What is Rockbox? Why should I use it?

Rockbox is an open source firmware replacement for a growing number of digital audio players. It has been in development since 2001 and receives new features, tweaks and fixes every day to provide you with the best possible music listening experience. Rockbox aims to be considerably more functional and efficient than your device's stock firmware while remaining easy to use and customizable. It is a goal to not only offer a wide range of functionality, but where possible make sure that this functionality is presented in a consistent manner that is easy to learn and use. It is written by users, for users.

Another top priority of Rockbox is audio playback quality. Rockbox, for most models, includes a wider range of sound settings than that device's original firmware. A lot of work has been put into making Rockbox sound the best it can, and improvements are constantly being made. All models have access to a large number of plugins, including many games, applications, and graphical demos.

You can load different configurations quickly for different purposes (e.g. a large font for in your car, different sound settings for at home). You can even customize your While Playing Screen to display only and exactly what you want to see when your music is playing. In addition, Rockbox features a wide range of languages, and all supported models also have the ability to talk to you - menus can be voiced and filenames spelled out or spoken.

---

Key Features of Rockbox

Feature	Archos models	iriver models	iPod models	iAudio models	Gigabeat models	All Newer Targets
Support for over 30 Sound Codecs, including Ogg Vorbis and FLAC	MP3 and WAV only (hardware limited)
Gapless playback	(with lame -nogap)
10-band fully-parametric equalizer, and crossfeed	Not possible
High-resolution volume control, 64-100 levels (model-dependent)
Ability to create your own themes or use user-uploaded ones
Advanced crossfading	Not possible
ReplayGain support (volume normalization)	Not yet implemented
Cuesheet support
Album Art Support	Not possible
JPEG image and text-file viewing
Doom!	Not possible
MPEG video support	Not possible, but custom video playback
Real Time Clock (RTC)	(Recorders)	(H3x0, modded H1x0)		(X5(L), M5(L))
Customizable Tag Database
Unicode support
Advanced On-The-Go playlist creation
Multilingual Interface - 30 supported languages and counting
Optional spoken interface
Many plugins - games, apps, and demos
Open Source, so Rockbox is constantly improved

---

Learn More About Rockbox

Sounds good, no? Check out the Buyer's Guide for information on player availability, pricing, and so on. Want to learn more about Rockbox before diving in? The wiki and the technical forums are good places to get your feet wet and the glossary might help you understand the common terms a little better. If you run into problems along the way, chances are that your questions can be answered by searching the Rockbox manual or taking a look at the port page for your player. Have fun!

---