Why is Rockbox better?

[imsjry]

I have a Gigabeat 40G will all of my music already loaded with album art associated with each file. Someone please tell me a good reason to switch to Rockbox. From ready all the materials, the program actually seems more difficult to manage than the existing Toshiba software. Since there is a workaround to get rip of the Toshiba SAT wrapper if I wanted to, what is the big advantage to Rockbox?

Thanks all.

[GodEater]

If you find the standard Gigabeat firmware meets all your current needs - then there's no need for you to switch at all.

If at some stage in the future you find that you more needs of your audio player, and the Gigabeat's native firmware can't meet them - then come back and see us.

Rockbox isn't about making you switch your firmware - it's about offering you the choice. If you can't see any need to do it - then there's no way we're going to convince you to do it against your will.

That being said, bear in mind most if not all of the posts you'll see in these forums are from users who've run into difficulties. Based on our download stats against number of forum members - we have good reason to believe that most people run Rockbox without any issues at all. I certainly find it very easy to use (although to be fair I never looked at the original Gigabeat firmware even once!).

[bascule]

From a link on the front page of Rockbox.org:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WhyRockbox

From ready (sic) all the materials, the program actually seems more difficult to manage than the existing Toshiba software.

That, of course, is an entirely subjective opinion and one not even formed from your personal experience. If by difficult to manage you mean allow the user lots of choice, whilst requiring a modicum of common sense to install and setup to your liking, then yes it is marginally more difficult than the fully-integrated worlds of GigaRoom or iTunes...

[imsjry]

I did read the "why Rockbox" area. Since I don't care about games/watching video I'm trying to see the need for Rockbox. Since everyone seems to love it, I'm just trying to see the need to take the plunge.

For example:

Does it really sound better quality-wise? I never noticed any sound problems on my current player.

How is the gain control feature? Work good?

With the patched themes, is it easy to add artwork for album art for each folder you would play?

Can you do Random play of all the folders easily? I read that was a problem for some.

Can you easily transfer playlists from say, MediaMonkey to the player?

[DeanMurray]

I have 2 Gigabeat F40's. Both running Rockbox.

I was completely frustrated with the Toshiba software. I found it to be unstable. Loading my player using the Gigabeat room software was basically an overnight job because everything had to be encrypted.

With Rockbox I can load it up in 10-20 minutes max.

Album art with the Toshiba firmware was hit-or-miss.  There are a couple extra steps displaying album art in Rockbox, but once you've created your bitmaps its solid.

I don't watch videos or play games, but its nice to have the option.

Those are a couple of things I like about Rockbox over the Toshiba software. I think Rockbox is worth the small learning curve.

[jungle27]

For me the big advantage is the ogg vorbis codec. If you don't like how mp3 sounds and prefere more audiophile quality it is a must. I have encoded all my CD with vorbis aotuv -q8 and for me it is completely transparent (no compression artifact at all) even with excellent headset.b When listening with high end headset, mp3 sounds bad at 128kbs and just ok at high bit rate.

[MarcGuay]

Based on our download stats against number of forum members - we have good reason to believe that most people run Rockbox without any issues at all.

I was just thinking about this the other day and how it would be nice to have some positive information to combat all of the negative.  Any chance that the number of times the bootloaders have been downloaded be made a public statistic?

[Bagder]

Any chance that the number of times the bootloaders have been downloaded be made a public statistic?

Not really, we don't have any stats for download.rockbox.org since that's three different servers hosted by friendly organizations "elsewhere".

I do however regularly publish download stats in my blog[1] based on what the logs from build.rockbox.org says. The latest count I did is here: http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2007/11/06/rockbox-downloads-oct-2007/

[1] = http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/

[MarcGuay]

Thanks Bagder.  Although it's unfortunate that the numbers can't be more detailed (when the MoB changes were happening I downloaded the current build once or twice a day, something that throws these stats as a good representation of the number of people who use Rockbox into question), they still say a lot about the amount of activity vs. the number of problems, which is nice.

Salut,
Marc

[Llorean]

You also have to remember that a decent number of people only update monthly or less. There are plenty of people who install it, accept that it does what they want and isn't too buggy (say, H100 users) and go away, checking back never or not for several months.

So while there's surely a curve of some sort, it's probably bell-ish, and it'd be interesting to know where the distributions lie.

[MarcGuay]

True enough, I didn't consider the other side of the coin.  Here's a quick bastardization of numbers for those who like to shoot in relative darkness:

October 2007
New forum members: 600
Downloads of the current build: 100,000
(numbers have been rounded)

Let's be generous to the negative and say that all 600 new forum members joined because they had problems and that only one eighth of the downloads were done by new users, that's still only 5 out of every 100 new users who runs into difficulty.

(Things that have not been included in this calculation are people who only report their problems via the tracker or mailing list, the number of downloads for the daily build, and reality.)

[JdGordon]

the 2 numbers (rockbox users and forum users) are completely separate.. HEAPS of people dont even know about these forums, and alot dont believe these are the official forums (not looking at anyone in particular... MR....)

[melancholydm]

also some people dont register to the forums and just read the threads to see if it solves their problems or something peaks their interest. I certainly didnt register right away when i got rockbox... maybe after a month or two?