Rockbox

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the Run–D.M.C. song, see Rock Box.
Rockbox
Rockbox Logo
Main menu using default theme
DeveloperThe Rockbox Project
Written inC, assembly language
Source modelOpen source
Initial releaseJune 2, 2002; 22 years ago (2002-06-02)
Latest release3.15 / November 15, 2019; 4 years ago (2019-11-15)[1]
Latest previewDaily
Repository
Marketing target
digital audio players
PlatformsDigital audio players, various
Default
user interface		GUI
LicenseGNU GPLv2 or later
Official websitewww.rockbox.org

Rockbox is a

retrofit video playback functions on players first released in mid-2000. Rockbox includes a voice-driven user-interface suitable for operation by visually impaired users.[4][5]

Rockbox runs on a wide variety of devices with very different hardware abilities: from early Archos players with 1-bit character cell-based displays, to modern players with high resolution color displays, digital optical audio hardware and advanced recording abilities.

History

The Rockbox project began in late 2001 and was first implemented on the early Archos series of hard-disk based MP3 players/recorders (including the flash-only model Ondio), because of owner frustration with severe limitations in the manufacturer-supplied user interface and device operations. These devices have relatively weak main central processing units (CPU), and instead offload music playback to dedicated hardware MP3 decoding chips (MAS).[6] Rockbox was unable to significantly alter playback abilities. Instead, it offered a greatly improved user interface and added plug-in functions absent in the factory firmware. Rockbox can be permanently flashed into flash memory on the Archos devices, making it a firmware replacement.

Versions of Rockbox have since been produced for more sophisticated devices. These perform audio decoding in

software,[7]
allowing Rockbox to potentially support many more music formats than the original firmware, and adding the extensibility and increased functions already present in the Archos ports. Rockbox is run from the hard drive or flash memory after being started with a custom boot loader, so to upgrade Rockbox, users need only copy the files onto the player's drive and restart the device. Reflashing is only needed when changing the boot loader, and on some platforms is not needed at all.

The first of these ports, beginning in late 2004, was for the

Sandisk, Toshiba, Olympus and Philips in addition to newer Apple and iRiver players based on a variety of ARM7, ARM9 and ARM11 series processors. During this time, extensive work was conducted optimizing open source audio decoders for each of the ARM series processors. In 2008, porting began to processors based on the MIPS architecture. In 2010, work began on supporting "hosted" architectures where Rockbox runs as an application inside of more complex operating system
.

As of 2012[update] all Rockbox ports have been accomplished by reverse engineering with little or no manufacturer assistance. As free software, many Rockbox developers and supporters hope to eventually see official manufacturer support for new ports, or at least unofficial assistance in porting Rockbox to new devices. Only a few companies have expressed interest in Rockbox, and none have officially contributed code to the project or included it with their hardware. The Sansa e200v1 port is the first to be started at the request of the hardware manufacturer, who gave the Rockbox team samples of their devices.

Rockbox is continuously developed, with new

Git builds being released after every source change, and stable releases every 4 months for targets deemed sufficiently mature.[8] Additionally builds are often available to developers of unsupported targets, which, while somewhat functional, are typically not ready for general users due to incomplete features or poor stability.[9]

As of 2021, there have been no new ports released.

Future

Rockbox is targeted primarily at

digital audio players, rather than the much more powerful general-purpose devices (such as smartphones and tablet computers) that have been increasing in popularity since 2010. Some authorities expect the former class of devices to become obsolete in the next few years[when?].[10]

iOS, Sailfish OS or Tizen
:

In a chat after my Rockbox talk at Fosdem 2010, two other core Rockbox developers (Zagor and gevaerts) seemed to agree to the general view that a Rockbox future involves it running as an application. Out of the existing systems mentioned above, I'd prefer to start this work focused on Android. It has the widest company backing combined with open source, and it's also the most used open phone OS. I don't think there's anything that will prevent us from working on all those platforms, as the back-bone should be able to remain the same and portable code we already have and use. Heck, it could then also become more of a regular app for common desktops, too.[11]

A project to port Rockbox to run as an application under a full-fledged operating system was accepted for

Summer of Code[12] and completed.[13] Currently, Rockbox runs on Android based players, but integration into Android and conversion to work with touch based devices is ongoing.[14] Subsequently, an anonymous Chinese developer unofficially ported Rockbox to Palm's WebOS.[15]

Customization

A custom Rockbox theme: Brushed Metal

Subject to the limitations of each particular platform, the appearance of Rockbox can be customised in various ways. Fonts and foreground and background colours can be added and selected, while a simple markup language can be used to create themes for the menu and playback screens.[16] These themes can include backgrounds and other images (such as icons), plus various formats for file names, ID3 tags, album art, file progress, and time and system information.

Rockbox has essentially been a file-tree based player, to which folders could be dragged and dropped and then navigated by folder structure. However, more recent versions have included a complementary database feature which allows the player to compile information from the files' ID3 tags.[17] The user can then navigate the files regardless of file structure.

Features

Target status

Rockbox has many features additional to those supported by the original operating firmware, but in many cases there are limitations. On platforms classified as "stable" and supported, the device can be used as a digital music player, but even on some such platforms Rockbox does not support charging or USB; the player must be dual-booted into the original firmware to be charged or to transfer files. Some platforms are classified as "unstable", but supported; those deemed "unusable" are not supported, and their use is not recommended. Some porting projects are in a pre-development hunting and gathering stage, with no code written.[18]

Codecs

Rockbox on software decoding platforms (non-Archos) supports playback of twelve

lossless, two uncompressed and twelve miscellaneous formats.[19] This makes a conservative total of 30 supported audio formats, although a few of them do not operate in realtime on all platforms. Extensive work has gone into optimizing each codec, with FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, APE, TTA, MPC, Wavpack, ATRAC3, Cook and WMA Pro among the fastest known integer implementations for those formats.[20]

Lossy formats

Lossless formats

Uncompressed formats

Together they include over a dozen different

ADPCM
formats.

Miscellaneous formats

In addition, there are playback of game audio types

SMAF are also now supported.[21]

Some profiles in Monkey's Audio are not real time on all targets due to very high CPU needs. Also, Rockbox will not play files with a digital rights management (DRM) scheme.

Rockbox features

Beside the ability of playing and recording audio files, Rockbox offers many playback enhancements that other firmware packages may not have implemented yet. Listed below are a handful of these features.

Plug-ins

Rockbox developers can create plug-ins, which provide the user with other enhancements that may not be available on various firmware modules.

Available plug-ins include:

Architecture

Rockbox uses a simple kernel,

ColdFire, MIPS and SH
. Several codecs can be parallelized across 2 CPU cores for increased power efficiency, and the HWCODEC interface allows for dedicated audio decoder DSPs.

Rockbox Utility

An iPod Nano showing a grayscale "Do Not Disconnect" screen from the iPod Mini series with a new screen on the iPod Classic, although it is bundled with the Rockbox package.

The Rockbox Utility is a free computer application, available for

Qt
platform, that is used to install and manage Rockbox on DAPs. Rockbox Utility provides automatic installation of Rockbox, as well as themes and voice files, directly onto a DAP with minimal user interaction. Rockbox Utility is updated frequently as support for new devices is added.

See also

References

  1. ^ "ReleaseNotes315". Rockbox. November 15, 2019. Retrieved November 15, 2019.
  2. ^ "RockboxKernel < Main < Wiki".
  3. ^ "Rockbox | Linux Journal".
  4. ^ "BlindFAQ < Main < Wiki". www.rockbox.org. Retrieved 2016-05-14.
  5. ISBN 9783540705390
    .
  6. ^ a b "rockbox history". GitHub.
  7. ^ "rockbox software decode".
  8. ^ "buildsys".
  9. ^ "unstable".
  10. ^ Joe Brockmeier (June 16, 2010). "Rockbox 3.6 and Beyond". LWN.net.
  11. ^ Daniel Stenberg (February 15, 2010). "The Rockbox future is an app". Daniel Stenberg's blog.
  12. ^ "RockboxAsAnApplication2010 < Main < Wiki". Rockbox.org. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
  13. ^ Rockbox Contributors. "mail archive". Rockbox. Retrieved March 12, 2011. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  14. ^ "TouchscreenInterface < Main < Wiki". Rockbox.org. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
  15. ^ "万能播放器ROCKBOX for palm pre，新软支持下，绝对不会失望~~ – Palm Pre/+, Pixi/+, webOS – Pre, Pixi, webOS, Treo – Powered by Discuz!". Treo8.com. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
  16. ^ "Customising the User Interface". Rockbox Manual. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  17. ^ "Database". Rockbox Manual. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  18. ^ Rockbox Target Status
  19. ^ "Rockbox Supported audio formats". Rockbox Manual.
  20. ^ "Codec performance comparison – Hydrogenaudio Forums". Hydrogenaudio. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
  21. ^ "Other Codecs". Rockbox Manual. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  22. ^ "Codec Featureset". Rockbox Manual. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  23. ^ "Crossfade". Rockbox Manual. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  24. ^ a b c Software decoding targets only
  25. ^ "Pitch". Rockbox Manual. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  26. ^ "Rockbox themes". Retrieved 19 April 2012.
  27. ^ MP3.
  28. ^ "Recording". Rockbox Manual. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  29. ^ "Some limitations. Details at Rockbox Wiki". Rockbox.org. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
  30. LCD refresh rate
    .
  31. ^ Rockboy supports original Game Boy and Game Boy Color ROMs.
  32. ^ ZXBox emulates ZX Spectrum 48. The original site of Spectemu Archived 2006-09-29 at the Wayback Machine
  33. ^ "[TESTERS NEEDED] Another World".
  34. native screen resolution. Seeking is now implemented. [1]
  35. ^ FS#8806 - MikMod MOD, S3M, IT, XM player
  36. ^ "About the Rockbox kernel". Rockbox.org. Retrieved March 12, 2011.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rockbox.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rockbox&oldid=1221574168"