Fuze+ problems

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Hello Rockboxers!

I am a long time user of Rockbox and I simply love it, so when the battery of my Clip+ bailed on me, I decided I'd get another Rockbox-capable player, and I got the Fuze+. BIG mistake...

I was aware that Rockbox is not totally polished for the Fuze+, but I got in some big trouble after installing Rockbox for it. First of all, I can't go to the original firmware anymore cause it simply dies after loading. Which means, now I can't watch videos or images on my device.

Yes, I tried removing Rockbox and reapplying the firmware, with the same results.

Furthermore, concerning Rockbox itself, it stutters A LOT on many songs. Meaning, it freezes for about one second every two-three seconds of playing certain songs. Some other tracks are ok from beginning to end. I have read some similar issues around on the web, but no definite solution so far.

I installed the latest development version (2013-12-17). Any help?

Thanks.

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Update: I have formatted my Fuze+ drive and, after some trial and error, more Rockbox installing, and definitely some divine intervention, I can boot into the original firmware now. So that's nice. My Rockbox is still speech impeded, though.


Update 2: I think I may be onto something about the stuttering:

I realise that all the files that I had problems with were in the AAC (.m4a) format. So I took a 320kbps MP3 and encoded it into 64kbps m4a using NeroAAC. And voilà: the MP3 plays fine and the M4A does not. Looks like a decoder problem. The original firmware plays them both fine.

[silvertree]

The stuttering is a well known issue on this device.

There is a thread about it somewhere here, i haven't read it.

The issue does not appear to be related to any 1 simple solution but I have personally found that resetting my configs to default usually helps and never, never use a different skin or theme except the default one.  This is my personal experience.  Your mileage may vary.

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Thanks for the reply. I read about similar issues and solutions here and there, but what puzzles me is that in my case it was from the very beginning, right after installing and before changing anything from the default values. Some people reported that it would go away after decreasing the volume, for instance. But in my case, it seems to be a totally different reason.

I very much suspect that the AAC decoder needs some rework. I am using the same files as on my old rockboxed Clip+ and they worked fine there... Oh well. Let's hope the real heroes of the story, the developers, can do something about it.

[saratoga]

If the aac decoder plays the file ok then its working fine.

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Hmmmm... well, it isn't in my book. It's stammering like the village idiot every two seconds (pardon my candor here). Not on all files, grant you that. In comparison with the stock player, though, it's working quite badly. It may be that I'm wrong and it's not related to the decoder, but so far it's been only the AAC files that don't play properly.

But please don't get me wrong. I don't mean to sound like "this is crap, fix it". I am a programmer myself and I hate this kind of people, so I'd never imply that. I am only trying to contribute my experience to what seems a known problem and apparently dragging for some time, from what I've read. If it can be fixed, or improved, from my information, then it's great. If not, well, thanks for trying and I still love rockbox, it works and sounds much better than stock on most files, even if there are some that don't work as well.