Rockbox for the Ipod finally working, Well, MP3/AAC play at lease :) Options

[saratoga]

Rockbox boots and appears to be stable on the iPod Color/Photo, the Nano and the Video. Plugins and codecs work, including audio on the Color/Photo and Nano. There is no audio on the Video yet.

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodPort

And from the IRC channel:

mp3, aac, wavpack, ac3, wav are all OK.  Ogg and ALAC need a little optimising, FLAC has some memory alignment bugs to fix.

Amazing work, the entire Ipod project started just a few months ago, and it appears that people are submitting updates for the ipod port almost daily.

I have a 3G, which isn't supported, but it looks like someone is working on that too, so maybe I'll get to try it out soon

[kwanbis]

oh my!!!!!!!!

[Cyaneyes]

Very good news. I use Rockbox on my H340, and like it. Hopefully this development will also spur the creation of a color GUI, or at least something more than the 1 bit black and white Rockbox currently uses.

[saratoga]

Heh just saw this on CVS:

Prevent unaligned memory accesses whilst reading seektable - fixes FLAC playback on iPod

[Mr_Rabid_Teddybe...]

Very good news. I use Rockbox on my H340, and like it. Hopefully this development will also spur the creation of a color GUI, or at least something more than the 1 bit black and white Rockbox currently uses.

Playing Howlin' Wolf while writing this with Rockbox on H340 with full color GUI. 24 bit color BMP support and BMP transparency just implemented in the "H300 Optimized" release. Get it here. Not that color is very important to me, but it's there already, and more seems to be coming along... Nicest in switching from iRiver are getting gapless, replaygain-from-tags (not from ape2 tags on mp3 yet, but works fine with Vorbis, Musepack, Wavpack and FLAC), additional support for Musepack, Wavpack and FLAC, superfast booting....... Most negative are shorter battery life, but that will be worked on, they say...

[unfortunateson]

I might need to sell my H140, if the Ipod port gains enough momentum.

One question: Does the ipod have line in?

[Eli]

now if they would just get MPC support Id be in heaven

[Farpenoodle]

If they could get it running on the mini anytime soon I'd probably spooge my pants. I want gapless and non-skipping so bad. MPC would be nice as well.

[Otto42]

One question:  Does the ipod have line in?

The headphone jack can double as a microphone/line input jack. The dock connector also does have pins for a Line input, although I'm not aware of any accessories that use it as such.

Why is everybody so big on Rockbox, BTW? After looking at it, it looks far less advanced than the default iPod firmware, to me. Am I missing something? I mean, yes, clearly it's better than a lot of other default player interfaces, but one of the best things about the iPod is the well designed and functional interface. Rockbox doesn't even appear to come close to that sort of thing.

[unfortunateson]

i could care less for aesthetics. Rockbox is easy to use, works as external USB drive for fast transferring, and plays back gaplessly, has replaygain support, and supports many more file types than the ipod firmware.

Rockbox is made to be a damn good audio player firmware, not a "hip" item that only has basic music playing abilities.

This post has been edited by unfortunateson: Jan 29 2006, 09:15

[Otto42]

i could care less for aesthetics.

I really wasn't talking about aesthetics.

Rockbox is easy to use, works as external USB drive for fast transferring, and plays back gaplessly, has replaygain support, and supports many more file types than the ipod firmware.

External USB drive = So does the iPod, and without any drivers on the PC.
Gapless = I really don't need it, although I realize many people disagree with this assessment. It would be nice, but it's not really necessary.
ReplayGain = The iPod firmware has it too, in the form of SoundCheck (foo_pod actually uses real ReplayGain info in there instead).
File Types = If it plays my files, why would I care that it can play a dozen other types? I have MP3 and AAC files, and both can play those, right?

Rockbox is made to be a damn good audio player firmware, not a "hip" item that only has basic music playing abilities.

The problem is that I'm not seeing where Rockbox is any better than the iPod at playing my music. It seems to lack realtime rule-based dynamic playlist support, for one thing. That's a deal breaker for me, personally, as nearly all my music is played back via Smart Playlists on the iPod firmware.

My point is that most of the features I see in Rockbox have very little to do with playing back music at all. File Management, several games, recording, a text file reader, custom font support, screensavers... None of these seem oriented at music playback or management. It has very basic playlist support, lots of extraneous format support, weird stuff like "speaking menus" (which I admit is cool), but in the end it doesn't seem to be any better at playing music than the iPod is by default. In fact, it lacks many important features that I use a lot. And yes, the interface for Rockbox is nowhere near advanced as the iPod's is, for the specific purpose of selecting and playing back music. If I want to play a whole artist, or album, or genre, or even my favorite tunes that I have not listened to in the last 2 weeks, these are just a couple button presses away on the iPod.

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.


Oh, and the goal of my original post was not to cause controversy or troll or anything like that, I was kinda hoping somebody could point out something I was missing, like some cool must-have feature that the iPod lacks normally.

This post has been edited by Otto42: Jan 29 2006, 13:57

[davechapman]

Not many people would try to argue that the iTunes/iPod combination is easy to use and meets the DAP needs of a lot of people.

The intention of the Rockbox port to the iPod is not to try and improve upon that combination and to convince all existing iPod users to switch to Rockbox. I think it will appeal to either existing Rockbox users looking to upgrade to a newer player, to new Rockbox users looking for an easily available player that Rockbox can run on, or for those iPod owners who are either not satisfied with the functionality of Apple's firmware, or do not wish to use iTunes (or a third-party equivalent) to transfer their music to their player.

You're right in that you can access the disk in your iPod without drivers from your PC - but the Apple firmware will not play any music files that you transfer in that way. Rockbox will.

As for the Rockbox UI - Rockbox was originally developed for small black and white LCDs where screen real-estate is valuable. The UI was designed to display the maximum amount of information in the smallest amount of screen space.

It is only in the last few months that Rockbox has been running on devices (iriver H300, iPods) with large colour LCDs. Work has started on adapting the UI to make full use of that potential, but it is only in the very early stages. The actual music playback functionality on these players has obviously been a much higher priority.

Rockbox is designed to play music files back from the filesystem - the recommended way to organise your music is in a simple Artist/Album directory structure. Simply clicking on one track in a folder will play that whole folder. If you don't organise your music this way, then you'll find Rockbox very inconvenient.

Work is in progress on a "tag database" system for Rockbox that will require no software on your PC to use - the database will be created and updated by Rockbox itself running on the player. This is when you'll start to see rule-based dynamic playlist functionality appearing. This system should also "unify" any music you have transfered to your iPod using iTunes and music you have "dragged and dropped" directly onto your ipod's hard drive.

But constructive criticism of Rockbox is always welcome - please submit feature requests via the link on the Rockbox home page.

[keytotime]

Flac is working now, and also the port for the H140 is under heavy development. Since the H140 is way better than the iPod, don't sell it unfortunateson. As For the Ugly Gui, Rockbox now support's 24bit bitmap's. Some screeny's of the H300



So UGLY. AW DAMMM
With Rockbox you can full customize your WPS, to whatever way you please, it's very similar to Foobar with Columns UI.

This post has been edited by keytotime: Jan 29 2006, 14:41

[Cpt. Spandrel]

(snip)

Oh, and the goal of my original post was not to cause controversy or troll or anything like that, I was kinda hoping somebody could point out something I was missing, like some cool must-have feature that the iPod lacks normally.

Well it's more about being able to have a DAP that can conform to how you've been using music on your PC, rather than the other way around. I've been playing round with ogg, aac, LAME, wavpack etc on my pc and it was just damn nice to get a DAP that I could simply treat like an extension of that (a rockboxed iriver h120).

If I got an iPod and there were no rockbox for it, then sure, there are good workarounds to transcode (etc) the non-playable files into something Apple thinks I should've be using in the first place. But it's at least nice to have the alternative to simply dump your files of whatever format on the thing and just have it (via alternative firmware) play them.

Rockbox for iPod will matter little for people who've already set themselves up to use the formats that Apple has benighted, or who've got the CPU time to transcode etc via your own excellent foobar component. If you've already conformed yourself to Apple's choices then rockbox offers you nothing new and then fine, don't use it. But it's a great boon to first-time DAP owners like me who just want a DAP that will do everything that it's CPU makes it capable of doing. Apple chose to constrain the iPod's capabilities for commercial reasons. It's nice to free the thing up if that better suits your existing habits.

Other points:

1) it's not a choice between Apple and Rockbox firmware; the rockbox bootloaders make it a dual-boot system. (though the iPod native database format and Rockbox's directory-based filing approach are incompatible, to be sure)

2) the new GUI features are in it's early stages, there wasn't even colour support until a month or two ago. it's early early early alpha days, so it's far to early to make any comparisons about this.

3) you're completely correct about smart playlists. iPod users who are used to them will miss them. But again it's early days for the iPod port, and I'd bet good money that someone who misses them (but likes everything else about Rockbox) will come up with something similar before the end of this year.

Basically, satisfied iPod users shouldn't be overly excited by Rockbox, and Rockbox enthusiasts should be mindful of this. But personally I now know my next DAP will probably be an iPod, because now I can change it to suit me. To each their own.

[fairway]

Read here how to install Rockbox on your iPod
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodInstallation

See my iPod playing FLACs
http://img494.imageshack.us/img494/6522/p10002780qv.jpg

This post has been edited by fairway: Jan 29 2006, 18:25

[kritip]

Well, i installed it on my nano...

it crashed on wrapped aac, dident try raw aac
it plays mp3 fine
it reads mpc's but doesn't play them yet
couldn't get volume to work
doesn't read the battery life

for my main reason for installing it, gapless playback is MUCH better than the apple firmware but not perfect, there is still a VERY small delay and click.

Also the fact you can just drop music in to folder on the device is ACE!!!! no more plugins for fobar, or iTunes

It looks very promising though, i'll keep up to date with it.


There was an error in the install guide though.

At stages when it says:

CODE

ipodpatcher -r bootpartition.bin N

it should be:

CODE

ipodpatcher N -r bootpartition.bin

Cheers,

Kristian

This post has been edited by kritip: Jan 29 2006, 19:11

[davechapman]

Well, i installed it on my nano...

it crashed on wrapped aac, dident try raw aac
it plays mp3 fine
it reads mpc's but doesn't play them yet

Yes, only AAC encoded by iTunes is working at the moment. The mp4 parser needs improving to correctly handle other encoders such as Nero.

There was a bug with musepack, but that's now been fixed. Musepack support is now working fine in the latest "bleeding-edge" build on the Rockbox site. Vorbis and FLAC have also been fixed, so it's now only ALAC which isn't usable.

couldn't get volume to work
doesn't read the battery life

Yes, sound settings and battery status are not implemented yet.

for my main reason for installing it, gapless playback is MUCH better than the apple firmware but not perfect, there is still a VERY small delay and click.

MP3 gapless still isn't perfect - I'm assuming it was MP3 files you tested? Other formats should be fine (apart from AAC, which has the same problems as MP3).

There was an error in the install guide though.

Good spot, thanks for reporting it. It's now been fixed.

Dave.

[kritip]

Hi,

Correct, with regards to gapless playback, it was a lame 3.96 encoded mp3 from my collection. Still better than the origonal firmware though, will it improve even more in the futre or is this as good as its likely to get?

I got the bleeding edge earlier today, and musepack wasn't working, I'll try again tomorrow with another update, hopefully it should all be fine then.


Cheers,

Kristian

[neomoe]

FINALLY! :-D

[davechapman]

Hi,

Correct, with regards to gapless playback, it was a lame 3.96 encoded mp3 from my collection. Still better than the origonal firmware though, will it improve even more in the futre or is this as good as its likely to get?

This is a general Rockbox issue (affecting all players), and it's high on lots of people's priorities. We definitely hope we can improve it in the future.

I got the bleeding edge earlier today, and musepack wasn't working, I'll try again tomorrow with another update, hopefully it should all be fine then.

The Musepack fix was committed to Rockbox CVS at 17.06 GMT today - so any bleeding edge build after that (including the one available now) contains working Musepack playback for the iPod.

Dave.

[neomoe]

one question: how are the files accessed, by folder-strucutre or by database? - I'd choose a database over directories.

[davechapman]

one question: how are the files accessed, by folder-strucutre or by database? - I'd choose a database over directories.

Rockbox does have a tag database, but it's been neglected over recent months. I've never looked at it, but I believe some people are using it successfully. However, efforts in that direction seem to have picked up recently, so maybe that area of Rockbox will be improved.

But for now, the only reliable way to play back your music is via directories and "static" playlists.

[kritip]

I just downloaded the lastest version, and can confirm mpc plays back fine Haven't tried a gapless test on mpc yet though.

Cheers,

Kristian


/EDIT

Just tried gapless mpc, there is a VERY small click during change, but no gap at all, excellent! Seeking isn't working with mpc at the moment though. Regardless, its still in early development, but i can see great things coming from this

This post has been edited by kritip: Jan 29 2006, 22:29

[boiling_ice2k4]

Wow, this is good news indeed. Hopefully I'll be able to test this on my 5G video ipod soon (as audio playback isn't funtional yet on the 5G ipods, AFAIK).

This post has been edited by boiling_ice2k4: Jan 29 2006, 23:21

[bryant]

Kritip:
There was a bug that would cause mpc playback to sometimes become corrupt during track changes, and this would add [sometimes loud] noise until playback was restarted. I fixed this, however in the process I also discovered that the first and last frames in mpc files were sometimes still not being decoded correctly, and this will sometimes produce a click. Unfortunately, I haven't had any time to look into this further (and mpc is now usable, at least).

Dave:
First, thanks for all your hard work on this!

I tried to install RockBox on my very new Nano and ran into the problem that your program would not find my Nano. I grabbed your source and recompiled it to dump the unrecognized sector to disk. I found that the text "iPod" was actually at decimal offset 83 instead of 71. I uploaded a text dump here:

www.wavpack.com/sector.txt

Should I just change the constant and be on my merry way? Is that safe, or do you want to have a look first? I suspect the newness of my Nano to be the culprit. Perhaps a bounded search would be better...?

Thanks again,
David