The Main Menu

The main menu is the screen from which the rest of the Rockbox functions can be accessed. It is used for a variety of functions, which are detailed below. You can access the Rockbox main menu by pressing MENU (player/studio version), F1 (recorder version), or A-B (iriver version) key. All options in Rockbox can be controlled via this menu. Some of them can also be found in the Quick Menu (Recorder and iriver versions only).

All settings are persistently stored on the unit. However, Rockbox does not spin up the disk solely for the purpose of saving settings, but instead will save them when it spins up the disk the next time, for example when refilling the audio buffer or navigating through the file browser. Changes to settings may therefore not be saved unless the jukebox is shut down safely.

The Main Menu is structured as follows:

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Recent Bookmark

If the 'save a list of recently created bookmarks' option is enabled, you can view a list of several recent bookmarks here and select one to jump straight to that track. This option is 'off' by default.

Sound Settings

Volume

The volume at which your music is played. Although settable range is 0-100%, many units don't produce audible output below 40%. On Archos Recorders, volume settings above 92% will cause distortion (clipping) and are not recommended.

On iriver, the maximum volume will not be as high as the volume of the original iriver firmware if you engage the bass boost or treble boost. For more information, see this FAQ on the different approach taken by Rockbox and iriver regarding the volume issue.

Bass

The Bass setting controls the amount of bass in the track. On Archos players, the bass may be raise or lowered. 0 means that bass sounds are unaltered (flat response). On Iriver players, the bass may be boosted, but not lowered. Bass boost may be set from 0 to 24 dB in increments of 2 dB.

Treble

The Treble setting controls higher frequency (treble) sounds in the track. On Archos players, the treble may be raised or lowered. 0 means that treble sounds are unaltered (flat response). On Iriver players, the treble may be boosted, but not lowered. Treble boost may be set from 0 to 8 dB (6dB on iRiver H1xx) in increments of 2 dB.

Balance

The Balance control determines whether the sound level is equal in both channels, or 'panned' to either the left or right. The Balance control works by determining how much of the volume is generated by the left or right channel of the sound. The default, 0, means that the left and right outputs are equal in volume. Negative numbers increase the volume of the left channel relative to the right, while positive numbers increase the volume of the right channel relative to the left.

Channels

This option controls the on-board mixing facilities of your player. A stereo audio signal consists of two channels, left and right. Available options are:

Stereo	Do not mix the signal.
Mono Left	Plays the left channel in both stereo channels
Karaoke	Removes all sound that is the same in both channels. Since most vocals are recorded in this way to make the artist sound central, this often (but not always) has the effect of removing the voice track from a song.
Mono Right	Plays the right channel in both stereo channels.
Mono	Mix both channels down to mono and send the mixed signal back to both.
Stereo Narrow	Mixes small amounts of the opposite channel into the left and right channels, thus making the sound seem closer together.
Stereo Wide	Elements of one channel that are present in the opposite channel are removed from the latter. This results in the sound seeming further apart.

Note: The above Channel features are available but not confirmed as working yet on iriver.

Stereo Width

This option controls the perceived '*width*' of the sound. The larger the value chosen, the '*wider*' the sound seems. If you imagine having two speakers, increasing the Stereo width sounds similar to placing the speakers further apart. The larger the value set, the larger the time difference heard between the left and right channels. The default setting is 100%.

General Settings

Playback

This menu is for configuring settings related to audio playback.

Shuffle

Options:

Yes	Shuffles the contents of current directory or playlist
No	Does not shuffle the contents of the current directory or playlist

Repeat

This menu is for configuring settings related to repeating of directories or playlists.

Options:

Off	Current directory or playlist is not repeated.
One	Repeat the current song.
All	Repeat the current directory or playlist.
Shuffle	When the current directory or playlist has finished playing, it will be shuffled and then repeated.

Play Selected First

This setting controls what happens when you press PLAY on a file in a directory and shuffle mode is on.

Options:

| Yes | The file you selected will be played first.

No	A random file in the directory will be played first.

Resume on Startup

Sets whether Rockbox will resume playing at the point where you shut off.

Options:

Yes	On startup, the jukebox automatically resumes playing at the point where it was last stopped.
No	On startup, the jukebox does not automatically resume.

Earlier versions of Rockbox had an "Ask" setting, which would ask whether to resume when the jukebox was turned on. This setting has been eliminated because it was redundant. If resume is set to "No," simply pressing PLAY (iriver) or On (Archos) will resume from the point where the jukebox was stopped before shutdown.

FFwd/Rewind

FF/RW Min Step

The smallest step, in seconds, you want to fast forward or rewind in a track. Options are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45, or 60 seconds.

FF/RW Accel

How fast you want search (ffwd/rew) to accelerate when you hold down the button.

Options:

Off	No acceleration during fast forward or rewind.
2x/1s	The search speed will double once for every second the button is held.
2x/5s	The search speed will double once for every 5 seconds the button is held.

iriver H1xx: The iriver series H1xx has options to set doubling of search speed between every 1and 10 seconds, in increment of 1 second.

Anti-Skip Buffer

This setting allows you to control how much music is stored in the player's memory whilst playing a song, acting as a buffer against shock or playback problems.

On Archos, this can be set to a value between 0 and 7 seconds. On the iriver H1xx series, the anti-skip buffer can be set to various values between 5 seconds and 10 minutes.

The player transfers the selected amount of the forthcoming song into its memory at high speed whilst you are playing the song. It keeps a 'rolling' buffer, i.e. keep feeding more of the forthcoming song into memory as it goes along. In the event of the player being knocked, shaken or jogged heavily, Rockbox might not be able to read the hard disk. Rockbox will retry over and over again until it succeeds, but may eventually reach the end of the memory buffer and has to stop playing while waiting for more data from the disk. The anti-skip setting tells Rockbox how much extra buffer memory to spare to handle this situation. This setting therefore allows you to reduce the chances of there being a gap or pause during playback of songs, at the expense of using less memory for the regular buffering.

Recommendations

Having a large anti-skip buffer tends to use more power, and may reduce your battery life. It is recommended to always use the lowest possible setting that allows correct and continuous playback.

Fade on Stop/Pause

This setting enables and disables a fade effect when you pause or stop playing a song.

Options:

Yes	Your music will fade from your set volume down to zero when you press STOP or PAUSE.
No	Your music will not fade out when you press STOP or PAUSE.

Crossfade (Iriver H1xx series only)

This setting enables a cross-fader. At the end of a song, the song will fade out as the next song fades in, creating a smooth transition between songs.

The crossfade setting is particularly effective when the player is set on shuffle.

Crossfade duration (iriver H1xx series only)

This allows you to set the length of the cross-fade between songs. You can choose between 1,2,4,6,8,10,12 and 14 seconds for the cross-fade duration.

Replaygain (iriver H1xx series only)

This allows you to control the replaygain function. The purpose of replaygain is to adjust the volume of the played songs so that they are equally loud, to avoid sudden changes in volume when changing between songs recorded at different volume levels. For this to work, the songs must have been processed by a program that adds replaygain information (usually as tags).

Enable replaygain

This turns on/off the replaygain function.

Options:

Yes	Turns ON replaygain
No	Turns OFF replaygain

Prevent clipping

Avoid clipping of a song's waveform. If a song would clip turing playback, the volume is lowered for that song. Replaygain information is needed for this to work.

Options:

Yes	Prevent clipping of songs with replaygain information
No	Allow clipping of songs

Replaygain type

Choose the type of replaygain to apply.

Options:

Album gain	Maintain a constant volume level between tracks, but keep any intentional volume variations between songs in an album. If this information is not available, use track gain.
Track gain	Maintain a constant volume level between tracks. This works best when playing songs randomly.

Pre-amp

This allows you to adjust the volume when replaygain is applied. Replaygain often lowers the volume, sometimes quite much, so here you can compensate for that. Please note that a (large) positive pre-amp setting can cause clipping, unless prevent clipping is enabled. The pre-amp can be set to any decibel (dB) value between -12dB and +12dB, in increments of 0.1dB.

Beep volume (iriver H1xx series only)

This allows you to set the volume of the beep heard when skipping forward or backward between tracks.

Options:

Off	Turn off the beep
Weak	Low volume beep
Moderate	Medium volume beep
Strong	Loud beep

Optical output (iriver H1xx series only)

Enable/disable optical SPDIF output.

Options:

On	Optical output is enabled.
Off	Optical output is disabled.

ID3 tag priority

Choose which ID3 tag to use if both are present.

Options:

V2 then V1	Uses the V2 tag if present, else the V1 tag
V1 then V2	Uses the V1 tag if present, else the V2 tag

Move to Next Folder

If set to "Yes," when playback of a playlist or folder ends, Rockbox will create and play a new playlist of the next folder in the browser.

Options:

Yes	Move to the next folder when the current folder is finished playing.
No	Do not move to the next folder when the current folder is finished playing.

In order for the "Move to Next Folder" option to be effective, the "Repeat" option must be set to "Off."

Once you have reached the last folder on your player, this function will not loop and go back to the first folder again. It therefore only works up until you are in the last folder.

Gather runtime data (experimental)

If set to yes, rockbox will track playcount for the runtime DB

File view

This menu deals with options relating to how the file browser displays files.

Sort Case Sensitive

If this option is enabled, files that start with a lower case letter will appear after the files that start with an upper case letter have all been listed. If disabled, then case will be ignored when sorting files.

Sort Directories

This option controls how Rockbox sorts folders.

Options:

Alphabetical (default)	Sorts folders alphabetically.
By date	Sorts folders in date order with the oldest folder first.
By newest date	Sorts folders in date order with the newest folder first.

Sort Files

This option controls how Rockbox sorts files.

Options:

Alphabetical (default)	Sorts files alphabetically.
By date	Sorts files in date order with the oldest folder first.
By newest date	Sorts files in date order with the newest folder first.
By type	Sorts files alphabetically by their type (such as .mp3) then alphabetically within each type.

Show Files

Controls which files are displayed in the directory browser.

Options:

Music	Only directories and supported audio files (e.g., .mp3, .mp2, .mpa, .m3u, etc.) files are shown. Extensions on the files shown are stripped. Files and directories starting with "." or with the "hidden" flag set are hidden.
Playlists	Only shows directories and playlists, for simplified navigation.
ID3 database	For use with the ID3 database
Supported	All directories and files Rockbox understands are shown. Files and directories starting with "." or with the "hidden" flag set are hidden.
All	All files and directories are shown. File extensions are shown. No files or directories are hidden regardless of their attributes.

A useful tutorial can be found on this Mistic River thread.

Follow Playlist

Determines where you go if you go to the directory browser from the While Playing Screen.

Options:

Yes	When you enter the directory browser from the WPS, you will find yourself in the same directory as the currently playing file.
No	When you enter the directory browser from the WPS, you will stay in the same directory as you were last in.

Show Icons

This indicates whether Rockbox will display an icon representing what type a file is on the left of the file in the browser.

Icons are only shown against supported file types.

Display

Browse fonts

Browse the fonts that reside in your /.rockbox directory. Selecting one will activate it. See the fonts page for further details about fonts.

Browse .wps files

Opens the file browser in the /.rockbox directory and displays all .wps files. Selecting one will activate it, stop will exit back to the menu. For further information about the WPS see How to Make a Custom WPS.

LCD Settings

This submenu contains settings that relate to the display of the player.

Backlight

The amount of time the backlight shines after a key press. If set to "Off," the backlight will not light when a button is pressed. If set to "On," the backlight will never shut off. If set to a time (1 to 90 seconds), the backlight will stay lit for that amount of time after a button press.

Backlight on When Plugged

If set to 'Yes,' the backlight will stay on constantly while the charger cable is connected to a power source.

Caption Backlight

This option turns the backlight on for 25 seconds on either side of the start of a new track so that the display can be read to see song information.

Backlight fade in

The amount of time that the backlight will take to fade from off to on after a button is pressed. If set to "Off" the backlight will turn on immediately, with no fade in. Can also be set to 500ms, 1s or 2s.

Backlight fade out

The amount of time that the backlight will take to fade from on to off after a button is pressed. If set to "Off" the backlight will turn off immediately, with no fade out. Can also be set to 500kms, 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s or 10s.

Contrast

Changes the contrast of your LCD display. Warning: Setting the contrast too dark or too light can make it hard to find this menu option again!

LCD Mode (Recorder and iriver only)

This setting lets you invert the colour of the whole screen, so now you get a black background and light text graphics.

Upside Down

Displays the screen so that the top of the display is nearest the buttons. This is sometimes useful when carrying the jukebox on a belt clip, or (on the Recorder) in a pocket for easy access to the headphone socket.

Line Selector

Select this option to have a bar of inverted text ('Bar' option) mark the current line in the File Browser rather than the default arrow to the left ('Pointer' option). This gives slightly more room for filenames.

Remote-LCD Settings (Iriver series H1xx only)

Controls remote control settings.

Backlight

Sets the time before the backlight fades out.

Contrast

Adjust the remote LCD contrast.

LCD Mode

Sets the remote LCD to normal or 'inverse' LCD view (white text on black background or vice versa)

Upside Down

Inverts the entire remote screen so it is upside down.

Scrolling

This allows you to set options controlling the scrolling of text on your players display. Text will only scroll if it is too large to fit on the screen, as might be seen with very long song or file names.

Scroll Speed

You can choose speeds between 0 and 15. The higher your choice, the faster the text will scroll across the screen. How well you can view fast-scrolling text will depend on the resolution of your screen.

Scroll Start Delay

This sets how long a delay is seen before text begins to scroll. Settings are between 0 and 2500ms, in increments of 100ms.

Scroll Step Size

This sets how many pixels the text is displaced across the screen each time it scrolls. Options are between 1 and 160. A higher setting will make the scrolling look more jerky, especially if used with small fonts.

Bidirectional Scroll limit

When scrolling a line, Rockbox can either scroll continuously to the left or scroll to the left until the end of the line is reached and then back until the beginning of the line is displayed at the left edge again. The Bidirectional Scroll limit determines how much longer than the display the scrolling line has to be, to switch from bidirectional scrolling to continuous scrolling. Setting it to 0% switches off bidirectional scrolling completely.

Status-/Scrollbar

Allows you to change settings controlling the built in Status and Scroll bars.

Scroll Bar

This sets whether or not a scroll bar is seen on the left of your player's display if the files listed are too many to fit on the screen.

Options:

Yes	Turns the scroll bar ON
No	Turns the scroll bar OFF

Status Bar

This sets whether or not a Status bar is seen at the top of your player's display. The Status bar includes a Battery Status and Charging indicator, Volume indicator and Mode (STOP,PLAY, PAUSE) indicator.

Options:

Yes	Turns the Status bar ON
No	Turns the Status bar OFF

Many Custom WPS screens (See this link) require this to be turned off to be viewed correctly.

Volume display

With the Status Bar turned ON, this allows you to change how the Volume indicator is shown.

Options:

Graphic	The Volume indicator is shown in a graphical form
Numeric	The Volume indicator is shown in numeric form (Range: 0 to 100, where 100 is full volume)

Battery display

With the Status Bar turned ON, this allows you to change how the Battery indicator is shown.

Options:

Graphic	The Battery indicator is shown in a graphical form
Numeric	The Battery indicator is shown in numeric form (Range: 0 to 100, where 100 is full charged)

Peak Meter

The peak meter can be displayed on the While Playing Screen. The peak meter allows you to view the level of a song being played back using several indicators:

The bar	This is the wide horizontal bar. It represents the current volume value.
The peak indicator	This is a little vertical line at the right end of the bar. It indicates the peak volume value that occurred recently.
The clip indicator	This is a little black block that is displayed at the very right of the scale when an overflow occurs. It usually doesn't show up during normal playback unless you play an audio file that is distorted heavily. If you encounter clipping while recording your recording will sound distorted. You should lower the gain. Note that the clip detection is not very precise. Clipping might occur without being indicated.
The scale	Between the indicators of the right and left channel there are little dots. These dots represent important volume values. In linear mode each dot is a 10% mark. In dbfs mode the dots represent the following values (from right to left): 0db, -3db, -6db, -9db, -12db, -18db, -24db, -30db, -40db, -50db, -60db.

The peak meter has several configurable options.

Peak Release

This determines how fast the bar shrinks when the music becomes softer. Lower values make the peak meter look smoother. Value range is 1 to 126.

Peak Hold Time

Specifies the time after which the peak indicator will reset. If you set this value to 5s, for example, then the peak indicator displays the loudest volume value that occurred within the last 5 seconds. Big values are good if you want to find the peak level of a song, which might be of interest when copying music from the jukebox via the analogue output to some other recording device.

Clip Hold Time

This controls how long the clipping indicator will be visible after clipping is detected.

Scale

Determines whether the peak meter displays linear or logarithmic values. In 'dB' (decibel) scale the volume values are scaled logarithmically. This very similar to the perception of loudness. The volume meters of digital audio devices usually are scaled this way. If you are interested in the power level that is applied to your headphones you should choose 'linear' display. Unfortunately this value does not have real units like volts or watts since that depends on the phones. So they can only be displayed as percentage values.

Options:

Linear(%)	Use a linear scale for displaying volume in the peak meter.
Logarithmic(dB)	Use a logarithmic scale, based on the track dB level for displaying volume in the peak meter.

Mimimum Of Range

The Minimum of Range and Maximum of Range options define the full value range that the peak meter displays. Recommended values for dbFs are -40 for min. and 0 for maximum. For linear display, use 0 and 100%. Note that -40 dbFs is approximately 1% in linear value, but if you change the minimum setting in linear mode slightly and then change to dbFs there will be a large change. You can use these values for 'zooming' into the peak meter.

On iriver, this is currently fixed on 0% and cannot be changed.

Maximum Of Range

Controls the maximum volume level to display on the Peak Meter. See "Minimum of Range" above.

Bidi Hebrew/Arabic

Controls Bidirectional text display support for use with Hebrew and Arabic languages.

Options:

Yes	Turns ON the bidirectional support for Hebrew/Arabic
No	Turns OFF the bidirectional support for Hebrew/Arabic

System

Controls certain system setting for your player.

Battery

Options relating to the batteries in the jukebox unit.

Battery Capacity

Capacity can be used to tell the jukebox what capacity (in mAh) of battery is being used inside it. This value is used for calculating remaining battery life.

Default values are:

Battery type	Default value	Applicable jukeboxes
NiMH	1500mAh	Archos Studio, Archos Recorder v1
Li-Ion	2300mAh	Archos FM Recorder, Archos Recorder v2
Lithium Polymer	1300mAh	iriver H1xx series

These values correspond to the battery shipped with each unit.

For additional information, refer to the Battery FAQ for NiMH batteries or the Battery FAQ for Lithium Ion batteries. Deep discharge (all supported Archos jukeboxes except FM Recorder) This option has been removed in Rockbox 2.5 because the charging algorithm now makes it unnecessary.

Set this to ON if you intend to keep your charger connected for a long period of time. It lets the batteries go down to 10% before starting to charge again. Setting this to OFF will cause the charging to restart on 95%. Trickle Charge (all supported Archos jukeboxes except FM Recorder) This option has been removed in Rockbox 2.5 because the charging algorithm now makes it unnecessary.

The jukebox cannot be turned off while the charger is connected. Therefore, trickle charge is needed to keep the batteries full after charging has completed. For more in depth information about charging see the Battery FAQ for NiMH batteries or the Battery FAQ for Lithium Ion batteries.

Disk

Options relating to the hard disk.

Disk Spindown

Rockbox has a timer that makes it spin down the hard disk after being idle for a certain time. You can modify this timeout here. This idle time is only affected by user activity, like navigating through file browser. When the hard disk spins up to fill mp3 buffer, it automatically spins down afterwards. This can be set to any value between 3s and 254s, in increments of 1s. The higher this Disk Spindown setting, the longer your disk will continue to spin when the drive is not being accessed. This enhances performance, as the disk does not need to start up again before allowing you to continue browsing. However, having a high setting does use more power. Use a lower setting for better battery life, especially if you don't mind waiting a second for the disk to spin up again before the player responds!

Disk Power Off (all supported Archos jukeboxes except Recorder v2 and FM Recorder)

This setting controls whether the disk is powered OFF or only set to 'sleep' when spun down. Power off uses less power but takes longer to spin-up.

Enable directory cache

Currently this option is available for iRiver players only (not in CVS yet). If enabled, player will build a cache from the complete file system structure (including directory and file names) to allow fast browsing inside the file browser without need to wait for the disk to spin up. Rebooting the player is required to turn this option on.

Rebuild cache on startup

By default on every system boot (or immediately after USB connection) the cache is temporarily disabled and transparent background cache rebuilding is started. However, when this option is turned on no cache resyncing will be done on system boot but the cache is loaded directly from hard disk from the state where it was the player previously was shut off. This means that if user knows for sure he/she is not going to use bootloader USB mode to transfer new files to the hard disk, this option can be set on to skip the cache rebuilding and thus increasing the battery life. There should be no risk of losing data even if the cache is out-of-sync because only file tree browser uses the cache and low level file system functions never uses it directly. On possible error situations the cache is automatically disabled on the fly.

Time and Date (Archos Recorder Only)

This setting controls time related menu options.

Options:

Set Time/Date

Set current time and date.

Time Format

Choose 12 or 24 Hour clock.

Idle Poweroff

Rockbox can be configured to turn off power after the unit has been idle for a defined number of minutes. The unit is idle when playback is stopped or paused. It is not idle while the USB or charger is connected, or while recording. Can be set anywhere between 1 and 10s or to 15s, 30s, 45s and 60s. Can also be set OFF.

Sleep Timer

This option lets you power off your jukebox after playing for a given time. This setting is reset on boot. Using this option disables the Wake up alarm (see below). Can be set between 15 minutes (Displayed as 00:15) up to 5 hours (Displayed as 05:00), in increments of 15 minutes. Can also be set OFF.

Wake up alarm (Archos Recorder v2/FM only)

This option turns the jukebox off and then starts it up again at the specified time. This is most useful when combined with the Resume on Startup setting set to 'Yes,' so that the jukebox wakes up and immediately starts playing music.

Buttons:

LEFT and RIGHT	Adjust the minutes setting.
UP and DOWN	Adjust the HOURS.
PLAY	Confirms the alarm and shuts your jukebox down.
STOP	Cancels setting an alarm.

If the jukebox is turned on again before the alarm occurs, the alarm will be canceled.

Using this option disables the Sleep Timer.

Limits

This submenu relates to limits in the Rockbox operating system.

Max files in dir browser

Configurable limit of files in the directory browser (file buffer size). You can configure the size to be between 50 and 10000 files in increments of 50 files. The default is 400. Higher values will shorten the music buffer.

Note: the device must be rebooted for settings to take effect!

Max playlist size

Option to configure the maximum size of a playlist. The playlist size can be between 1000 and 20000 files in increments of 1000. By default it is 10000. Higher values will shorten the music buffer.

Note: the device must be rebooted for settings to take effect!

Car Adapter Mode

This option turns on and off the car ignition auto stop function.

When using the jukebox in a car, car adapter mode automatically stops playback on the jukebox when power (i.e., from cigarette lighter power adapter) to the external DC in jack is turned off. When the external power off condition is detected, the Car Adapter Mode function only pauses the playback. In order to shut down the jukebox completely the Idle Poweroff function must also be set. If power to the DC in jack is turned back on before the Idle Poweroff function has shut the jukebox off, playback will be resumed 5 seconds after the power is applied. This delay is to allow for the time while the car engine is being started. Once the jukebox is shut off either manually, or automatically with the Idle Poweroff function, it must be powered up manually to resume playback.

See here for further information.

Options:

Yes	Turns ON Car adaptor mode
No	Turns OFF Car adaptor mode

Line In (Archos Player only)

This option activates the line in port on Jukebox Player, which is off by default. This is useful for such applications as:

* Game boy -> jukebox -> human * Laptop -> jukebox ->human * LAN party computer -> jukebox -> human

Bookmarking

Bookmarks allow you to save your current position within a track so that you can return to it at a later time.

Bookmarks are saved on a per folder basis. In other words, all of the files in the same folder have their bookmarks stored together. You can store multiple bookmarks for the same track.

Bookmark on Stop

Write a bookmark to the disk whenever the stop key is pressed. If playback is stopped it can be resumed easily at a later time. The Resume function remembers your position in the most recently accessed track regardless of this setting.

Options:

No	Turns OFF automatic bookmarking
Yes	Turns ON automatic bookmarking
Ask	Causes a prompt to be displayed whenever you press Stop, asking if you wish to 'Create a bookmark'

Load Last Bookmark

When this is on, Rockbox automatically returns to the position of the last bookmark within a file when it is played. If set to Ask, Rockbox will ask the user whether they want to start from the beginning or the bookmark. When set to no, playback always starts from the beginning and the Bookmark file must be played or Load Bookmark selected from the Bookmarks submenu of the Main Menu while the file is playing

Maintain a List of Recent Bookmarks

If this option is turned on, Rockbox will store a list of Bookmarks that have been accessed recently. This is then accessible from the Recent Bookmarks option of the Bookmarks submenu of the Main Menu.

Language

This setting controls the language of the Rockbox user interface. Select this option to bring up a list of installed languages. Select a language to activate it. The language files must be in the /.rockbox/lang/ directory.

Voice

Controls the Voice User Interface, implemented predominantly for blind users, to help in navigating through menus and files. In simple terms, this makes RockBox speak your folder or filenames to you.

Voice Menus

This option turns on the Voice User Interface, which will read out menu items and settings as they are selected by the cursor. In order for this to work, a voice file must be present in the /.rockbox/lang/ directory on the recorder. Voice files are large (1.5MB) and are not shipped with Rockbox by default. The voice file is the name of the language for which it is made, followed by the extension .voice. So for English, the file name would be english.voice. This option is ON by default. It will do nothing unless the appropriate .voice file is installed in the correct place on the jukebox.

Limitations

* Setting the Sound Option Channels to 'karaoke' may disable voice menus. * Plug-ins and the wake up alarm do not support voice features.

'How To' for using Voice Interface

Download Voice Files

Voice Directories

This option turns on the speaking of directory names. The jukebox is not powerful enough to produce these voices in real time, so a number of options are available:

.talk mp3 clip	Use special pre-recorded MP3 files (_dirname.talk) in each directory. These must be generated in advance, and are typically produced synthetically using a text to speech engine on a PC. If no such file exists, the output is as for the 'numbers' option below.
Spell	Speak the directory name by spelling it out letter by letter. Support is provided only for the most common letters and punctuation.
Numbers	Each directory is assigned a number based upon its position in the file list. They are then announced as 'Directory 1', 'Directory 2' etc.
Off	No attempt will be made to speak directory names.

Voice Filenames

This option turns on the speaking of file names. The options are similar to Voice Directories:

.talk mp3 clip	Use special pre-recorded MP3 files in each directory. These must be generated in advance, and are typically produced synthetically using a text to speech engine on a PC. The clip must have the same name as the music file with the .talk extension (e.g. Punkadiddle.mp3 would require a file called Punkadiddle.mp3.talk). If no such file exists, the output is as for the 'numbers' option below.
Spell	Speak the file name by spelling it out letter by letter. Support is provided only for the most common letters and punctuation.
Numbers	Each file is assigned a number based upon its position in the file list. They are then announced as 'File 1', 'File 2' etc.
Off	No attempt will be made to speak directory names.

See http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/VoiceHowto for more details on configuring speech support in Rockbox.

Manage Settings

Allows you to load or save system configuration files. On Archos jukeboxes, this menu also allows you to load or save different firmware versions.

Browse .cfg files

Opens the file browser in the /.rockbox directory and displays all .cfg (configuration) files. Selecting one will activate it, stop will exit back to the menu. See the Write .cfg files option on the Manage Settings menu for details of how to save and edit a configuration file.

Browse Firmwares

Reset Settings

Resets all configuration settings back to their default values.

Write .cfg file

This option writes a Rockbox configuration file to your jukebox's hard disk. The configuration file has the ".cfg" extension and is used to store all of the user settings that are described throughout this manual.

A configuration file may reside anywhere on the hard disk. Multiple configuration files are permitted. So, for example, you could have a car.cfg file for the settings that you use while playing your jukebox in your car, and a headphones.cfg file to store the settings that you use while listening to your jukebox through headphones.

The Rockbox configuration file is a plain text file, so once you use the "Write .cfg file" option to create the file, you can edit the file on your computer using any text editor program. Configuration files use the following formatting rules:

* Each setting must be on a separate line. * Each line has the format "setting: value". Values must be within the ranges specified in this manual for each setting. * Lines starting with # are ignored. This lets you write comments into your configuration files.

Configuration files may be loaded using the Browse .cfg files option on the Manage Settings menu.

Configuration files do not need to contain all of the Rockbox options. You can create configuration files that change only certain settings. So, for example, you could create configuration files that control only the bass boost and treble boost functions. Create a few different files with different bass and treble settings, give each file a different name (such as EQ_Normal.cfg, EQ_Bassboost.cfg, etc.), and you can then use the Browse .cfg files option to select EQ presets!

FM Radio (FM Recorder, Ondio FM, iriver*)

This menu option switches to the radio screen:

fm_screenshot.png

The keys are:

BUTTON	FUNCTION
LEFT, RIGHT	Change frequency in 0.1 MHz steps. For automatic station seek, hold LEFT/RIGHT for a little longer.
UP, DOWN	Change volume
PLAY (EXPERIMENTAL)	Freezes all screen updates, may enhance radio reception in some cases.
ON	Leave the radio screen with the radio playing
OFF	Back to main menu

The FM radio has the ability to record and to remember station frequency settings (presets). As noted above, preset and recording features are not yet implemented on iriver.

* Saving a preset. You can save your favourite stations in the 32 presets. Press F1 to go to the menu, then select "Save preset". Enter the name (maximum number of characters is 32).

* Selecting a preset. Press F2 to go to the preset list. Use UP and DOWN to move the cursor and then press PLAY to select. Use LEFT to leave the preset without selecting anything.

* Removing a preset. Press F1 to go to the menu, then select "Remove preset".

* Recording. Press F3 to start recording the currently playing station. Press OFF to stop recording. Press PLAY again to seamlessly start recording to a new file. The settings for the recording can be changed in the F1 menu before starting the recording.

Note: On Archos models, the radio will turn off when playing an MP3. As recording is currently implemented on iriver, the radio will continue to play if an audio file is started during radio play. To turn off the radio, return to the radio screen and press STOP.

Recording (not yet implemented on iriver)

Despite this not being officialy implemented yet, initial testing of FM (radio) recording on the iriver H1xx series has been successful (See this topic thread on MisticRiver for more information).

Playlist Options

The Playlist Options menu allows you to work with playlists. Playlists can either be created automatically by playing a file in a directory directly, which will cause all of the files in that directory to be placed in the playlist, or they can be created by hand using the File Menu or using the Playlist Options menu. Both automatic and manually created playlists can be edited using this menu.

iriver users: See IriverPlaylistInstructions for detailed instructions on creating, editing and saving an on-the-fly playlist.

Create Playlist

This option creates a playlist with all tracks in the current directory and all subdirectories. The playlist will be created one folder level "up" from where you currently are. If you are in the root directory when you select the 'create playlist' option, Rockbox will create a playlist of all tracks on the player, and that playlist will be place in the root directory.

View Current Playlist

Displays the contents of the playlist currently stored in memory.

Save Current Playlist

Saves the current dynamic playlist, excluding queued tracks, to the specified file. If no path is provided then playlist is saved to current directory

Recursively Insert Directory

If set to ON then when you insert/queue a directory in Dynamic Playlist, all subdirectories will also be inserted. If set to ASK then you are prompted about recursive insertion when inserting a directory.

Browse Plugins

Rockbox features a plug-in concept. Only one plug-in may be running at a time. This menu item allows you to browse the various plug-ins that are available for Rockbox. For more information on which plug-ins are available on each supported platform, please see the Plug In page of the WikiManual.

Info

This option shows MP3 ram buffer size, battery voltage level and estimated time remaining, disk total space and disk free space. On iriver, press UP and DOWN on the joystick to step through several pages of information. On Archos Players use the MINUS and PLUS keys to step through several pages of information.

Show ID3 info

This is an alternative way to access the ID3 viewer.

Rockbox Info

Displays some basic system information. This is, from top to bottom, the amount of memory Rockbox has available for storing music (the buffer), battery status, hard disk size and the amount of free space on the disk.

Version

Software version and credits display.

Debug (Keep Out!)

This submenu is intended to be used only by Rockbox developers. It shows hardware, disk, battery status and a lot of other information. It is not recommended that users access this menu unless instructed to do so in the course of fixing a problem with Rockbox. In particular the 'Dump ROM Contents,' 'View/clear RTC RAM' and 'Screenshot' and 'Sound test' functions should be treated with care.

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MichaelDiFebbo - 23 Aug 2005

(Loaded back into Wiki by EdSolman Sept 2005)