Firmware Feature Comparison Chart

This document is historical and mostly out of date!

These charts compare Rockbox with the original firmwares as shipped by the manufacturers of the digital audio player/recorders. The Rockbox column usually indicates generally available features, but may specify features only available in SVN and daily builds. Numbers in (parentheses) refer to footnotes. Click on the hypertext link to view.

Generic features

Feature	Rockbox Open Source aftermarket firmware	Archos proprietary stock firmware	iRiver proprietary stock h1x0 firmware	Most current SanDisk Sansa e2x0 firmware
Number of available languages	24	3	2	17
Speaking Menus Support	Yes	No	No	No
Easy to use User Interface	Yes	No	No	Yes
Boot Time from Flash (in seconds)	4	8-12	13-60 (5)	4-8
Open source development process	Yes	No	No	No
History of correcting reported bugs via firmware update releases	Yes, the rockbox project (all targets combined) has produced a total of 30720 updates via SVN and volunteer effort as of 5 Oct 2011.	No	No or very slooowly	No; but adds new bugs randomly until product enters End of Life.
FM Tuner support (FM Recorder/iriver)	Yes	Yes	Yes (4)	Yes
FM Tuner playback	Yes	Yes	Yes	US/Japan FM bands
Supported FM recording file formats	.MP3 @ (range) bps .WAV @ (range) bps .AIFF @ (range) bps .WV @ (range) bps	Archos=Yes but which Formats + supported bitrate range	iRiver=Yes but which Formats + supported bitrate range	e280v1: wav 512k bps e280v2: wav 768k bps
FFmpeg recognized codec for FM recording files	mp3 pcm_s16le aiff wv	Archos=?	iRiver=?	pcm_s16le e280v1:16k sample Hz e280v2: 24k sample Hz
Naming of FM channels	Yes	?	No	No
ID3v1 support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
ID3v2 support	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Background noise during playback	No	Yes	No	No
Mid-track resume	Yes	No	Sometimes (1)	Sometimes (1)
Mid-playlist resume	Yes	No	Sometimes (1)	Sometimes (1)
Resumed playlist order	Yes	No	Sometimes (1)	Sometimes (1)
Playback Battery lifetime (archos target)	Longer	Long
Playback Battery lifetime (iriver target)	19-21 hours	?	14-16
Playback Battery lifetime (Sansa e2x0)	19-21 hours	?	?	14-16
OGG Playback Battery duration	?	?	?	?
Voice Record Battery duration	?	?	?	?
FM Record Battery duration	?	?	?	?
Battery time indicator	Yes	No	No	Visual Percentage
Customizable font (Recorder/iriver)	Yes	No	No	No
Customizable screen info when playing songs	Yes	No	No	No
USB attach/detach without reboot	Yes	No	Yes	Sometimes (19)
Can load another firmware without rebooting	Yes	No	Not really (1)	No
Playlist load speed, songs/sec	3000 - 4000	15 - 20	30 - 40
Max number of songs in a playlist	20 000	999	999 (2)	200
Max filename length of song in playlist	260	?	52
Supports bad path prefixes in playlists	Yes	Yes	No
Automatic Volume Control (Recorder)	Yes	No	No	No
Volume triggered recording (Recorder)	Yes	No	Yes	No
Pitch control (Recorder)	Yes	No	Yes (limited)	No
Text File Reader	Yes	Yes	Yes (limited)	No
Games (Bitmap LCD)	8	No	No	No
Games (Player)	2	No	N/A	No
File Delete	Yes	Yes	Partial (6)	Yes
File Rename	Yes	Yes	No	No
Playlist Building	Yes	Yes	No	Yes - only one playlist
Recording (Recorder/iriver)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes - Partial/Bad
Generates XING VBR header when recording	Yes	Yes	N/A - records CBR only	N/A - records WAV only
High Resolution Volume Control	Yes, 84 steps	No	Yes, 40 steps	Yes, 30 steps
Customizable backlight timeout	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Backlight-on when charging option	Yes	No	Yes	No - always on when charging
Backlight fading (iriver?)	Yes	?	No	No
Supports the XING header	Yes	Yes	?
Supports the VBRI header	Partly	Yes	?
Max number of files in a dir	10 000	999	?
Adjustable scroll speed	Yes	No	Yes (but badly)	No
Screensaver style demos	Yes	No	No	No
Variable step / accelerating ffwd and rwd	Yes	No	No
Visual Progress Bar	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Select/Load configs	Yes	No	No	No
Sleep timer	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Remote Control Controllable	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
ISO8859-1 font support (Player)	Yes	No	N/A	No
Queue songs to play next, queue support	Yes	Yes	Yes (3)
Bookmark positions in songs	Yes	No	No	No
Accurate VBR bitrate display	Yes	No	No	No
FF/FR with sound	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Skip to next/previous folder	Yes	?	Yes	N/A
Pre-Recording (Recorders)	Yes	Yes	No
Video Playback with sound (Recorders)	Yes	No	No	Yes

Container and Codec support for Decoding and Playback

Suggestion: Replace the Yes answers in this table with supported bitrates. Thoughts?

Function / Compatibility	Rockbox	iriver H1x0 H3x0	Apple iPod	Toshiba Gigabeat	iAudio X5/M5	Sansa e2x0	Portable Media Players
MP3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	All
WMA	Yes	Yes	No?	Yes	Yes	Yes	All
WMA Pro	Yes	Yes	No?	Yes	Yes	Yes
ASF encapsulated audio	?	?	?	?	?	?	Most
Wav (PCM) Uncompressed	Yes	No	?	No	No	Yes	Most
Wav (ADPCM) Compressed	Yes	No	?	No	No	Yes	Most
WavPack Lossless Compressed	Yes	No	No	No	No	No?
ALAC (Apple Lossless)	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
FLAC Lossless	Yes	No	No	No	Yes (20)	No	Some
OGG/Vorbis Compressed Audio	Yes	Yes (9)	No	No	Yes	No	Many
OGG/SPEEX Voice	?	?	No	?	?	No	Some
AAC in an MP4 container	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
.m4a Audiobook	Yes	?	Yes	?	?	No	Many
.m4b Audiobook	No. (22)	?	Yes	?	?	No
.amr-nb Narrowband Voice	?	?	No	?	?	No	Many
.amr-wb Wideband Voice	?	?	No	?	?	No	Many
AC3(A-52) "Dolby Digital"	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	Some
.ape (Monkey) Audio	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	Some
.3gp (ETSI) Video	No	No	No	No	No	No	Camera

Other features

Feature	Rockbox	iriver H1x0	iriver H3x0	Apple iPod	Toshiba Gigabeat	iAudio X5/M5	Sansa e2x0
Gapless playback	Yes	No (8)	No	Yes	No	No
Crossfade	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Voice UI	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
ReplayGain	Yes	No	No	No (12)	No	No	No
Cuesheet support	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Album art support	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Backlight fade-in/fade-out	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No	No
Video playback	Yes (16)	No	Yes (11)	Yes (13)	No	Yes (18)	Yes
Picture viewing	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Text viewing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Bookmark support for multiple files	Yes	No	No	Yes (14)	Yes	Yes	No
Remote Control Controllable	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Voice/MIC Recording	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
FM Radio Recording	Yes (21)	No	Yes	No	No	Yes (18)	Yes
MP3 Realtime Encoding /record	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
WavPack Realtime Encoding /record	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Proprietary DSP effects	No	SRS WOW	SRS WOW	No	SRS WOW	BBE	No
FF/RW with sound	No	Yes	Yes	?	No	?	Yes
5 Band Parametric Equalizer	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes (17)	Yes
On The Fly Playlists	Yes	No	Yes (7)	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
File Rename	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
File Delete	Yes	Yes (6)	Yes (6)	No	Yes	No	No
Games	Yes	No	Yes (10)	Yes (15)	No	No	No

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Have you detected something here that is incorrect? Feel free to edit this page.

Footnotes:

1. Yes, except after removing from PC or total battery failure.
2. The iRiver firmware will read playlists larger than 999 songs, but will only actually load the first 999 into memory.
3. Only 1 song in queue.
4. No recording.
5. If database scan is on, and some disk fragmentation, a full H140 (6997 tracks on mine with 4MB free) will take up to around a minute to load. Without DB scan, 20 seconds is normal.
6. Functionality limited. Stock iriver firmware can only delete music files while no song is currently playing.
7. Limited to 100 tracks (added with the 1.31 firmware).
8. The supported 'Gap delete' is something totally different from gapless playback. Gapless playback means to add no pause between the tracks, so that e.g. for a DJ mix split into multiple tracks, the track change is unnoticeable during playback. Gap delete just means cutting silence from the beginning and/or end of the track itself.
9. Not low bitrates - less than 96kbps doesn't appear to work.
10. The 1.31 firmware has a minesweeper game.
11. Stock H3xx firmware is only capable of playing XviD video at 10 fps.
12. iPod has soundcheck, which is similar in purpose to Replaygain.
13. The iPod 5G (aka "iPod Video") is capable of playing MPEG-4 and H.264 format video using dedicated decoding hardware. Other iPod models can not play video.
14. The iPod can do bookmarks for Audible files and audiobooks, but not for other files.
15. There are some games available for purchase.
16. Currently support MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video streams, see PluginMpegplayer.
17. Cowon firmware equalizer is simplified and not fully parametric (only gain is adjustable on an arbitrary non-dB scale).
18. iAudio X5/X5L only.
19. The stock Sansa firmware is capable of MSC and MTP mode. Sansa requires reboot when in MSC mode, and doesn't when using MTP.
20. X5 Notes:The X5 does support FLAC, but not with 48 kHz. And deleting files is possible, but not that easy (switching to USB host mode required).
21. Only on target platforms which actually have FM tuner hardware which is supported by Rockbox. See Buyers Guide note #1 for a list of working FM record targets.
22. The Rockbox WPS currently supports only cover art. Thus both .m4b chapter and PNG support is lacking. Possibly the Mpegplayer extra could be adapted to play/display .m4b Audiobook files.

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