Rockbox Development > New Ports

iriver T-series flash-based players

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saratoga:

--- Quote from: greg_m on July 04, 2006, 04:56:02 PM ---Llorean, to answer your question...

In this case, the only features I'm interested in are those related to direct audio encoding.  If the T30 can encode good quality at 320kbps, that makes it potentially a much better "recorder" than most other MP3 boxes.

So, e.g., if the encoding parts of Rockbox could be made to work on the T30, but the video games etc. do not, I'd be perfectly satisfied.


--- End quote ---

Getting these features would involve porting essentially everything.  And probably more.  Lots of working Rockbox targets can't even record (Ipod, Iaudio), so its not a simple task.  You'd probably need to get a few people really interested in working on it, or at least one exceptionally motivated person. 

Llorean:
Basically, you have to think of Rockbox as one program, rather than several things. Even the games are really part of the main program, in a way. What happens with ports is that you tend to get plugins first (games, etc) even before you have sound, since most of those will work as soon as you have a screen and buttons. Then sound support gets added, so you can actually play music. THEN recording support gets added.

You may be discouraged to know that at the moment Rockbox only supports recording as WAV (except on Archoses, which have hardware to encode MP3s.)

greg_m:
Llorean, thanks for that explanation of how the Rockbox code interacts with the "box."  That puts an entirely different light on things.  I was thinking in "ondio" terms, where the software wouldn't have to encode the audio "from the ground, up" but would have a chipset there to do the encoding.

As far as recording only .wav format, that's not necessarily bad; the 1GB iRiver would still hold about 90 minutes of .wav at 44.1kHz x 16bit x 2ch.  And, in fact, the audio quality would be better than MP3, which is a good thing (although 320kbps MP3 is pretty good!).

Thank you again!

greg_m:
Here's another question about what a Rockbox port will and won't do.

I'm used to the Ondio, which apparently has its own internal chipset to do the MP3 encoding.  From what you've said, the iRiver T30 does not, so any encoded audio would be strictly .wav ... that's fine.

One of the things I like about the Ondio is the fact that it has a moving bar-graph display of actual recording *level* (not just a display that shows the recording *gain* at some fixed number, e.g. 17).  I think this is very important, because it allows me to set recording gain so the record file isn't clipped.

If someone were to create a RockBox port for something like the T30, would it have the moving bar-graph display showing actual recording level?  Or does that function come from the encoding chip in the Ondio?

Thanks again for all the enlightenment!

Llorean:
The current software codec (recording in WAV only so far) Rockbox ports have Peakmeters (what you're describing) on their recording screen. So yeah, if it were to come to the T30, it's very likely it could have this.

A few notes:
1) In the future, Rockbox almost certainly will have MP3 recording. In fact, I think there's a patch in the patch tracker that has some of the work toward this already done, though it may not be implemented in the "right" way.

2) Being as I don't know about the T30 hardware, it's completely possible there is a hardware encoder/decoder. I really couldn't say.

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