes sense to use the same control.
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Volume (and bass/treble) control was implemented a few days ago.  Battery status isn't.

The select key should now (as of a few minutes ago) work as expected - that was a bug that I just never got around to fixing.

The "empty battery" warning is there constantly.  Your ipod probably turned itself off due to the Rockbox "idle power-off" function, which will turn off your player after a configurable period of inactivity (i.e. no music playing, and no buttons being pressed).

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #78
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Volume (and bass/treble) control was implemented a few days ago.  Battery status isn't.

The select key should now (as of a few minutes ago) work as expected - that was a bug that I just never got around to fixing.

The "empty battery" warning is there constantly.  Your ipod probably turned itself off due to the Rockbox "idle power-off" function, which will turn off your player after a configurable period of inactivity (i.e. no music playing, and no buttons being pressed).
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Sweet  I'll give this another go at the weekend! Really looking foward to testing out sound quality differences between my MP3s and FLAC through my UM-2s

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #79
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Like I said, I agree than Rockbox is far better than the Archos or iRiver firmware, for example, but it really doesn't seem to offer a lot when stacked up against the iPod firmware. One big benefit is that it is open sourced, and so it one day might be up to par, but I'm not seeing it at the moment, that's all.
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You've hit the nail on the head in that post Otto42. I only quoted a bit of it but I agree.


I have an H140 with Rockbox collecting dust which I had solely to keep an eye on Rockbox development, and use an iPod daily for my listening needs. Apart from gapless implementations which is considered as crucial by many (I don't, since the vast majority of my music is fine with gaps), there's nothing of huge importance that Rockbox offers which on aggregate is better than the iPod/iTunes combo for someone who simply wants to listen to music without their player getting in the way. If anything, Rockbox implementation on the iPod if it remains faithful to other platforms will ensure that the iPod does get in the way.


Rockbox is for the geek... the sort of person who enjoys working problems out of their gadgets, especially at it's current stage of development. Still, I'm all for it as it'll keep the iRiver-uber-alles crowd quiet for a while 

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #80
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Apart from gapless implementations which is considered as crucial by many (I don't, since the vast majority of my music is fine with gaps), there's nothing of huge importance that Rockbox offers which on aggregate is better than the iPod/iTunes combo for someone who simply wants to listen to music without their player getting in the way.


I really dont agree with you. First of all the windows explorer drag'n'drop of files is much easier than having to install iTunes (I'm a fb2k user). Gapless is important since I have a lot of live albums, also I often used Musepack as the encoder since it gives the best size/quality ratio for me. So in fact Rockbox gives you the possibility to use the codecs you like, to adjust the sound (bass, treble, parametric eq) just the way you want it, to choose what information on the song will be displayed etc. Not to mention that Rockbox is much more open to suggestions, and all of them get implemented relativly fast.

So as I see it: as soon as the the new firmware becomes stable it will be THE solution for people wanting the most out of their digital music. Original iTunes centered firmware will remain the best for n00bs, people who use iTunes as the default player and the iTunes store, and lastly, for those who don't have time and/or lack the will to mess with basic settings. Theese are mostly the same differences as in beetven foobar and Winamp users...

Can't wait for Rockbox to finally start supporting grayscale 4G!

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #81
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Like I said, I agree than Rockbox is far better than the Archos or iRiver firmware, for example, but it really doesn't seem to offer a lot when stacked up against the iPod firmware. One big benefit is that it is open sourced, and so it one day might be up to par, but I'm not seeing it at the moment, that's all.
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You've hit the nail on the head in that post Otto42. I only quoted a bit of it but I agree.


I have an H140 with Rockbox collecting dust which I had solely to keep an eye on Rockbox development, and use an iPod daily for my listening needs. Apart from gapless implementations which is considered as crucial by many (I don't, since the vast majority of my music is fine with gaps), there's nothing of huge importance that Rockbox offers which on aggregate is better than the iPod/iTunes combo for someone who simply wants to listen to music without their player getting in the way. If anything, Rockbox implementation on the iPod if it remains faithful to other platforms will ensure that the iPod does get in the way.


Rockbox is for the geek... the sort of person who enjoys working problems out of their gadgets, especially at it's current stage of development. Still, I'm all for it as it'll keep the iRiver-uber-alles crowd quiet for a while 
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This is a bit baiting. Yes, 'geeks' will like Rockbox, but so will anyone else who has use for the Rockbox-specific features (gapless, crossfade, crossfeed, plugins, on-the-fly playlists, folder-hierachy, wv, flac, mpc, ogg, etc) but not for the iPod specific features. I don't see the point in dismissively saying 'rockbox is for geeks' if you've already conceeded that it has features that the non-geek might want (eg playing gapless or cross-fade party-mixes etc).

You say you don't want these features and that the iPod/iTunes combo has everything you want, so all power to you and I'm glad you're happy. But for those who want more, it's the iPod/iTunes combo that "gets in the way" -- in the way of what they want their DAP to do. No-one's forcing you to install Rockbox, so if you honestly have no personal interest in it, why post in this thread? Some people have use for Rockbox-on-iPod, and that alone is justification for it.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #82
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also I often used Musepack as the encoder since it gives the best size/quality ratio for me.

OT but...Is this really, TRULY the case anymore?  I'm tired of seeing this claim in the face of recent leaps in improvement of Vorbis and even AAC...

I realize you postfaced the comment with "for me," so perhaps you came to your conclusion with an ABX test, so fair enough if that's the case.

 

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #83
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Apart from gapless implementations which is considered as crucial by many (I don't, since the vast majority of my music is fine with gaps), there's nothing of huge importance that Rockbox offers which on aggregate is better than the iPod/iTunes combo for someone who simply wants to listen to music without their player getting in the way.


I really dont agree with you. First of all the windows explorer drag'n'drop of files is much easier than having to install iTunes (I'm a fb2k user). Gapless is important since I have a lot of live albums, also I often used Musepack as the encoder since it gives the best size/quality ratio for me. So in fact Rockbox gives you the possibility to use the codecs you like, to adjust the sound (bass, treble, parametric eq) just the way you want it, to choose what information on the song will be displayed etc. Not to mention that Rockbox is much more open to suggestions, and all of them get implemented relativly fast.

So as I see it: as soon as the the new firmware becomes stable it will be THE solution for people wanting the most out of their digital music. Original iTunes centered firmware will remain the best for n00bs, people who use iTunes as the default player and the iTunes store, and lastly, for those who don't have time and/or lack the will to mess with basic settings. Theese are mostly the same differences as in beetven foobar and Winamp users...

Can't wait for Rockbox to finally start supporting grayscale 4G!
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=361569"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I'm interested in Rockbox development for the iPod in terms of what sort of look and feel Rockbox will develop as a result of the iPod port. As I said, as long as it remains faithful to the previous ports it'll be a geek's player. Please note that I'm a geek and probably a nerd myself. But I'm a fairly well-off geek with a definite impatience for things which require too much futzing time to get acceptable results. I'm not a "workaround guy" so maybe I'm a pseudo-geek 


I don't know if you've got into the involved features of iTunes yet, but I find the automatic syncing and the information passback from iPod to PC pretty much essential in my daily usage pattern of the player... and I'm not unique in that aspect. But more than the individual components, it's how the iTunes/iPod combo works together that's the important bit.


There's no reason that something can't be powerful and well thought out as well as fundamentally easy to use. Foobar is a good example to mention in relation to that: I have used it but abandoned it pretty quickly after going as far as I was prepared to customising it. I use iTunes for syncing, but for home listening I use j.River Media Center. jRMC packs the power of Foobar, but with an accessibility / look&feel that is notably superior. Foobar on the other hand is the Rockbox of PC audio software... optimised by geeks, for geeks.


iTunes / iPod happens to be the best power/feature ratio that I've found at the moment as far as my ultimate goal is concerned, which is to make choosing and loading what I choose from an enormous library as effortless as possible, and also as I said for the player to get in my face as little as possible.


If the Rockbox team forged ahead but gave overall usability a thought and also considered how it interacts with software on the PC, it may deal a considerable boost for the user base of Rockbox.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #84
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If the Rockbox team forged ahead but gave overall usability a thought and also considered how it interacts with software on the PC,

I think they designed it from the ground up to work independently of any software on the PC...

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #85
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If the Rockbox team forged ahead but gave overall usability a thought and also considered how it interacts with software on the PC,

I think they designed it from the ground up to work independently of any software on the PC...
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Just because the player is self-databasing and UMS, it doesn't have to restrict you to using Explorer. All you need is a player identification of some sort (perhaps a file in the root of the player) to stop 'drive-name drift' becoming an issue, and you can create a program which will load the player. It can even be a Foobar Plugin I dare say.


I personally don't see the point of using Explorer via drag & drop once your music library exceeds the capacity of your player. Have you tried picking out a decent selection of music from a 100Gb+ library to load and unload/replace on a regular basis via Explorer drag & drop? Hard work I can tell you. In iTunes, I can scroll through my entire music, select subsets, do searches etc.. all while dragging single or groups of files to the iPod, and if I want creating playlists at the same time. And all that's before Smart Playlists, which wouldn't work properly without the information pass-back from the iPod.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #86
nope, can't say I have tried to pick from a selection that large...music listening is also more arbitrary and not so methodical for me, so the explorer method works well enough.  That fact plus the Ogg support (80 kbps has even reached a level of transparency for me, thus enabling me to fit more tune per MB ) and gapless support are the main draws for me, in any case.  I've never utilized a database for my music collection...maybe I should see what I'm missing.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #87
Remember iTunes isn't necessary. foopod(?) for f2k and ml_pod for Winamp

I think I'll have to mess with changing the font in Rockbox as it's absolutely tiny on a nano.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #88
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OT but...Is this really, TRULY the case anymore? I'm tired of seeing this claim in the face of recent leaps in improvement of Vorbis and even AAC...

I realize you postfaced the comment with "for me," so perhaps you came to your conclusion with an ABX test, so fair enough if that's the case.


And I kinda agree with you, for new encodings I use Vorbis AuTv versions (yet another reason for me wanting to use Rockbox), but  I really don't feel like reencoding my old MPC q6 rips. 
I did some ABX tests beetven iTunes AAC @ 192 VBR (the highest bitrate it alows for VBR) and the MPC rips to see if I can spot the difference and I got a bit dissapointed when I got 8/8 on a song by Tool. Since the musepack one sounded beter TO ME  I decided not to regrab those albums.

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I don't know if you've got into the involved features of iTunes yet, but I find the automatic syncing and the information passback from iPod to PC pretty much essential in my daily usage pattern of the player... and I'm not unique in that aspect. But more than the individual components, it's how the iTunes/iPod combo works together that's the important bit.


Well I don't have much use from sync since my library is over a 100gb of audio files and the iPod is only 20gb, so again I drag and drop files into iTunes. I have my folders neatley organised so browsing throught the collection ain't a problem on any player (athough I prefer a tag database, yes). I tried using foopod but it had a lot of issues with the iTunes database so I gave up on it. Did I mention that I dont need Smart playlists that much, and I also think Rockbox has some Dynamic ones wich are created for a given criteria (not apsolutley sure because I saw it for just a little on a iRiver).

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jRMC packs the power of Foobar, but with an accessibility / look&feel that is notably superior.


You got my attention, I'm gonna check it out! 

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #89
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I did some ABX tests beetven iTunes AAC @ 192 VBR (the highest bitrate it alows for VBR)


Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure I just used it to encode some 256kbps VBR. From memory VBR is only allowed for some bitrates (not 224, but 256 works).

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #90
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Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure I just used it to encode some 256kbps VBR. From memory VBR is only allowed for some bitrates (not 224, but 256 works).


That may be, I only remember trying a higher bitrate and it wouldn't allow it. Sorry for any confusion.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #91
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I did some ABX tests beetven iTunes AAC @ 192 VBR (the highest bitrate it alows for VBR) and the MPC rips to see if I can spot the difference and I got a bit dissapointed when I got 8/8 on a song by Tool.

How recent was this?  It sounds like your hearing/artifact training is a cut above (most of) the rest.

Please do a similar Vorbis test...I'm anxious as to your results.  Guru's "classical" music listening test at 180 kbps showed Vorbis easily taking the lead from mpc...the question still remains if this lead is also present with other genres.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #92
Well perhaps this was some isolated artifact, but the main difference between the two files was the handling of preccusion (ride, crash etc.) as far the bass and vocals were conserned I couldn't tell the difference. Bear in mind that it was only 2 songs from the same artist.  The only other time I did an abx was to see if I could tell the difference between aps and 320kbps mp3, and the answer was: statistically no.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #93
Just a quick Rockbox status update for those that may not be keeping up with progress since the initial availability of the iPod port:

1) The beginnings of a port to the older (3G) ipods is now in CVS.  It's still not functional, but it's progressing.

2) A port to the 4G Grayscale ipods is also in progress - it's in need of a developer who owns such an ipod to finish it.

3) A fully customisable 5-band software EQ is now in Rockbox (for all "software codec" players - iriver H1x0, iriver H3x0 and iPods)

4) The glitches in iPod audio playback have now been fixed - playback on the iPods now seems as stable as the iriver players.

5) Some optimisations have been made to the ALAC decoder - it's now realtime on the iPod.  This  brings the list of working codecs to: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MP2, FLAC, Wavpack (lossy and lossless), AC3, ALAC, Musepack, WAV, AIFF and Shorten.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #94
Many thanks for the update.

Do you know if APEv2 tag support is planned? This is the default tagging when ripping to FLAC as far as I'm aware?

Cheers

Paul.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #95
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Do you know if APEv2 tag support is planned? This is the default tagging when ripping to FLAC as far as I'm aware?
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FLAC files shouldn't have APE tags - they should have native Vorbis comments.

As far as I know (I could be wrong), Rockbox only supports APEv2 tags in Musepack and Wavpack files.

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #96
just awesome!  Thanks for updating us, Dave!

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #97
same here ... can't wait this 25 to have my nano ...

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #98
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Do you know if APEv2 tag support is planned? This is the default tagging when ripping to FLAC as far as I'm aware?
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FLAC files shouldn't have APE tags - they should have native Vorbis comments.

As far as I know (I could be wrong), Rockbox only supports APEv2 tags in Musepack and Wavpack files.
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Ahh ok, wasn't sure, I just remember rockbox moaning that there were no ID3 tags found when I played a FLAC file. Will get the latest firmware/software flashed and give it a go

Rockbox for the Ipod finally working

Reply #99
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Many thanks for the update.

Do you know if APEv2 tag support is planned? This is the default tagging when ripping to FLAC as far as I'm aware?

Cheers

Paul.
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I asked for apev2 tags support on mp3 in rockbox two years ago and nobody was interested. 
Let's hope that devs have changed their minds.
Stupidity is root of all evil.