General: Rockbox + Sansa = Hmmm, Nice!

http://www.rockbox.org/

I had been wanting to do this for a while and I finally did it last night. I replaced the stock firmware on my Sansa E200 series player with Rockbox. It has managed to breath new life into my Sansa. So many more configurable options, it's crazy.

Rockbox, in its stock form, is a blah looking interface compared to the stock firmware. It more than makes up for it by giving you so many customizable options that you know this firmware is not about looking pretty. There are skins you can install for the eventual eye candy cravings but I have not tried any yet. That will come later.

Recording options expands the Sansa's stock capability of mp3 to AIFF, PCM wave, and Wavepack. It will play mpeg encoded movies without having to run them through a converter first and at 30fps. The EQ is totally customizable withing the four channels available. You can select what four channels you want to tweak! You also have the option of loading pre-defined EQ curves based on musical flavor.

Formats that are playable? Maybe it's easier to ask what it can't play.
Lossy codecs

MPEG audio .mp1, .mpa, .mp2, .mp3
OGG/Vorbis .ogg
Some old “floor 0” files may crash Rockbox.
Musepack .mpc
Advanced Audio Coding .m4a, .m4b, .mp4
Windows Media Audio .wma, .wmv, .asf
ATSC A/52 .a52, .ac3
Supports downmixing for playback of 5.1 streams in stereo.
ADX .adx
Speex .spx

Lossless codecs

Waveform audio format .wav
Audio Interchange File Format .aif, .aiff
Free Lossless Audio .flac
Apple Lossless .m4a, .mp4
Wavpack .wv
Shorten .shn

The firmware upgrade also includes a lot of games and apps. I have not had a chance to play with them all but the oscilloscope is fun to play around with. It has options to display it in portrait or landscape mode. It did crash on me once while playing a version of Asteroids on it. I thought I had bricked it but after a quick search on Google, I was able to get it rebooted.

One thing that I did not count on is it eating up my available space. I had to delete some albums to get it to fit on my humble 2gb of space. It's okay though. I had not listened to those albums in a while. There is a Linux installer available. I tried it but it would not work. I had to follow the manual install instructions. It is not a big deal. It is just a matter of unzipping files to the root of the dev and three commands in a terminal window.

I must mention that Rockbox took a page out of the "dual-boot" book. The original firmware is still there and readily accessible. Just hold down the left button while powering it on and you are back into the stock firmware. What more can you ask for?

That looks fun Ivan, nothing that will work on any of my players though. Then again I'm not sure I need an update. I'm glad you have found it useful on your Sansa.

Posted By: Beanz

Posted By: KrazyIvan

What more can you ask for?

A free E200 to put it on?

Yes please. Do I have to pay for delivery?

Now that I am more familiar with the way Rockbox works I have delved into skinning it. I found that anythingbutipod.com has a forum with a lot of avid theme creators for the Sansa version of Rockbox.

I downloaded a few and installed them without a hitch. Like the Rockbox install itself, you just copy the file folder over to the root of the dev and reboot the device. The themes are browsed via the settings menu and can be changed on the fly.

So far I have downloaded 5 themes. Some themes are very album art oriented and others are current stat oriented. This can lead to sensory overload. One in particular is the LCARS theme. As far as eye candy, it is up there. As far as usability, it is barely legible because the font is so narrow on the screen. Thankfully, you can change the font independently of the theme.

Battery life is somewhat of an issue. It chews through the battery a bit faster than the stock firmware, especially if you are gaming while listening to music. I guess that is to be expected with all the extra stuff going on. It is not too terrible though. In my opinion, the penalty is worth it.

I think someone is reading my posts.

http://lifehacker.com/5056370/breathe-new-life-into-your-aging-mp3-player-with-rockbox