[nati8056]

Hi
What are the benefits of Rockbox? Is it improves the sound quality? I have Xdouu X3 and headphones flc8s

 

[Daveydguk]

Rockbox makes the X3 alot more usable. It has functions galore to fine tune the SQ output. You can boot into rockbox or original xduoo 1.1 firmware using the lock switch.

 

[Slater]

Rockbox makes the X3 alot more usable. It has functions galore to fine tune the SQ output. You can boot into rockbox or original xduoo 1.1 firmware using the lock switch.

Also the stock firmware has a bug where files play slow. (ie 16 bit /44 100 Hz , 24-bit /44,100 Hz MP3, FLAC, ALAC plays slow, by 30 seconds per hour). This can be detected with the help of a stopwatch, to synchronously start the music and watch the end of the album you will see various metrics over time. It's really annoying, because the slow music doesn't sound quite right. A user in Russia checked the signal with an oscilloscope - at 1000 Hertz output the oscilloscope reads 990 Hertz.
 
I also had a problem with battery life in the stock firmware. I think when the X3 was off, there was some sort of parasitic drain, because my standby time was terrible. Once I installed Rockbox, it could sit there for a month & the battery is exactly at the same charge it was before. Funny thing is, I have yet to find anyone else mention that battery behavior. Probably because so few people run the stock firmware haha

 

[Daveydguk]

Hi. Could anyone give advice on best practice to ensure the best compatibility with xduoo x3 for the following:-

Filename lengths eg 255 char or more.
Folder file count. Is there a limit ?
Best settings for flac/mp3 creation.

I assume flac/mp3 tags are not problematic​.

The reason I'm asking is my x3 keeps freezing when building the database. I've also noticed it freezing when nothing is playing and the screen goes into stand by mode.

Using 2x
Samsung 64 GB Evo MicroSDXC UHS-I Grade 1 Class 10. (Checked genuine)

Thanks.

 

[charleski]

  the 44.1 to 48k file thing can be addressed by just letting the 48k files play at 44.1k.

 
As I posted before, I strongly advise against doing this. The mistuned PLL will introduce a huge amount of aliasing that's readily audible.
Here's a couple of high-frequency sweeps:
48kHz
44.1kHz
pop them on your card and set the frequency to either 44.1 or 48 -- one of the files will play properly and the other will have a load of spurious warbling products especially towards the end. Setting frequency to automatic removes this and both play back fine. The glitch is distracting, it sounds like it starts playback, then a fraction of a second later resets the PLL and starts again, but the impact of a mistuned PLL is far worse. The frequency setting applies to any multiple of the base, i.e. 88.2 or 176kHz files need the 44.1 setting, whereas 96 or 192kHz files need the 48k tuning.

 

[Slater]

   
As I posted before, I strongly advise against doing this. The mistuned PLL will introduce a huge amount of aliasing that's readily audible.
Here's a couple of high-frequency sweeps:
48kHz
44.1kHz
pop them on your card and set the frequency to either 44.1 or 48 -- one of the files will play properly and the other will have a load of spurious warbling products especially towards the end. Setting frequency to automatic removes this and both play back fine. The glitch is distracting, it sounds like it starts playback, then a fraction of a second later resets the PLL and starts again, but the impact of a mistuned PLL is far worse. The frequency setting applies to any multiple of the base, i.e. 88.2 or 176kHz files need the 44.1 setting, whereas 96 or 192kHz files need the 48k tuning.

Sorry, I forgot. It was decided to just deal with the clicks, right? I'll correct that post.

 

[Slater]

Hi. Could anyone give advice on best practice to ensure the best compatibility with xduoo x3 for the following:-

Filename lengths eg 255 char or more.
Folder file count. Is there a limit ?
Best settings for flac/mp3 creation.

I assume flac/mp3 tags are not problematic​.

The reason I'm asking is my x3 keeps freezing when building the database. I've also noticed it freezing when nothing is playing and the screen goes into stand by mode.

Using 2x
Samsung 64 GB Evo MicroSDXC UHS-I Grade 1 Class 10. (Checked genuine)

Thanks.

Are you getting flat out freezing, or are you getting PANIC errors? If you are getting PANIC errors, which PANIC error in particular?
 
I was having a lot of freezing/crashing at one point, and found a few things that all but eliminated them.
 
1. I don't remember which special characters are supported and which should be avoided with Rockbox, but I think in general most ARE supported. It's in the documentation somewhere on the Rockbox website. Anyways, this is my personal experience, but I personally found that for some reason, renaming folders and files to eliminate/replace the special characters (!, ?, $, %, &) has reduced my freezing by 95%.
 
The title tag can have whatever characters - I'm just talking the physical folder or name. And it may have only been 1 out of the list that caused an issue, but all I know is I was having massive freezing until I started cleaning up the special characters. Now I rarely if ever freeze - the only time being is if I start trying to browse files after bootup without waiting about 1 minute.
 
I use an open source Windows utility called Rename-It (https://sourceforge.net/projects/renameit/). It's really easy to use, and it can rename everything in 1 step. You simply create multiple "filters", such as replacing '&' withthe word  'and', and replacing !,?,$,and % with nothing (ie leave blank). Finally, I replace 2 spaces (ie space bar space bar) with 1 space (ie space bar), which corrects the filter that replaced the !,?,etc with a space thus making 2 spaces. Then you just execute the thing in 2 swoop and it runs through all of the filters. I can rename thousands of files in less than a minute. The other nice thing is there's a sample text box where you can type in sample test BEFORE making the changes, and it will show you changes to your sample text. This way, you can make sure your filters will work as expected.
 
So for example, a fictitious file named Stop! Do You Hear Me? (Jinkelheimer & Dougan) would be renamed to Stop Do You Hear Me (Jinkelheimer and Dougan).
 
2. I have the settings set as follows (again, not sure which 1 or more may have fixed it):
 
General Settings - Database - Gather Runtime Data = NO (this creates a log that can be used for troubleshooting)
General Settings - System - Disk - Directory Cache = NO (when YES, caused a ton of disk cache PANIC errors)
General Settings - System - Limits - Max Entries In File Browser (I have mine set to 1500**)
General Settings - System - Limits - Max Playlist Size - (I have mine set to 5k more than the total songs, so 25000)
 
** I have my files organized like this, so I set to 1500 based on the total number of top level "Artist" folders inside of the "Music" folder: 
 
<root>
--------- .rockbox
--------- Music
------------------- Artist 1
----------------------------- Album A
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
----------------------------- Album B
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
----------------------------- Album C
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
------------------- Artist 2
----------------------------- Album X
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
------------------- Artist 3
----------------------------- Album Y
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
----------------------------- Album Z
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
.
.
.
.
etc
 
3. Any folder that doesn't have music (like the folder with my EQ profiles), I have a database.ignore file in it, including the .rockbox folder.
 
4. For the filename length, I don't know for sure, but it's most likely limited to the max filename length of the OS (255 characters). Still, that's awfully long (like ridiculously long), and there's really no need to have the name that long. When you start approaching ridiculously long file names, you risk running into other OS related problems, such as file management errors due to exceeding the path limit (for example, 260 total in Windows = the sum of all folder/subfolder name lengths + the filenamelength). If any filenames are approaching anywhere close to that, I would consider shortening to only as long as needed to properly identify the file. Especially given that the file name can be 1 length & the tag title another.
 
5. Occasionally, the card can be suspected to be corrupt, and/or something messed up in the .rockbox folder on the card. The solution to this is delete the .rockbox folder on the card (saving any EQ profiles or anything else you need from the .rockbox folder before deleting), and unzip the contents of the latest .zip 'update' file onto the card (thus recreating the .rockbox folder fresh.
 
Hope that helps,
- Slater

 

[charleski]

  Sorry, I forgot. It was decided to just deal with the clicks, right?

 
This doesn't affect me much as I play albums in which all the songs have the same samplerate. But if you enable crossfade and bump up the fade-in duration to 3 or 4s the glitch is a lot less noticeable.

 

[Daveydguk]

Are you getting flat out freezing, or are you getting PANIC errors? If you are getting PANIC errors, which PANIC error in particular?

I was having a lot of freezing/crashing at one point, and found a few things that all but eliminated them.

1. I don't remember which special characters are supported and which should be avoided with Rockbox, but I think in general most ARE supported. It's in the documentation somewhere on the Rockbox website. Anyways, this is my personal experience, but I personally found that for some reason, renaming folders and files to eliminate/replace the special characters (!, ?, $, %, &) has reduced my freezing by 95%.

The title tag can have whatever characters - I'm just talking the physical folder or name. And it may have only been 1 out of the list that caused an issue, but all I know is I was having massive freezing until I started cleaning up the special characters. Now I rarely if ever freeze - the only time being is if I start trying to browse files after bootup without waiting about 1 minute.

I use an open source Windows utility called Rename-It (https://sourceforge.net/projects/renameit/). It's really easy to use, and it can rename everything in 1 step. You simply create multiple "filters", such as replacing '&' withthe word  'and', and replacing !,?,$,and % with nothing (ie leave blank). Finally, I replace 2 spaces (ie space bar space bar) with 1 space (ie space bar), which corrects the filter that replaced the !,?,etc with a space thus making 2 spaces. Then you just execute the thing in 2 swoop and it runs through all of the filters. I can rename thousands of files in less than a minute. The other nice thing is there's a sample text box where you can type in sample test BEFORE making the changes, and it will show you changes to your sample text. This way, you can make sure your filters will work as expected.

So for example, a fictitious file named Stop! Do You Hear Me? (Jinkelheimer & Dougan) would be renamed to Stop Do You Hear Me (Jinkelheimer and Dougan).

2. I have the settings set as follows (again, not sure which 1 or more may have fixed it):

General Settings - Database - Gather Runtime Data = NO (this creates a log that can be used for troubleshooting)
General Settings - System - Disk - Directory Cache = NO (when YES, caused a ton of disk cache PANIC errors)
General Settings - System - Limits - Max Entries In File Browser (I have mine set to 1500**)
General Settings - System - Limits - Max Playlist Size - (I have mine set to 5k more than the total songs, so 25000)

** I have my files organized like this, so I set to 1500 based on the total number of top level "Artist" folders inside of the "Music" folder: 


--------- .rockbox
--------- Music
------------------- Artist 1
----------------------------- Album A
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
----------------------------- Album B
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
----------------------------- Album C
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
------------------- Artist 2
----------------------------- Album X
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
------------------- Artist 3
----------------------------- Album Y
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
----------------------------- Album Z
----------------------------------------- Track 1, Track 2, etc etc
.
.
.
.
etc

3. Any folder that doesn't have music (like the folder with my EQ profiles), I have a database.ignore file in it, including the .rockbox folder.

4. Occasionally, the card can be suspected to be corrupt, and/or something messed up in the .rockbox folder on the card. The solution to this is delete the .rockbox folder on the card (saving any EQ profiles or anything else you need from the .rockbox folder before deleting), and unzip the contents of the latest .zip 'update' file onto the card (thus recreating the .rockbox folder fresh.

Hope that helps,
- Slater

Thanks for the advice. I use to get panic errors until turning off disk cache, it's just freezing. I suspect it maybe when it's creating database in the background. Once it's created it seems to be ok.

 

[Slater]

   
This doesn't affect me much as I play albums in which all the songs have the same samplerate. But if you enable crossfade and bump up the fade-in duration to 3 or 4s the glitch is a lot less noticeable.

Good to know. Thx for the tip

 

[Daveydguk]

My xduoo x3 is definitely struggling with creating a database causing it to freeze. I suspect it's bad mp3 files.

Has anyone used mp3 Diags before ?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mp3diags

Will try it and let you know.

I rebuilt my mp3 tags using MusicBrainz then renamed the files to Artist - Title

Around 7k of files.

 

[Slater]

My xduoo x3 is definitely struggling with creating a database causing it to freeze. I suspect it's bad mp3 files.

Has anyone used mp3 Diags before ?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mp3diags

Will try it and let you know.

I rebuilt my mp3 tags using MusicBrainz then renamed the files to Artist - Title

Around 7k of files.

Never used mp3diags, but looks like a nice tool (thanks!)
 
Make sure the value of the "Max files in dir browser" setting (General Settings - System - Limits) is set high enough. For 7k files I would set it to 10k.
 
Then what I would try next (which I left off of my previous troubleshooting list for you) is to try & reinitialize the database (Settings - General Settings - Database - Initialize Now). That helped me once when things were acting super flaky with lots of freezing. Don't worry, you won't lose any files or any settings. It will run for a while in the background (unfortunately won't tell you when it's done though, but with 7k files I'd give it maybe 30 mins). Then reboot the X3, and it will do this 9-stage database updating thing (takes a few minutes). While it's doing the 9-stage updating thing, don't try and listen to music or tinker with any settings or it may lock up. Just wait until it finishes all of the steps (ie 9/9).
 
The Rockbox Wiki says this about the Initialize Database function: "Initialize Now removes all database files (removing runtimedb data also) and then builds the database from scratch."
 
That's what prompted me to try it when I was 1st experiencing mass freezing.
 
Also, the Wiki lists the following additional steps you can do to try and troubleshoot database errors/freezing:
 

 

Check the file system for errors

Use your PC to check that the FAT32 file system on your device contains no errors.
 

Check for files that crash the parser

The database can log files as it parses them. Go to system > debug > metadata log. Then rebuild the database. As each file is parsed, it will be logged to /metadata.log. If the database parser fails, the last file logged is probably responsible. Try removing it and rebuilding the database. 
 
 
Lemme know if any of these steps helps at all. Like I said, the freezes and lockups at the worst times really started pissing me off. I 1st did all of the steps I listed in that previous troubleshooting post, followed by the 3 things mentioned in this post. Now I only get freezing maybe 1x/10 days, and it's almost always when the player 1st starts up and I start playing with the menu settings or trying to browse files/database without waiting. I have to be patient and wait and few minutes before browsing the files and menus.

 

[gregsoir]

we have a new update 17.03.2017, any changelog?

 

[XVortex]

- 'click' between 44100/48000 freq changes has been minimized;
- Upstream rb repo sync, bugfixes;

 

[petan970]

- 'click' between 44100/48000 freq changes has been minimized;
- Upstream rb repo sync, bugfixes;

Thank you for this update. I am really impressed that you made the fix for the automatic frequency selection so quickly.