Sansa Fuze and Rockbox

1: I doubt that rockbox has altered the sound quality of any DAP in any substantive way, other than differing EQ and DSP performance. If you're an incurable basshead, SRS Wow and BSS are better bass boosters than the rockbox eq. On the other hand, the fuze has neither of those, and some have complained about the performance of the fuze EQ. The rockbox EQ may perform better because both the sansa firmware and rockbox use software equalizers - so at the very least it'll be different.

Edit: OK, there have been minor SQ quibbles with rockbox in the past - like the remote control on the h120 used to be noisy under rockbox, but they fixed that.

2: I haven't heard of people bricking the fuze v1 or the e200 v2 in a long time. At this point it's reasonably stable but there is still filesystem corruption for some people. Also the FM tuner is sometimes quirky, and there's a minor bug in the WPS on the fuze as well. Worst case scenario you reboot to the sansa firmware and reformat, and have to reload the .rockbox directory and your music.

If the existing firmware on your fuze is a version 2.xx.xx rather than a 1.xx.xx, you can't use rockbox yet.

thank you for the info ... i will be keeping an eye on rockbox development for the fuze

Is it not possible to downgrade the firmware?

No, the v1 and v2 firmwares are not interchangeable.

1. Depends on how much of a tweaker you are. Rockbox gives you a blizzard of settings to fine-tune the sound, superior to the stock firmware on any portable player. But you have to enjoy stuff like that; there's such a thing as too much choice.

2. I have a v1 Fuze, and it's rock-stable and dual bootable. I hear you can trick a v2 Fuze into running it, but that sounds like a gamble. The different firmwares correspond to different chipsets, so there's no switching from one to the other.

Just received 4g fuze  refurb that I ordered for 20 usd.... (turned out its v2)

after installing the rockbox, it sounds way better than stock with just little bit of bass boost... this little thing sounds better than my cowon d2

and its pretty damn close to my iphone 3g sound

much better soundstage and bass impact than stock firmware

This has been my best 20 bucks spent

only thing I can complain is the battery life(maybe because its refurb?)

are rockboxed fuze cannot use Line out Dock?

is that true?

Rockbox Fuze V1 can use line out dock, Fuze V2 can not use it.

1. yes & 2. no

 

I have a V2 Fuze and a FiiO LOD cable into an iBasso T4 amp, which sounds pretty damn good. I was considering a Rockbox upgrade (v2 appears on the "stable" list) but reading through the manual, the menu/directory system seems awful complicated and there are just so many different settings and options for an aged dinosaur such as myself.

 

Is the SQ enough of an improvement alone to justify the hassle of trying to work my way though?

 

Alo, how much space does the new firmware take up? I only have about 1mb left of the flash drive and 2md or so left on the expansion card. The rest is jammed full of music.

Edited by andyalfa - 6/16/11 at 6:02am

There is no direct sound quality improvement by installing RB onto Fuze. A better EQ system, more complicated GUI and better format support are what you will get with RB. Unfortunately I have no use of all three and end up using the original firmware most of the time.

@ ClieOS, the OF seems to slow down a bit with a fully loaded Library. also the OF does sound better than RB on the Fuze though, but the OF seems locked down, as in not letting the user use all the capabilities of the Fuze's hardware.

I didn't find much different on SQ between the original firmware vs. RB myself. I don't fully load (like with a few MB left) my Fuze but I don't really mind it being slow down for a little bit. I guess it all depends on what you care. I only need Fuze to play music one album at a times and the original firmware is more the adequate for the purpose.

Everyone saying they like the sound of the Fuze OF better than Rockboxed must have forgotten about the pitch issue with the OF.....at least with Rockbox the mus8ic is playing at the proper speed.