Ipod USB out

[AKChastain]

Not sure if this is the right place for this forum, but here goes.  Does rockbox send an audio signal via the USB out of an Ipod?  Could this be possible?  Would that not solve the lack of a digital out for the ipod?  Then we could directly utilize the new USB DAC devices that are starting to emerge in the market.  Please help me understand why this is or is not possible.

Thanks!

[Llorean]

Rockbox only uses the Line Out and Headphone Out of the iPod right now. At the moment we're currently unable to control the USB port.

In the future, if we ever have USB drivers, it MAY become possible to do as you describe. It depends to an extent on the manner in which we can control the USB port. On some devices, such as the H100, where the USB port can only be slave, we cannot do such a thing. But on devices where it can be host, it may be possible, and it is theorized (though I don't believe there's any hard evidence yet) that the iPods may fall into this category.

[saratoga]

There was once a flash memory card to ipod adapter that let you copy pictures to your ipod through the USB connection, so I suspect that the hardware in at least some ipods is capable of what you want.  Implementing it would be difficult though, since no one really knows how the hardware works, and implementing the software to drive an external DAC would also be nontrivial.

[Llorean]

I don't know about the adapter, but I can imagine it serving as host for the transferring of files.

I've actually seen devices for in-the-field transferring between two UMS devices, that fake one as a host, let you browse it, and write the files to the other, even though both are slave devices naturally.