A question regarding why Rockbox was made the way it was.

[galbro48026]

To me, i have never played music on the rockbox and the only reason is that i can play music on my firmware (i have ipod5g and sansae280) im just curious, i dont know why people would rather use rockbox to play music rather than the firmware, i can understand that rockbox play over 13 music formats but every music i have bought was .mp3 format. and most music is only around 4-5MB that really not that much. and i have never seen many different formats of music before other than .mp3 and few others (which i would just convert to mp3 to me average space of mp3 is only 4-5MB that not much to me) Im sure thats why you made rockbox like that because majority of people wanted it that way. in my view and i know i dont represent the majority. it would been cool to have tons of games and emulators and also a video player that plays tons of different codecs as a alternative firmware and/or freeware program in addition to the original firmware.

[Llorean]

So what was your point exactly?

Rockbox was made to be a replacement firmware, by people who actually wanted the features it has. Some of us feel that patent-unencumbered formats are better. Some of us actually have a use for gapless playback, or the ability to create a standardized playlist format, or the ability to use our players without needing special software on the PC, or for the ability to not lose quality by having to convert audio in strange formats to one of the two formats our player supports by default, etc.

Rockbox was made the way it was because we made it for us. We put in the features we want to use. Yes, it gets shared with you, but we're the ones working on it, so we put in the things we think are most important.

Here's where it gets great though: We shared all our work with you. Even posted it so you can change it. That means anyone who thinks more emulators would be good can work on it and add more emulators. Nobody is there to stop you!

Rockbox can be whatever you need it to be. We made it what we want it to be, because we're the ones making it. We don't ask you for money in exchange for the software, or anything else. We just share what we've done.

[mad]

have you looked here? http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WhyRockbox
Rockbox was started to improve on the disappointing firmware of the old school archos players. It made my archos 6000 about 100 times better to use back in 2003.
It turns out that with years Rockbox simply trumps every other original firmware that a company puts out. It is for people who want better sound, control over their music, custmomization of the interface, control over the firmware code and of course a wide range of audio codecs....

[Spanky]

Thought I'd take a stab at this from a basic user's standpoint. Biggest thing for me in Rockbox is the ability to have all those codecs. FLAC is awesome for those that like quality and don't really care about the size of the file. I think the Equalizer in Rockbox is one of it's shining points and there's nothing that comes close in portable players to it. As far as having tons of games, those games have to be coded in the right language and they must also be open source games to even be considered to be converted over. Emulators can take quite a toll on the players CPU, I can't do much with rockboy on my iPod 4G. Videos, that has to be another shining point of Rockbox. I can convert ANY video to play on my iPod 4G Photo. It's really amazing that Apple hasn't released a firmware update to allow the player to do that.

If better sound, more reliability and being able to play video on devices that can't do it on original firmware isn't enough. Rockbox is "updated" several times a day and it's open source! There's many people that contribute to it and with some time invested you can make your own custom version.

I've forgotten what the original apple firmware looks like.

[TexasRockbox]

1. Ogg Vorbis playback.  I decided some time ago that that format worked best for my ears in a lossy format.  Large capacity players that play that format are rare.

2. I could design my own screen placing controls and colors I wanted where I wanted.  Display what I want, do not display what I don't want.

3. USB harddrive.  No 200MB of iTunes bloatware.  Use CDEx to rip to .ogg Vorbis and copy to the the harddrive.  Done.

4. It's fun!  Been having a blast wtih it.  Picked up an80GB G5 iPod just before that generation was replaced.

5. MP3, no problem. FLAC,  here it is. WAV, can do. APE, have a banana.  And some I just never heard of!

6. Free.  Doesn't get better than that.

[ryran]

I know we hate stickys but this is just so good.... Very well said Llorean.

[insanepotato]

personally, the reason initial reason i switched to RB, was to listen to video game music (.sid, SPC). ^^

[LambdaCalculus]

1) Biggest reason of all: Ogg Vorbis playback. I prefer Vorbis to MP3, and even though I had received an iPod video for Xmas two years ago, Rockbox let me enjoy my Vorbix files on the go.

2) Easily cross-platform. Rockbox doesn't care about what OS you have. On devices with a USB stack, just plug it into your computer, and drop in some music. Done.

3) More codecs than I can think of. Besides Vorbis, I've started using FLAC for select albums. I discovered Musepack. I've seen WavPack. Monkey's Audio? Hello there! SID? NSF? SPC? Cool, now I can bring some chiptunes with me on the road!

4) Retrofit new features. Do you know how cool it is to be able to watch videos on devices that normally don't play them? The iPod color and Gigabeat F normally don't play video on their OF's, and the iriver H300 and iAudio X5 have subpar video playback on their OF's. Nothing that Rockbox's Mpegplayer can't fix! Plus, gotta love having a few games to kill time with!

5) It's free software. I admit, I'm a rather fierce supporter of free software. Rockbox is GPL'd, meaning I can use my DAPs with peace of mind.

6) It's just... cool!

[soap]

Here are some of my reasons not touched upon by others yet.

• Directory structure based music organization.  (If you choose).
  I don't like a database style of music management.  Many players force this style upon you in their original firmware.  I like to simply browse my well organized files.
  
• Last FM/Audioscrobbler logging support.
  I love Last FM and the new (to me) music I find through the service, but Last FM needs to know what I listen to to make those recommendations, and Rockbox creates a log for them if you so desire.
• Gapless Playback.
  Nothing is more annoying than many MP3 player's inability to play back my audio files without inserting unnecessary gaps between tracks.
• Replaygain.
  Allows tracks from different CDs to be played back at the same apparent volume.

[Strife89]

This coming from a Sansa c250 user.....

1a) I found Rockbox when I was looking for "hacks" for my Sansa's firmware so I could change a few things. In the process, I found Rockbox. I explored the website for a while and read through the manual, and I began to think, "This may be more than what I'm looking for" in a positive sense. I carefully read the instructions, and half an hour later, my Sansa was Rockboxed.

1b) My first impression was a good one. I practically fell in love with all the different options the user gets, and all of the plugins (particularly the games) came in handy from time to time. I'm hooked on Wormlet now, and the Calculator has been helpful. (So has the Lamp.)

2a) Like some people, I didn't think much of all those codecs that Rockbox could use. Most of my music was (and still is) in MP3 format, and I didn't ever think that other options would be very major sources for music. Oh, how wrong I was....

2b) About three months ago I discovered that Rockbox had a .MOD codec (if you can call it that). I remembered vaguely that one PC game I liked (Invalid Tangram) had its music in a chiptune format, so I copied the .MOD files to my Sansa and gave it a listen.

I was, for whatever reason, blown away. All of a sudden, an entire new format of music that I had never listened to before (at least not knowledgeably so, if you will) had been opened to me thanks to Rockbox. I scoured the Internet with Google, and today I have about 700 MODs in their own folder, taking up 250 MB of space.

Without Rockbox, I would probably have never looked for any MODs, and even if I had, I would have to convert them all to MP3s to play them on the original firmware, which would take time and a ton of disk space. Nowadays I have a heck of an SAP and an SPC collection, too.

[gerwen]

...Rockbox simply trumps every other original firmware that a company puts out...

Well said.


Rockbox is more feature rich than anything else out there.  It's almost guaranteed that there is something in rockbox you would like, that your original firmware doesn't have. 

[galbro48026]

thank you for all your feedback, i guess i should went to wikipedia first to understand the different audio formats and why they are, um to me i only want to use .mp3 but many there are other better one i will read on that. and yes i did forget that firmware does have Digital rights management and stuff like that so yea you did remind me of that now im starting to realize that rockbox is a good idea heck I dont even want to know how coded to iphone firmware is!! SecureRom is the worst ive heard for example of many. so yes guys thank for the feedback.

[riksweeney]

Gapless playback was by far and away the biggest reason why I changed to Rockbox. Even though my iRiver's gap was less than half a second, going from a gapless CD player to that set my teeth on edge every single time.

The day my iRiver packs up and I have to look for a new MP3 player, I won't even consider looking at a player that Rockbox didn't support.