Best MP3 player?

[billy1ear]

Loved the Rockbox firmware but lost/ broke my 2 old archos jukeboxes.
Need to replace them with something that I can flash with RB.
What's a good one with 20+gb of storage? How mature is the Ipod stuff?
Thanks in advance
 

[soap]

Rockbox on the iPods is quite usable, but expect only 50% of stock battery life.  Also expect general performance issues including (but not limited to) slower than Apple UI, and possible skipping if using multiple CPU intensive signal processing steps at once.  (Software EQ being the real killer, but crossfeed, replaygain, and all such add to the CPU load.)

Rockbox on the iRiver H1xx and H3xx series is much smoother, though they are not made anymore.  Likewise Rockbox on the Cowon iAudio X5 series is smooth, and perhaps a bit easier to find.

The iRiver H10 series is basically an iPod, with all the caveats associated with them.

The Sansa has no audio at this time, though there is good reason to believe it will be coming.

The Toshiba Gigabeat F and X series are cheap (on eBay), powerful as a mule on crystal meth, and surprisingly long in battery life.  They are a recent port, but at least as smooth as the iPods.

[Llorean]

The Gigabeat F, at least, is far smoother in performance than the iPod, though it offers no recording functionality (or compared to some of the other targets, no Radio either).

[Mad Cow]

The Gigabeat port is surprisingly polished, there are still a few small bugs and missing feature, but generally it's very good. My biggest gripe about it is USBOTG isn't supported.

[Llorean]

There are no Rockbox ports with USBOTG, so this is hardly relevant in judging its performance under Rockbox compared to other Rockbox targets.

[Mad Cow]

I know, I'm just saying.

A bit off topic, but why is there no USBOTG support? Not enough documentation?

[Llorean]

Nobody has written a USB stack. USBOTG is not a priority relative to audio playback related topics, and it's likely to take a very considerable amount of work to get working properly, so while it'll happen eventually the combination of 'large amount of work' and 'not core focus' means that it may be a while.

[billy1ear]

Thanks for the feedback. Kinda was wanting to go with iPod as I like the box but hate iTunes and the random file names. Suppose I could make that leap and watch Rockbox improve as I saw it do with the old archos stuff. Guess I will do some homework on Toshiba, maybe that is a smarter choice.
Thanks again
 

[BigMac]

Kinda was wanting to go with iPod as I like the box but hate iTunes and the random file names.

Uhh that is only if you use itunes to transfer your music. Most people just put their music on in /Music/Artistname/Albumname/song.codec

[Muse]

There are no Rockbox ports with USBOTG, so this is hardly relevant in judging its performance under Rockbox compared to other Rockbox targets.

My search at www.acronymfinder on  USBOTG was fruitless. What does this mean?

[Febs]

"USB On the Go"

It's the ability of a portable device to act as a USB host.

[billy1ear]

Kinda was wanting to go with iPod as I like the box but hate iTunes and the random file names.

Uhh that is only if you use itunes to transfer your music. Most people just put their music on in /Music/Artistname/Albumname/song.codec

Didn't know that. Got one for my daughter so I only set it up, never really played with it much. That makes it more appealing to me as the random file thing ticked me off. Used Winamp Pro instead of Itunes as it did not keep all those little i*.exe processes running in the background.

[BigMac]

Didn't know that. Got one for my daughter so I only set it up, never really played with it much. That makes it more appealing to me as the random file thing ticked me off. Used Winamp Pro instead of Itunes as it did not keep all those little i*.exe processes running in the background.

Yup, and as everyone else has said, I hear good things coming from the Gigabeat direction, but the iPod is still a great DAP.

[GodEater]

I feel I should point out that he means you can use the drag and drop approach with the iPod only once you've installed Rockbox on it...

[MisterScoundrel]

If you get an iPod, I'd recommend one that has a hardware equalizer. Not sure which models do besides the Video. I had occasional audio skips with the software equalizer but I've been very happy with the hw eq on my 30GB iPod Video.