Does Rockbox improve on the sound quality.

[warpig]

Hello

I have been reading about Rockbox and do like whats going on with it.   Its great to see these things happen and I am very appreciative of it.

Anyway to me it is all about sound and then storage.  I currently have a Rio Karma playing flac files.  Nice little player that souns very nice.  They are known for there hard drive failures though.  Also at 20 gb I would like to go to something bigger.  

I bought an Ipod classic 160 gb (got to love the storage) but canceled the purchase.  Reading up on them from what I gather they do not sound as good as the 5.5 gen.  I have not been able to find a new Ipod 5.5 gen from a company that I know about or that has some reviews on rr.

So my question is.  Installing rockbox onto a palyer improve the sound of that player?  If it does not I could live with the rest of the stuff even though it is a pain. DRM and so on.

Thanks All For The Hard Work

[mschneider]

Improving the sound is usually done by some type of hardware (sometimes via headphones), but there are some types of audio formats that have very nice sound capabilities and are supported by rockbox. There are some topics in the forums about this but i would also suggest doing some research online about different formats.

Look here for a list of supported codecs:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SoundCodecs#Current_status

[saratoga]

So my question is.  Installing rockbox onto a palyer improve the sound of that player?

No, however it does give improved features such as parametric EQ, which may sound better then stock versions.

[MU4L]

So my question is.  Installing rockbox onto a palyer improve the sound of that player?

No, however it does give improved features such as parametric EQ, which may sound better then stock versions.

 

That's technically the correct answer, but I understand what the OP is getting at.

Basically, any detection in improvements in sound quality are always going to be subjective, so YMMV, but the general consensus appears to be that, as a result of Rockbox's features (such as the parametric equaliser saratoga mentioned) which allow for greater manipulation of sound, sound quality is improved on the majority (if not all) of Rockbox-capable players.

The Karma was an awesome player, BTW. Shame, like you say, about the hard drive issues and the lack of any real successor.

[warpig]

Thanks All

Yes the Karma is a great sounding little player.  It is starting to act up though.  Bought a few headphone amps one is really portable the other not so much so.  It depends when I use them.  Just riding the bike it is just the Karma and a set of Grados SR80s.

Anyway sound is 95 percent for me.  Always lossless compression.  Currently flac.  Watch videos or looking at pictures on such a little screen just does not do it fo me.  Maybe wireless to the internet just to check on some things would be nice but not needed.

Thanks for the replies

[shoe]

I have an 4g ipod.  The sound is definitely different with the RockBox firmware.  It seems from the postings that a lot of people like it better.  I found that I can hear better tones and more detail with the original firmware though.  I cant get the same sound from RockBox, no matter what I do with the sound settings.

I got an old Archos Jukebox 6000 with the intention of putting 100GB hard drive it, and it sounds really great, for some reason! (I dont know about the original firmware, I only tried it with RB).  Unfortunately, there aren't enough buttons and the display is so terrible, it is almost impossible to navigate the menus, etc.  It is a hassle to just change the volume while playing.  Also it doesnt charge over USB, battery life is short, it is bulky etc.  Oh well.

[safetydan]

It's has been demonstrated that Rockbox and the Apple firmware produce exactly (or close enough as makes no difference) the same output on the same hardware, in this case the Apple iPod Video. See this thread for details: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=6139.0

[shoe]

I should should set up some kind of blind-test to convince myself...  Thanks for the link.

[saratoga]

RMAA would be a better tool for that sort of thing, since it ignores differences in volume, which are somewhat difficult on DAPs.