I want to get a player that rockbox supports, but which one?

[Slogra]

Hi,

Rockbox looks really awesome because it supports all kind of cool formats (i'm especially interested in Musepack)

I got a Cowon iAudio M3 player at the moment, but it looks like it will take a while before it will be supported by Rockbox.
So i want to get a player that already has Rockbox support, but which one should i get?

Here are the things that are important to me:
- Soundquality. I'd like nice quality without the need of using EQ and other DSPs. So basicly it should have a good DAC/amp
- Lots of HD space. 20GB minumum
- and of course good rockbox support

My other wishes will be fullfilled by the Rockbox firmware itself:
- Musepack/flac/ogg support
- good vbr mp3 support with correct length indication

Which player would you recommend?

[Febs]

The iriver H120/H140 is the only player right now that meets your criteria (Ogg, FLAC, etc.)

[Slogra]

I'm kinda confused. Why is the iriver H120/H140 the only player that meets my criteria. Do the archos players have bad sound quality or why are those not recommended?

[JonathanHull]

I'm kinda confused. Why is the iriver H120/H140 the only player that meets my criteria. Do the archos players have bad sound quality or why are those not recommended?

Archos players use a hardware MP3 decoder, and thus are not capable of decoding any other formats (Ogg, FLAC, Musepack, etc), which require software decoding done in players like the H1x0 players.

[Slogra]

Ok thanks, i understand now. I will try to get my hands on a iriver H120/H140.

[Chill]

In theory, could the firmware on the Archos units be adapted to transcode these other formats in real-time into MP3, before passing the MP3 data to the hardware decoder?  I know, I know - processor speed would be an obvious issue, as would the loss in quality that might arise out of such a transcoding approach.  Would more or less processor speed be needed to transcode to high bitrate MP3?

[JonathanHull]

In theory, could the firmware on the Archos units be adapted to transcode these other formats in real-time into MP3, before passing the MP3 data to the hardware decoder?  I know, I know - processor speed would be an obvious issue, as would the loss in quality that might arise out of such a transcoding approach.  Would more or less processor speed be needed to transcode to high bitrate MP3?

With as weak as the CPU in the Archos is, I doubt it would be a viable solution. Either it wouldn't be realtime, be way too low a bitrate, or suck up too much battery power, or a combination. I may be wrong though, the devs know better than I.

I would say, if you own an archos, just reencode your music on your computer.

[Assimalyst]

I will try to get my hands on a iriver H120/H140.

They're pretty hard to find, manufacture was discontinued a while back. Some are still available at misticaudio http://www.misticaudio.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4
and there's the buy/sell/trade forum at misticriver too http://www.misticriver.net/forumdisplay.php?f=97

Good luck, it's a great piece of hardware, especially when Rockboxed!

[JonathanHull]

I will try to get my hands on a iriver H120/H140.

They're pretty hard to find, manufacture was discontinued a while back. Some are still available at misticaudio http://www.misticaudio.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4
and there's the buy/sell/trade forum at misticriver too http://www.misticriver.net/forumdisplay.php?f=97

Good luck, it's a great piece of hardware, especially when Rockboxed!

And there is always ebay.

[nobby]

jonathanhull is right, as the cpu in archoses is 20mhz, it could be as slow as 5x below realtime!

[LinusN]

jonathanhull is right, as the cpu in archoses is 20mhz, it could be as slow as 5x below realtime!

It's even worse than that, it's 12MHz on the Player/Studio, and 11MHz on the Recorder models. :-(

[nobby]

eep. :0