Transmaster
Onward Through The Fog
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY
edit:
April 20th, @05:44PM
| [Mp3] RockBox review
I have been using RockBox on my Sansa e260 for a couple of months now. RockBox is a fantastic OS for My Sansa. The first thing you need to do is download and read the 150 page manual for Rockbox this will help you understand the features this OS has. There are some things I don't like but they are very minor in comparison to the control this OS brings to your player. The audio equalizer suite it has is fantastic. It isn't just a simple graphic equalizer. You can control just about every parameter, the range that each band on the equalizer controls cover, what they call the "Q". The cut off frequency is adjustable for both the bass and high range, What this means is you can set the bass range to enhance, or reduce the lower frequencies from 1000Hz, 800Hz, 100hz on down. The same goes for the high frequencies you can set it up so the frequencies starting at say 2000Hz and up are enhanced or reduced. You can also make similar settings in the 4 mid range settings. You can also adjust things like the channel separation between the right and left channel, this enables you to hear on your headsets the way it would sound on a home set of speakers where your ears can hear from from all of the speakers at once. you can reverse the channels, and control the stereo sound stage, and much more. These controls are great for me as my 55 year old ears, thanks to decades of playing low brass in a Jazz/Big Band always placed me in front of the trap set so my ear got blasted with drum playing. I can set things up to compensate for the higher frequencies I can no longer hear as well these days. The frosting on the cake is RockBox enables the Sansa to play back not just MP3, WMA, and WAVE files but also Ogg, FLAC, and APE files. Here is one of the things I don't like. RockBox does not support MP4. What this means if you use the Sansa Media Converter which converts video files to MP4 RockBox will not play them, if the file is in MP2, or MP3 fine. The solution to this is to boot the Sansa up with it original OS which is not disabled by RockBox. When you boot up the Sansa just hold down the left hand button on the playback controls and it will boot up with the original OS, and you can play the MP4 video without any problem.
I am primarily interested in the audio control RockBox brings to my player but there are other thing it does. You can control the font size, the way files are displayed, There are some interesting backgrounds you can use. You can change how the unit displays the sound in a bar graph, peak, meter, in dB etc. There are games you can install, Solitary, Doom, etc. I don't know how useful they would be but this OS also includes some of the functions of a PDA.
Give RockBox a try, it is freeware »www.rockbox.org/
You can see the wide range of players RockBox can be used with. Be sure to download the manual RockBox does a lot of things and the only way you will get the best use out of it is to read the manual. 
--
Send a prayer to Allah, eat Beans. |
|
fuziwuzi
Not born yesterday
join:2005-07-01
Atlanta, GA | Perhaps on the e series Sansa the Rockbox software is better. I tried it on my c240 Sansa and found it to be less-than-desirable. It was just ugly and cumbersome to use. I went back to using the standard Sansa OS. |
|
sheik28
Premium
join:2000-10-15
New York, NY | Rockbox has come a long way. I had it on my iPod a couple of years ago and removed it. Now, it is perfect. If you are curious give it a shot. |
|
iampedro
join:2005-02-12
Houston, TX | reply to Transmaster
I wish it had a more graphical user interface... |
|
Transmaster
Onward Through The Fog
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY
edit:
August 6th, @01:15AM
| reply to Transmaster
At first I would switch back-n-forth between the Sansa OS, and Rockbox now all I use is the Rockbox OS. The only complaint I have about it is sometimes it is real slow to execute commands but the other things it does more then makes up for this short coming. iampedro I am a little unsure what you mean by a lack of GUI. there seems to be plenty, there is even a bunch of games you can play. playing these games is a little funky because of the controls but you can do it. As for the C model Sansa I can understand where you are coming from the smaller screen would negate much of what I like about Rockbox on this unit. But it is worth having because of the extra compression codex's it gives you. OGG, FLAC etc.
--
Send a prayer to Allah, eat Beans. |
|
Freeze
Premium
join:2001-05-13
Columbus, OH | reply to Transmaster
I've used RockBox on my Archos Recorder and my Sansa player, but I have yet to try the software on my iPod video. (I felt very odd to play Doom on a $20.00 Sansa player...)
Either way, definitely a great piece of software. |
|
