ipods are gapless... - Riovolution

vince 2006-09-30, 23:38 #121

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In reply to post ID 3395

Quote by mrk:
Headphone output? I know that the 5g is the best-sounding full-sized iPod yet, but it still doesn't compare to the Karma, in my eyes. Along the same point, the E4s haven't too much synergy with the iPod, from what I've heard personally.

I'm using Rockbox with the hardware equlizer (there's also a 5 band parametric software eq) and crossfeed. I think it actually sounds better than the Karma when paired with E4s. The interface is slightly confusing, but it's not too bad.

MrCookie989 2006-10-01, 00:30 #122

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Equalizer? Have there been any improvements, third-party or not?
Interface? How does Rockbox compare to the stock firmware? Any other interfaces that work well?
Headphone output? I know that the 5g is the best-sounding full-sized iPod yet, but it still doesn't compare to the Karma, in my eyes. Along the same point, the E4s haven't too much synergy with the iPod, from what I've heard personally

Umm the EQ is the same as far as I can tell (comparing to my friends 4G). There are a few new presets I'm fairly certain, which are supposed to be when using the iPod Hi-Fi Bose dock nonsense. Rockbox does not work on the new iPods yet since there have been several hardware changes (new CPU and so forth). The headphone output on the Nano is pretty comparable to the Karma, at least by my ears. Pretty good stuff overall.

Hehe I didn't expect people to get all worked up over gapless-ness like this. It's nice to know that alot of people on these boards actually give a shit about gapless. I was actually defending the iPod's gapless capabilities, since it does it better than my Karma(s) ever did. There's still room for improvement however.

nudel 2006-10-01, 04:51 #123

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The EQ on the iPod is the only crap thing left about it, IMO. The boosting presets distort ridiculously, the other presets seem to make everything sound like crap, and you have no other options except Off.

There are other things which aren't perfect -- mainly how you get music on the player and how it's organised once on there, which no tag-based player has got right so far (non-issue if you're using Rockbox) -- but the EQ is the only really lame thing now that gapless is sorted out.

Oh, and the Zuma port is too damn easy. :-)

I don't know if things have improved but the software EQ in Rockbox wasn't useable with MP3 or Vorbis when I tried it. It pushed the CPU usage up too high for the player to keep up, resulting in lots of skipping. I think it's fine with lightweight decoders like FLAC, and I'm sure things will improve as things become more optimized and Rockbox starts to take advantage of the 2nd CPU, but if a good EQ is a condition of your purchase then you might want to hold off (or investigate whether the situation is better now -- I am out of touch as I say).

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radish

2006-10-01, 08:36 #124

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Yeah, the EQ sucks and there's a number of issues with the menus & organization. For example, if I go to Podcasts I get a list of all my podcasts, audio & video. Fair enough. But if I play a video one from here I only get the soundtrack - wtf? To actually see the video I have to back out, go to Video, then Video Podcasts, and then play it. Absurd.

And don't even get me started on the website names of Podcasts ending up in my Artists list. And the stupid touch wheel thingy which is about as accurate as typing with mittens on. And the herky-jerky "couple of pixels at a time" scrolling. And the fact that only the first line of the display scrolls. And iTunes. *gggrrrrr*

But it's gapless, holds all my music, and fits well in my pocket. That's all I ever wanted.

nudel 2006-10-01, 09:35 #125

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Hah, yeah, all of those things annoy me as well but, as you say, they're not deal-breakers.

The audio-only thing is so you can listen to the audio without wasting power on the video. I think that's a good idea but they've implemented it in an incredibly stupid way.

(If you set a video's type to "music video", it will appear in your list of music. That's just messy. But I can see that if I was some kind of short-attention-span heathen who listened to and bought single tracks instead of albums then I might want to buy a music video and not have to spend more money buying the audio part of it separately just to save battery life.)

Just did some reading about the EQ and you can apparently avoid the clipping when using the Bass Booster (or similar) by using MP3Gain or AACGain to reduce files by 6db. My ripping/transcoding/syncing process is complex enough without adding that extra hassle, though, so I'm not going to try it. (It sounds like the volume adjustment in iTunes won't prevent clipping as it's applied to the analogue amplifier after the EQ has already screwed everything up in the digital realm.)

I played with the presets some more, though, and the Small Speakers one seems similar to Trebble Reducer but, to me, less muddy. I might try it with the E4cs for a while.

I wish there was a site somewhere or, god-forbid, official information which explained exactly what each of the presets does. Not in terms of "this is good for rock music" (whatever the hell that means) but in terms of a before-and-after frequency response graph or similar.

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fondy44 2006-10-01, 19:10 #126

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I'm not sure how accurate it is, but FWIW, you can open up the EQ menu in iTunes and it gives you a graphical representation of the position of the sliders (if that's what you're asking).

nudel 2006-10-02, 02:16 #127

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Quote by fondy44:
I'm not sure how accurate it is, but FWIW, you can open up the EQ menu in iTunes and it gives you a graphical representation of the position of the sliders (if that's what you're asking).

Thanks! I didn't know about that. That answers my question of how people knew/thought the bass booster needed 6db of headroom when running AACGain.

Strangely, the Small Speakers preset looks like a combination of Bass Booster and Treble Reducer. I wonder why I didn't hear any clipping/distortion with that? Either I wasn't playing the same song and wasn't paying attention or the preset's different on the iPod. Probably the former.

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MrCookie989 2006-10-02, 08:35 #128

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While were on EQs here...does anybody with a Rockbox'd iPod use the EQ on that? If so, is it any good? I don't EQ much, but sometimes I end up having to use crap headphones and like a boost, or when I'm running my Nano to my car stereo.

*Edit* nvm, I just read the above posts!

Einkoro (Administrator) 2006-10-04, 23:55 #129

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In my quest for a black dock I only found the VIVO Black 30gb iPod dock. Apparently the 80Gb doesn't fit.

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luketabor 2006-10-05, 00:23 #130

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So I FINALLY updated my Rockbox installation to the newest version to get the hardware EQ. Any suggestions as to settings for it or should I just go with what sounds good?

Edit: This newer build kicks the shit out of the one I had before. Optimised for the 64mb of ram the 60gig has, and it doesn't skip any more while playing vorbis and going through the menus. I can even run the oscilloscope plugin while playing vorbis now without skipping. Thank God for Rockbox.

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This post was edited on 2006-10-05, 00:36 by luketabor.

LycoLoco 2006-10-05, 10:24 #131

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Luke: That's for the "old" G5s, right?

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luketabor 2006-10-05, 10:36 #132

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Yeah. Oddly enough, Rockbox doesn't support the new 5.5g even though it's confirmed that they have all the same hardware inside them except for the different hard drive. That statement could come from the fact that the new Apple firmware seems to be giving Rockbox trouble. If I had a 5.5g, I'd try installing it anyway. Couldn't hurt.

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nudel 2006-10-05, 12:23 #133

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Quote by Ankle:
In my quest for a black dock I only found the VIVO Black 30gb iPod dock. Apparently the 80Gb doesn't fit.

The Logic3 Universal Dock is black.

Quote by luketabor:
Oddly enough, Rockbox doesn't support the new 5.5g even though it's confirmed that they have all the same hardware inside them except for the different hard drive.

I saw someone on IRC saying the data wasn't in quite the same place on the drive so the bootloader needed changing. Not sure if that's still the case or if there are further problems to overcome.

I guess Apple love breaking 3rd party firmware as much as they love breaking 3rd party iTunes alternatives.

Though it may not be on purpose; not like they guarantee not to break such things. (It does suck that they don't provide an official API for the iTunes DB though.)

Quote by luketabor:
This newer build kicks the shit out of the one I had before. Optimised for the 64mb of ram the 60gig has, and it doesn't skip any more while playing vorbis and going through the menus. I can even run the oscilloscope plugin while playing vorbis now without skipping.

Nice! What's the battery life like these days? Is the hardware EQ the same list of presets as in the Apple firmware, and the same amount of nasty distortion (if you can't be bothered to mp3gain all your files down by 6db), or are Rockbox using it more intelligently? Can you use the software EQ without skipping now? Tried the video playback that's in Rockbox now (or is that not yet in CVS?)?

I'm still rather impressed at what the Rockbox people manage to do on barely documented hardware.

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luketabor 2006-10-05, 13:17 #134

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I haven't used it long enough to make any judgement on the battery life. I don't usually run things down all the way anyway, so I probably will never know. Hardware EQ (from what I can tell) is a 5 band EQ that lets me select from narrow or wide bandwidth, and boost from -10 to +10 db. I haven't messed with the software EQ yet. And I know nothing about Rockbox playing video, though I'd love to look into it.

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vince 2006-10-05, 17:43 #135

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Quote by luketabor:
Hardware EQ (from what I can tell) is a 5 band EQ that lets me select from narrow or wide bandwidth, and boost from -10 to +10 db.

Only the low shelf and high shelf are implemented for now. I have the low shelf set to -6 dB at 135 Hz, high shelf -3 dB at 11.7kHz. I also have the crossfeed turned on to its default settings. I'm using Shure E4s most of the time.

Audio playback skipping should be reduced, if not completely eliminated. The audio playback thread has been prioritized, at the cost of smoothness when navigating through menus.