Rockbox

Hi

I’m new to Rockbox - installed it this morning in response to issues with the original OS on the X5 I bought last summer.

The main reason for the OS change is so that I can use the X5 to record live gigs in wav format. [or any format with reasonable quality to be honest, since I’d found the sound quality of recordings on the X5 to be absolutely awful]

Now I’ve tried with Rockbox I’ve seen a major improvement, but the sound is still way off the quality you’d expect and I’m wondering if I’ve missed something simple - or maybe the X5 hardware is just crap.

The test recordings I made this morning looked to have good input levels, but still came out very quiet. When I grabbed the file via the USB cable and pulled it into Audition it looked tiny. When I normalised to CD levels there is an awful lot of background hiss (sample attached) - in fact it almost sounds like the kind of artefacts you get when noise reduction gets used on the transfer from a very hissy tape.

1. Equipment: iAudio X5 running 12 Jan 07 daily build of Rockbox SW, Giant Squid stereo omni mics with bass rolloff and 9V power box that came with it

1. Record Settings: wav, 44.1kHz, Line In, Stereo, Split at 2 hours, no pre-record time, default directory, clipping light off, trigger off

1. Recording Screen Volume 6dB, Gain (L&R) 12dB

I’ve just done the same thing using my old Sony MD walkman and there is no hiss and much better bass response. [The reason for making the change is that the only way I have to get my recordings off the MD is via the headhone socket which introduces low level hiss to the recording and I’ve been trying to get away from that].

Any and all info/advice greatly appreciated.

Many thanks. Rob.