Sunday, August 3, 2014

Rockbox: An open source firmware alternative for your MP3 Players (iPod, Sansa Clip+, etc)


This isn't going to be a lengthy post, I promise you that.

I learned about Rockbox back when I was still using Ubuntu, and therefore browsing through Ubuntu forums years ago. It wasn't that well known, and to be honest I don't know if it got the spotlight it deserves but well, give it a try. Rockbox truly rocks.


What is Rockbox though? And why do I bring it up?

Rockbox is an alternative firmware for your MP3 Player, simply put if you don't want to depend on your MP3 Player manufacturer to provide updates for your Sansa or iPod in terms of firmware, you can choose Rockbox.

Why did I choose it? Today I had one hell of a struggle. I'm using youtube-dl to download a few audio files, you know, to play then when I exercise, etc. And for some reason my Sansa default firmware was freezing up when I played an mp3 file that was freshly converted by avconv. I spent like 2 or 3 hours figuring out what was the issue. Sadly, I couldn't find what was the issue. But you know what? I recalled that years ago I installed Rockbox on one of my mp3 players, which was also a Sansa.



Problem eliminated, and now I have even more features that Sansa Clip+ couldn't provide me. I have a very stable firmware that can play any audio file and the most important part? It didn't choke up, hurrah!


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