Rockbox on my X5! (pics)

[fiery]

OK, so I took a deep breath and did it. I now have Rockbox on my X5! I affectionately call it RX5 (pronounced Rex 5). The king is dead, long live the king! ha ha

It sounds good. There were a couple of posts yesterday on iaudiophile.net saying that they were getting clicks in vbr mp3 files, but they must have fixed it as I couldn't replicate it. Ogg files (vbr) work too (haven't got any other file type on the player so will encode something into flac and wma to check).

I am going to have to take the time over the weekend to have a real good listen to the differences between the Cowon (I was using the latest 2.10 'final') and Rockbox firmware, but I swear it sounds better straight out of the box. I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that I quite have calibrated ears like the rest of the patrons of head-fi, but it sounds like it is driving my E4's better.

Managed to view pictures while listening to a track, although almost got stuck in a circle trying to get out of the pictures. It went into a slideshow and kept on repeating, but I am very sure that it was more to do with me being new to the rockbox interface and controls.

Need to get familiar with rockbox, but the x5 is charging at the moment (hurry up, hurry up). Feels like when I first got my x5, can't wait to play with it some more.

Here are a couple of pics! (hope they work, first time I have done this!)

booting


splash screen


while playing screen


So fellow X5 owners, have a go for yourself!

And again, a big salute to the Rockbox crew - there is definitely a donation heading their way from me!

 

[apnk]

Nice pics! Yeah I tried it yesterday but the sound didnt work for me?

Must of not updated the download links when I downloaded it.

 

[fiery]

hey apnk,

make sure to use the bleeding edge build (and not the daily one). its moving so fast now, there is obviously little (or big!) changes coming through all the time.

 

[The_X]

Wow! That's incredible, I'm going to try this in a bit as well. What is the button for dual boot, in case I need to go back to Cowon firmware? And how's the stability and battery life so far?

 

[Head Creep]

I just installed Rockbox on my X5 an hour or so ago, and I love it. Sure, ID3 browsing works as well as a bullet to the head (it either crashes or displays nothing at all), but everything else is great. As for sound quality, it sounded horrible with DT770's unamped (worse than with Cowon's firmware), but I put on the KSC75's and found Heaven. ReplayGain, crossfeed, a highly customizable GUI and Tetris, what more could one want from an MP3 player?

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_X What is the button for dual boot, in case I need to go back to Cowon firmware?

As of right now, there is no dual-booting. You copy over the Rockbox boot loader into the X5's firmware folder and the rest of the Rockbox files into the root directory, then restart the X5. All the old firmware's overwritten. You can always put the official firmware back on, just act like you're upgrading the firmware.

 

[apnk]

I just mine working like 2 hours ago, and Head Creep you're right it rocks! Can wait for almub art though!

What themes are you guys using? I am using the iPod theme, I also like the DancePuffDuo and iAmp.

 

[The_X]

Hmm.. could someone possibly send me a CVS compiled version? I have no idea how to use CVS whatsoever. I read their HowTo but it looks like Greek to me.

My email is Chrono88 at Gmail dot Com

 

[Head Creep]

Quote:

Originally Posted by apnk What themes are you guys using? I am using the iPod theme, I also like the DancePuffDuo and iAmp.

I'm currently using zezayer with a black background and grey foreground, looks great with the X5's exterior colors. Nice and simple, with all the information I could want.

 

[Head Creep]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_X Hmm.. could someone possibly send me a CVS compiled version?

Just get the daily build. It's all ready to go.

 

[The_X]

Daily build crashes for me. I turn it on and it automatically turns itself back off.

 

[atart]

ok so guys help me out here

i followed the 4 step process, download the .bin file, copy to the firmware folder, switch off the x5 and then plug it into the charger

the screen said upgrading firmware, but i get the same problem as X, it turns on and has a few lines of info, but then turns off by itself.

what exactly do i have to do with the daily builds thing, i downloaded the latest zip file from the daily builds page and extracted all the files to the desktop, where in the iaudio folders do i put all this extracted stuff?

any and all help much appreciated..
thanks

 

[The_X]

Uh oh, I hope I haven't killed my X5. What I did was place the rockbox.iaudio file in my root directory to stop the firmware from crashing on startup. Now, my first issue is that I get a "No .rockbox directory" error. But I don't know where to find a .rockbox directory... Second problem is more serious. My X5 has stopped working with my Mac. I plug it into the USB port and nothing happens--It doesn't mount or anything.

[edit] All figured out. The .rockbox directory is a part of the zip I downloaded, but any file or directory starting with . on a Mac is considered hidden. I wonder if there's a way to disable this... Also, for Macs Rockbox works like it does on other players--You have to turn it on for it to mount.

Anyways, this is REALLY cool but unfortunately the quality of playback is substantially lower than through the standard firmware. Awesome job to all the Rockbox guys (Linux especially!!) and I'll be keeping track of this until it can replace my X5 firmware. I miss Rockbox like hell since I sold my iHP-120.

 

[The D]

 

[HeavyBassMan]

I'm testing it out right now. Overall, it's quite good. I'll be keen to see how this develops

A strange thing just happened....I've just noticed a real difference in the sound from the X5s line-out? I think so, anyway? I always use the headphone out, but I just tested the line out now with Rockbox and I'm sure I hear a big difference

or it could just be the improved EQ settings helping the bass department out? ..I could be very wrong though.

I'm loving the EQ compared to Cowons firmware. Once you set it good, you'll almost think your listening to your iHP-140 rockboxed! LOL....

Not sure it's worth using line-out though. I can't stand the subpack, and headphone out sounds just fine to my ears.


edit:^^^ hmmmm... I just switched tracks on the player and tested from h/out to line-out.. this time I got that thin sound we all are familiar with. It must of just been the previous track I was listening to? It was "Over The Edge" by Fu Manchu, it has a LOT of low end bass in the production. Now I think the line-out is still a dud. It's a real shame.

 

[fiery]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_X Daily build crashes for me. I turn it on and it automatically turns itself back off.

Hi The_X,
Hi Atart,

Try the bleeding edge build. It's hiding right at the bottom of the CVS page:
http://www.rockbox.org/cvs.shtml.

This will be the most up to date version available.