Accidentally deleted my .rockbox folder in iRiver H120

[Muse]

Whoops!

How/why this happened: I am not a Mac guy but volunteer at an organization that is almost all Mac. So, on occasion I've plugged my H120 into a Mac there (actually an H130 because I replaced the non-functional 20GB HD with a 30GB HD). I don't understand the Apple OS, particularly. For whatever reason, if I have a file, say whatever.xyz, it creates a secondary file, .whatever.xyz. I've seen this gazillion times and when I'm working on my PC I usually just delete those to-me seemingly superlfuous .whatever files, never noticed an issue in doing so. The other day I selected a handful of those on my H130 and deleted them. A second later, I realized that one was .rockbox. I thought I'd be OK, but when I looked for a rockbox whatever in the root directory I couldn't find it. I figured there might be a problem!

Sure enough, yesterday I found that the H130 didn't boot to rockbox like it usually does but to the iRiver firmware. This screwed me up because I didn't know how to get the recording going that I typically do.

OK, so today I copy my .rockbox directory from my NAS, which is dated 09/23/2008. Simply doing that allowed my H130 to boot to Rockbox, the firmware still untouched.

Well, I'm wondering about my recording. What determines the level recorded when I record line in audio to MP3? And how should I set the AGC? Leave it as defaulted? Also, should I install a later version of Rockbox? Also, am I OK using the old 1.66 US firmware on the device? I also have an H140, so if more recent Rockbox or firmware are in order, I'd be doing both.

Thanks for replies!

[Chronon]

For recording level, important factors are sound pressure, the responsivity of the microphone and applied gain.  Enabling AGC is up to you and whether you want or do not want automatic gain adjustment. 

For more details about AGC and other recording settings, I refer you to the manual:
https://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-iriverh100/rockbox-buildch10.html#x12-15800010

[Muse]

Guess i didn't make note of the fact that i'm recording to MP3 using line-in, not microphone. Are levels automatically set or do I have to adjust something? Do I want AGC in effect for this? I'm getting audio off line-in off a mixing board. Thanks for answers.

PS  Also, should I update my Rockbox with a newer version than the 10+ year old version I'm using?

[Chronon]

Rockbox will only adjust levels if you have AGC activated.  One option is certainly to disable AGC entirely and set the gain levels yourself.  This is what I have done most often.  I enter the While Recording Screen, check the levels/adjust gain and then start recording.

These AGC modes sound potentially useful for the recording that you want to do.  I don't have enough firsthand experience with each AGC mode to make a specific recommendation, unfortunately.

• Safety (clip).This preset will lower the gain when the levels get too high (-1 dB) and will never increase gain.
• Live (slow).This preset is designed to be used for recording of live shows and has quitelarge headroom for loud parts. It heads for a nominal target peak level of -9 dB and will slowly increase or decrease gain to reach it.
• DJ-Set (slow).This preset heads for a nominal target peak level of -5 dB and will slowly increase or decrease gain to reach it.

[Muse]

Thank you, Chronon! Great response. For some reason I didn't get email notifications for this thread, however I have that turned on. Dunno why not getting notifications. Well, that seems plenty to go on. I recorded 3 hours of live radio the other day from within the air studio... started with AGC on, then stopped and started a new recording with it off. I did this because the therm bars just looked weaker than I remembered (I don't remember what my settings were before deleting .Rockbox folder). The resulting volume, with AGC turned off, seems reasonable but i'd like my recordings to be louder. I'm listening with my cell phone at max volume, using my customary headphones and it seems OK, but I'd like to be able to turn up some more. I'll play with the settings. The While Recording screen, turning up Gain while in it. I'll have to look for ability to do that. I think I did it before, but it was some years ago.

[Chronon]

Thanks!

You should be able to manually adjust gain on the While Recording Screen by selecting gain (with Up/Down) and adjusting the value by pressing Left/Right.

This is also in the manual (in section 5..