Channel Configuration - missing reverse option

[reszerve]

Rockbox has some advanced features there's no chance of seeing on the corporate products - including channel configuration settings.  These are great.  eg. if your trying to hear something on the left channel say - you can listen only to left through both ears.

Curious then that one option - to swap left and right, is missing.

There are two cases this is useful:

 - the recording you are listening to is wrong, eg. they remastered the CD and reversed the channels, or it's a live recording but they screwed the channels up - the guitarist is always stage right not left!

 - you have asymmetric hearing (your ears hear things different) so things sound markedly different when you swap left and right.

Does anyone else think this is a worthwhile addition?  I can't believe it would be hard to do.



reserve

[yapper]

Take your headphones off and put them on reversed? 

[reszerve]

Reversing the headphones of course only works with vaguely symmetrical headphones.......

But it does remind me of another reason why this added option is needed.  Apple.  Or more precisely their decision/mistake (anyone any idea why they did this???) of reversing left and right in ipods.

So if you want to use non-Apple headphones on an ipod you ideally should reverse the channels.

More bizarrely if you want to use Apple headphones on anythingbutipod the same applies - but why would you ever want to do that???

[torne]

Er, isn't that an urban legend? Left and right are left and right on my ipod, whatever headphones I use.

[reszerve]

No, it is not an urban legend, but that said I have only had hands on experience with an ipod video, so can't know for sure this is all ipods.

Googling around trying to see if this is all Apple products just found me contradictory results, pinouts.ru showing all ipods to be normal, but others like http://anythingbutipod.com/2006/04/zen-vision-m-video-cable-other-4pole-35mm-pinouts/ aligns with my ipod video findings, plus a couple of entries on Apple's support forum also state the pinout with L&R reversed.


I think the problem is most people never notice, understand or care!

[torne]

I have an iPod Video and it's *definately* not reversed, I have plenty of files with known panning and I use several sets of non-Apple headphones. Unless Rockbox is already flipping the channels on this device... (I don't have any music accessible to the OF, so can't easily test)

[Zezboob]

I think too that adding an option for swapping channel would be a worthwhile addition.


Some IEM have particular shells and need to swap sides to be worn over the ear or straight down.
For example the t-JAYS or Fisher Audio DBA-02.


I don't know if it requires a lot of tweaking/codding, but if it isn't the case, I think it would be very welcomed. Personally I was surprised at first by the absence of the feature even if I didn't need it at this time.
(but now I am planning to buy a DBA-02 or maybe a Brainwavz B2 and it reminded me this)

[gbl08ma]

I too think this addition would be great. In most cases, you can swap the headphones... but what to do when you're not using headphones to listen to the sound? Let's say, connected to your home hi-fi, or to a dock? In the case of the hi-fi, you can switch the position of the speakers for 5 minutes - not very practical if the speakers are heavy or bolted to a wall - but in the dock, you generally can't do anything...

I have already needed this option for several times and although I could live without it, well, it'd be better if it were there, right?

[aargl]

Of course, such an option would be far more elegant than physically swapping headphones.
I have got a 5KHz "hole" on one ear and it would be nice to check how it sounds reversed, from time to time...

[Chronon]

I haven't seen any real objection to the idea, so if someone wants to code a patch there's a chance it could be accepted.