Iaudio M3, M3 Rockbox Firmware Update Manual

Download

The Rockbox Manual

for

Iaudio M3

rockbox.org

December 16, 2014

Rockbox

http://www.rockbox.org/

Open Source Jukebox Firmware

Rockbox and this manual is the collaborative eﬀort of the Rockbox team and its contributors. See the appendix for a complete list of contributors.

 2003-2013 The Rockbox Team and its contributors,c 2004 Christi Alice Scarborough,c 2003 José Maria Garcia-Valdecasas Bernal & Peter Schlenker.

Version rUnversioned. Built using pdfLATEX.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 3

Contents

1. Introduction 11

1.1. Welcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.2. Getting more help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.3. Naming conventions and marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2. Installation 13

2.1. Before Starting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2. Installing Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2.1. Automated Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.2.2. Manual Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.2.3. Finishing the install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.2.4. Enabling Speech Support (optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.3. Running Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.4. Updating Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.5. Uninstalling Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.5.1. Automatic Uninstallation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.5.2. Manual Uninstallation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.6. Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3. Quick Start 18

3.1. Basic Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.1.1. The player’s controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.1.2. Turning the player on and oﬀ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.1.3. Putting music on your player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.1.4. The ﬁrst contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.1.5. Basic controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.1.6. Basic concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.2. Customising Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4. Browsing and playing 22

4.1. File Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4.1.1. File Browser Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.1.2. Context Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.1.3. Virtual Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.2. Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.2.2. Initializing the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 4

4.2.3. The Database Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.2.4. Using the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.3. While Playing Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4.3.1. WPS Key Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

4.3.2. Peak Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.3.3. The WPS Context Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.4. Working with Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.4.1. Playlist terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.4.2. Creating playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.4.3. Adding music to playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

4.4.4. Modifying playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.4.5. Saving playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.4.6. Loading saved playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4.5. Hotkeys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5. The Main Menu 38

5.1. Introducing the Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

5.2. Navigating the Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

5.3. Recent Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5.4. Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5.5. Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.6. Now Playing/Resume Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.7. Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.7.1. Sound Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.7.2. Playback Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.7.3. General Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.7.4. Theme Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.7.5. Recording Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.7.6. Manage Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

5.8. Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

5.8.1. While Recording Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

5.9. FM Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

5.10. Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

5.11. Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

5.12. System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

5.13. Quick Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

5.14. Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

6. Sound Settings 47

6.1. Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

6.2. Bass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

6.3. Volume Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

6.4. Treble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

6.5. Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 5

6.6. Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

6.7. Stereo Width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

6.8. Crossfeed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

6.9. Equalizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

6.10. Dithering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

6.11. Timestretch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

6.12. Compressor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

7. Playback Settings 55

7.1. Shuﬄe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

7.2. Repeat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

7.3. Play Selected First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

7.4. Fast-Forward/Rewind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

7.5. Anti-Skip Buﬀer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

7.6. Fade on Stop/Pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

7.7. Party Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

7.8. Crossfade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

7.9. Replaygain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

7.10. Track Skip Beep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

7.11. Auto-Change Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

7.12. Constrain Auto-Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

7.13. Last.fm Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

7.14. Cuesheet Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

7.15. Skip Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

7.16. Prevent Track Skipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

7.17. Rewind Before Resume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

7.18. Rewind on Pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

8. General Settings 62

8.1. Playlist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

8.2. File View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

8.3. Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

8.4. Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

8.5. System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.5.1. Battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.5.2. Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

8.5.3. Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

8.5.4. Use Shortcuts Menu Instead of Quick Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

8.5.5. Keyclick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

8.6. Startup/Shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

8.6.1. Start Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

8.6.2. Idle Poweroﬀ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

8.6.3. Sleep Timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

8.7. Bookmarking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 6

8.8. Automatic resume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

8.9. Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

8.10. Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

8.11. Hotkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

9. Theme Settings 75

10.Recording Settings 77

10.1. Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

10.2. Encoder Settings (MP3 only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

10.3. Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

10.4. Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

10.5. Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

10.6. Mono Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

10.7. File Split Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

10.8. Prerecord Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

10.9. Clear Recording Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

10.10.Clipping Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

10.11.Trigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

11.Plugins 81

11.1. Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

11.1.1. 2048 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

11.1.2. Blackjack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

11.1.3. BrickMania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

11.1.4. Bubbles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

11.1.5. Chessbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

11.1.6. Chopper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

11.1.7. Dice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

11.1.8. Doom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

11.1.9. Flipit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

11.1.10.Goban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

11.1.11.Invadrox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

11.1.12.Jackpot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

11.1.13.Jewels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

11.1.14.MazezaM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

11.1.15.Minesweeper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

11.1.16.Pegbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

11.1.17.Pong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

11.1.18.Reversi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

11.1.19.Robotﬁndskitten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

11.1.20.Rockblox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

11.1.21.Rockblox1d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

11.1.22.Sliding Puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 7

11.1.23.Snake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

11.1.24.Snake 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

11.1.25.Sokoban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

11.1.26.Solitaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

11.1.27.Spacerocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

11.1.28.Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

11.1.29.Sudoku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

11.1.30.Wormlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

11.1.31.Xobox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

11.2. Demos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

11.2.1. Bounce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

11.2.2. Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

11.2.3. Cube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

11.2.4. Demystify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

11.2.5. Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

11.2.6. Fractals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

11.2.7. Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

11.2.8. Mosaique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

11.2.9. Oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

11.2.10.PictureFlow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

11.2.11.Plasma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

11.2.12.Rocklife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

11.2.13.Snow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

11.2.14.Starﬁeld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

11.2.15.VU meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

11.3. Viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

11.3.1. Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

11.3.2. Chip-8 Emulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

11.3.3. Frotz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

11.3.4. Image Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

11.3.5. Lua scripting language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

11.3.6. Midiplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

11.3.7. MPEG Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

11.3.8. MP3 Encoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

11.3.9. Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

11.3.10.Shopper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

11.3.11.Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

11.3.12.Text Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

11.3.13.Theme Remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

11.3.14.VBRﬁx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

11.3.15.ZXBox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

11.4. Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

11.4.1. Battery Benchmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

11.4.2. Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 8

11.4.3. Chess Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

11.4.4. Disk Tidy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

11.4.5. Keybox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

11.4.6. Lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

11.4.7. Lrcplayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

11.4.8. md5sum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

11.4.9. Metronome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

11.4.10.Periodic Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

11.4.11.Pitch Detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

11.4.12.Random Folder Advance Conﬁguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

11.4.13.Resistor Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

11.4.14.Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

11.4.15.Stopwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

11.4.16.Text Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

12.Advanced Topics 145

12.1. Customising the User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

12.1.1. Customising The Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

12.1.2. Getting Extras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

12.1.3. Loading Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

12.1.4. Loading Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

12.1.5. Loading Backdrops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

12.1.6. UI Viewport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

12.2. Conﬁguring the Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

12.2.1. Themeing – General Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

12.2.2. Themes – Create Your Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

12.2.3. Info Viewport (SBS only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

12.2.4. Additional Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

12.3. Managing Rockbox Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

12.3.1. Introduction to .cfg Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

12.3.2. Speciﬁcations for .cfg Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

12.3.3. The Manage Settings menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

12.4. Firmware Loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

12.4.1. Using ROLO (Rockbox Loader) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

12.5. Optimising battery runtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

12.5.1. Display backlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

12.5.2. Anti-Skip Buﬀer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

12.5.3. Replaygain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

12.5.4. Peak Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

12.5.5. Audio format and bitrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

12.5.6. Sound settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

A. File formats 157

A.1. Supported ﬁle formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 9

B. Audio and metadata formats 159

B.1. Supported audio formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

B.1.1. Lossy Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

B.1.2. Lossless Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

B.1.3. Other Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

B.1.4. Codec featureset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

B.2. Supported metadata tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

B.2.1. Featureset for generic metadata tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

B.2.2. Featureset for codec speciﬁc metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

B.2.3. Limitations of metadata handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

C. Album Art 165

C.1. Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

C.2. Where to put album art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

D. Theme Tags 167

D.1. Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

D.2. Hardware Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

D.3. Information from the track tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

D.4. Viewports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

D.5. Additional Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

D.6. Misc Coloring Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

D.7. Power Related Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

D.8. Information about the ﬁle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

D.9. Playlist/Song Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

D.10.Playlist Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

D.11.Runtime Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

D.12.Sound (DSP) settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

D.13.Hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

D.14.Virtual LED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

D.15.Repeat Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

D.16.Playback Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

D.17.Current Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

D.18.List Title (.sbs only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

D.19.Changing Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

D.20.Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

D.21.Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

D.21.1.How to display the album art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

D.22.FM Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

D.23.Alignment and language direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

D.24.Conditional Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

D.25.Subline Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

D.26.Text Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Contents 10

D.27.Bar Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

D.27.1.Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

D.28.Other Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

E. Conﬁg ﬁle options 183

F. Menu Overview 188

G. User feedback 189

G.1. Bug reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

G.1.1. Rules for submitting new bug reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

G.2. Feature ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

G.2.1. Rules for submitting a new feature idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

G.2.2. Features we will not implement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

H. Credits 191

I. Licenses 195

I.1. GNU Free Documentation License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

I.2. The GNU General Public License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 1. Introduction 11

1. Introduction

1.1. Welcome

This is the manual for Rockbox. Rockbox is an open source ﬁrmware replacement for a growing number of digital audio players. Rockbox aims to be considerably more functional and eﬃcient than your device’s stock ﬁrmware while remaining easy to use and customisable. Rockbox is written by users, for users. Not only is it free to use, it is also released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which means that it will always remain free both to use and to change.

Rockbox has been in development since 2001, and receives new features, tweaks and ﬁxes each day to provide you with the best possible experience on your digital audio player. A major goal of Rockbox is to be simple and easy to use, yet remain very customisable and conﬁgurable. We believe that you should never need to go through a series of menus for an action you perform frequently. We also believe that you should be able to conﬁgure almost anything about Rockbox you could want, pertaining to functionality. Another top priority of Rockbox is audio playback quality – Rockbox, for most models, includes a wider range of sound settings than the 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). Rockbox features a very 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.

1.2. Getting more help

This manual is intended to be a comprehensive introduction to the Rockbox ﬁrmware. There is, however, more help available. The Rockbox website at http://www.rockbox.org/ contains very extensive documentation and guides written by members of the Rockbox community and this should be your ﬁrst port of call when looking for further help.

If you cannot ﬁnd the information you are searching for on the Rockbox website there are a number of support channels you should have a look at. You can try the Rockbox forums located at http://forums.rockbox.org/. The mailing lists are another option, and can be found at http://www.rockbox.org/mail/. From that page you can subscribe to the lists and browse the archives. To search the list archives simply use the search ﬁeld that is located on the left side of the website. Furthermore, you can ask on IRC. The

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 1. Introduction 12

main channel for Rockbox is #rockbox on irc://irc.freenode.net. Many helpful developers and users are usually around. Just join and ask your question (don’t ask to ask!) – if someone knows the answer you’ll usually get an answer pretty quickly. More information including IRC logs can be found at http://www.rockbox.org/irc/. We also have a web client so that you can join the Rockbox IRC channel without needing to install additional software onto your computer.

If you think you have found a bug please make sure it actually is a bug and is still present in the most recent version of Rockbox. You should try to conﬁrm that by using the above mentioned support channels ﬁrst. After that you can submit that issue to our tracker. Refer to section G (page 189) for details on how to use the tracker.

1.3. Naming conventions and marks

We have some conventions (especially for naming) that are intended to be consistent throughout this manual.

Manufacturer and product names are formatted in accordance with the standard rules of English grammar, e.g. “Iaudio playback is currently unsupported”. Manufacturer and model names are proper nouns, and thus are written beginning with a capital letter.

This manual has some parts that are marked with icons on the margin to help you ﬁnding important parts or parts you could skip. The following icons are used:

Note: This indicates a note. A note starts always with the text “Note”. In order to

make ﬁnding notes easier each one is accompanied by an icon in the margin as here. Notes are used to mark useful information that may help you to get the most out of Rockbox.

Warning: This is a warning. In contrast to notes mentioned above, a warning should

be taken more seriously. Whereas ignoring notes will not cause any serious damage, ignoring warnings could cause serious damage to your player. You really should read the warnings, especially if you are new to Rockbox.

This icon marks a section that is intended especially for the blind and visually im-

paired. As they cannot read the manual in the same way sighted people do we have added some additional descriptions. If you are not blind or visually impaired you can probably completely skip these blocks. To make this easier, there is an icon shown in the margin on the right.

Links to the wiki are abbreviated by the name of the wiki page. Those names are still linked so you can simply follow them like any other link in this manual. If you want to access a wiki page manually go to Z http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/ and type the page name in the “Go” box at the top of the page. Links to wiki pages are also indicated by the symbol Z in front of the page name.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 2. Installation 13

2. Installation

Installing Rockbox is generally a quick and easy procedure. However before beginning there are a few important things to know.

2.1. Before Starting

USB connection. To transfer Rockbox to your player you need to connect it to your

computer. For manual installation/uninstallation, or should autodetection fail during automatic installation, you need to know where to access the player. On Windows this means you need to know the drive letter associated with the player. On Linux you need to know the mount point of your player. On Mac OS X you need to know the volume name of your player.

2.2. Installing Rockbox

There are two ways to install Rockbox: automated and manual. The automated way is the preferred method of installing Rockbox for the majority of people. Rockbox Utility is a graphical application that does almost everything for you. However, should you encounter a problem, then the manual way is still available to you.

There are two separate components which need to be installed in order to run Rockbox:

The Rockbox bootloader. The bootloader is the program that tells your player how

to load and start other components of Rockbox and for providing the dual boot function. This is the component of Rockbox that is installed to the ﬂash memory of your Iaudio.

Note: Dual boot does not currently work on the M3.

The Rockbox ﬁrmware. Unlike the Iaudio ﬁrmware, which runs entirely from ﬂash

memory, most of the Rockbox code is contained in a “build” that resides on your player’s drive. This makes it easy to update Rockbox. The build consists of a directory called .rockbox which contains all of the Rockbox ﬁles, and is located in the root of your player’s drive.

Apart from the required parts there are some addons you might be interested in installing.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 2. Installation 14

Fonts. Rockbox can load custom fonts. The fonts are distributed as a separate package

and thus need to be installed separately. They are not required to run Rockbox itself but a lot of themes require the fonts package to be installed.

Themes. The appearance of Rockbox can be customised by themes. Depending on your

taste you might want to install additional themes to change the look of Rockbox.

2.2.1. Automated Installation

To automatically install Rockbox, download the oﬃcial installer and housekeeping tool Rockbox Utility. It allows you to:

• Automatically install all needed components for using Rockbox (“Minimal Installation”).

• Automatically install all suggested components (“Complete Installation”).

• Selectively install optional components.

• Install additional fonts and themes.

• Install voice ﬁles and generate talk clips.

• Uninstall all components you installed using Rockbox Utility.

Prebuilt binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are available at the ZRockboxUtility

wiki page.

When ﬁrst starting Rockbox Utility run “Autodetect”, found in the conﬁguration

dialog (File → Conﬁgure). Autodetection can detect most player types. If autodetection fails or is unable to detect the mountpoint, make sure to enter the correct values. The mountpoint indicates the location of the player in your ﬁlesystem. On Windows, this is the drive letter the player gets assigned, on other systems this is a path in the ﬁlesystem.

Choosing a Rockbox version

There are three diﬀerent versions of Rockbox available from the Rockbox website: Release version, current build and archived daily build. You need to decide which one you want to install and get the appropriate version for your player. If you select either “Minimal Installation” or “Complete Installation” from the “Quick Start” tab, then Rockbox Utility will automatically install the release version of Rockbox. Using the “Installation” tab will allow you to select which version you wish to install.

Release. The release version is the latest stable release, free of known critical bugs.

For a manual install, the current stable release of Rockbox is available at http:

//www.rockbox.org/download/.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 2. Installation 15

Development Build. The development build is built at each change to the Rockbox

source code repository and represents the current state of Rockbox development. This means that the build could contain bugs but most of the time is safe to use. For a manual install, you can download the current build from http://build.rockbox.

org/.

Archived Build. In addition to the release version and the current build, there is also

an archive of daily builds available for download. These are built once a day from the latest source code in the repository. For a manual install, you can download archived builds from http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml.

Note: Because current and archived builds are development versions that change fre-

quently, they may behave diﬀerently than described in this manual, or they may introduce new (and potentially annoying) bugs. Unless you wish to try the latest and greatest features at the price of possibly greater instability, or you wish to help with development, you should stick with the release.

Please now go to section 2.2.3 (page 16) to complete the installation procedure.

2.2.2. Manual Installation

The manual installation method is still available to you, should you need or desire it by following the instructions below. If you have used Rockbox Utility to install Rockbox, then you do not need to follow the next section and can skip straight to section 2.2.3 (page 16)

Installing the ﬁrmware

1. Download your chosen version of Rockbox from the links in the previous section.

2. Connect your player to the computer via USB as described in the manual that came with your player.

3. Take the .zip ﬁle that you downloaded and use the “Extract all” command of your unzip program to extract the ﬁles onto your player.

Note: The entire contents of the .zip ﬁle should be extracted directly to the root of

your player’s drive. Do not try to create a separate directory on your player for the Rockbox ﬁles! The .zip ﬁle already contains the internal structure that Rockbox needs.

If the contents of the .zip ﬁle are extracted correctly, you will have a directory called .rockbox, which contains all the ﬁles needed by Rockbox, in the main directory of your player’s drive.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 2. Installation 16

Installing the bootloader

The Iaudio M3 has a built-in bootloader which performs the ﬁrmware update and can also access the hard drive via USB. The Rockbox bootloader can therefore be very minimalistic, as it does not require its own USB mode. This makes it less dangerous to install the Rockbox bootloader as you can always restore it using the Iaudio bootloader.

Note: The Rockbox bootloader overwrites the original ﬁrmware, making it impossible

to dual-boot.

Installation

• Download the Rockbox bootloader binary from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/

iaudio/. Use the cowon_m3.bin ﬁle.

• Copy it to the FIRMWARE directory on your player.

2.2.3. Finishing the install

After installing you need to power-cycle the player by doing the following steps.

• Safely eject / unmount your player and unplug the USB cable.

• Hold the Play button to turn oﬀ the player.

• Insert the charger. The Rockbox bootloader will automatically be ﬂashed.

2.2.4. Enabling Speech Support (optional)

If you wish to use speech support you will also need a voice ﬁle. Voice ﬁles allow Rockbox to speak the user interface to you. Rockbox Utility can install an English voice ﬁle, or you can download it from http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml and unzip it to the root of your player. Rockbox Utility can also aid you in the creation of voice ﬁles with diﬀerent voices or in other languages if you have a suitable speech engine installed on your computer. Voice menus are enabled by default and will come into eﬀect after a reboot. See section 8.10 (page 72) for details on voice settings. Rockbox Utility can also aid in the production of talk ﬁles, which allow Rockbox to speak ﬁle and folder names.

2.3. Running Rockbox

When you turn the unit on, Rockbox should load.

Add a note about the charging trick and place it here?

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 2. Installation 17

2.4. Updating Rockbox

Rockbox can be easily updated with Rockbox Utility. You can also update Rockbox manually – download a Rockbox build as detailed above, and unzip the build to the root directory of your player as in the manual installation stage. If your unzip program asks you whether to overwrite ﬁles, choose the “Yes to all” option. The new build will be installed over your current build.

The bootloader only changes rarely, and should not normally need to be updated.

Note: If you use Rockbox Utility be aware that it cannot detect manually installed

components.

2.5. Uninstalling Rockbox

2.5.1. Automatic Uninstallation

You can uninstall Rockbox automatically by using Rockbox Utility. If you installed Rockbox manually you can still use Rockbox Utility for uninstallation but will not be able to do this selectively.

2.5.2. Manual Uninstallation

If you would like to go back to using the original Iaudio software, connect the player to your computer, download the original Iaudio M3 ﬁrmware from the Iaudio website, and copy it to the FIRMWARE directory on your Iaudio M3. Turn oﬀ the player, remove the USB cable and insert the charger. The original ﬁrmware will automatically be ﬂashed.

If you wish to clean up your disk, you may also wish to delete the .rockbox directory and its contents.

2.6. Troubleshooting

“File Not Found” If you receive a “File Not Found” from the bootloader, then the

bootloader cannot ﬁnd the Rockbox ﬁrmware. This is usually a result of not extracting the contents of the .zip ﬁle to the proper location, and should not happen when Rockbox has been installed with Rockbox Utility.

To ﬁx this, either install Rockbox with the Rockbox Utility which will take care of this for you, or recheck the Manual Install section to see where the ﬁles need to be located.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 3. Quick Start 18

3. Quick Start

3.1. Basic Overview

3.1.1. The player’s controls

Throughout this manual, the buttons on the player are labelled according to the picture above. Whenever a button name is preﬁxed by “Long”, a long press of approximately one second should be performed on that button. The buttons are described in

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 3. Quick Start 19

detail in the following paragraph. Additional information for blind users is available on

the Rockbox website at ZBlindFAQ.

3.1.2. Turning the player on and oﬀ

To turn on and oﬀ your Rockbox enabled player use the following keys:

Key Remote Key Action

Play Start Rockbox

Long Play Shutdown Rockbox

On shutdown, Rockbox automatically saves its settings.

In the unlikely event of a software failure, a hardware reset can be performed by inserting a paperclip gently into the Reset hole.

3.1.3. Putting music on your player

With the player connected to the computer as an MSC/UMS device (like a USB Drive), music ﬁles can be put on the player via any standard ﬁle transfer method that you would use to copy ﬁles between drives (e.g. Drag-and-Drop). Files may be placed wherever you like on the player, but it is strongly suggested NOT to put them in the /.rockbox folder and instead put them in any other folder, e.g. /, /music or /audio. The default directory structure that is assumed by some parts of Rockbox (album art searching, and missing-tag fallback in some WPSes) uses the parent directory of a song as the Album name, and the parent directory of that folder as the Artist name. WPSes may display information incorrectly if your ﬁles are not properly tagged, and you have your music organized in a way diﬀerent than they assume when attempting to guess the Artist and Album names from your ﬁletree. See section C (page 165) for the requirements for Album Art to work properly. See section B.1 (page 159) for a list of supported audio formats.

3.1.4. The ﬁrst contact

After you have ﬁrst started the player, you’ll be presented by the Main Menu. From this menu you can reach every function of Rockbox, for more information (see section 5.1 (page 38)). To browse the ﬁles on your player, select Files (see section 4.1 (page 22)), and to browse in a view that is based on the meta-data1of your audio ﬁles, select Database (see section 4.2 (page 26)).

ID3 Tags, Vorbis comments, etc.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 3. Quick Start 20

3.1.5. Basic controls

When browsing ﬁles and moving through menus you usually get a list view presented. The navigation in these lists are usually the same and should be pretty intuitive. In the tree view use Volume Down and Volume Up to move around the selection. Use Play or Forward to select an item. When browsing the ﬁle system selecting an audio ﬁle plays it. The view switches to the “While playing screen”, usually abbreviated as “WPS” (see section 4.3 (page 28). The dynamic playlist gets replaced with the contents of the current directory. This way you can easily treat directories as playlists. The created dynamic playlist can be extended or modiﬁed while playing. This is also known as “on-the-ﬂy playlist”. To go back to the File Browser stop the playback with the Long Play button or return to the ﬁle browser while keeping playback running using Mode. In list views you can go back one step with Rewind.

3.1.6. Basic concepts

Playlists

Rockbox is playlist oriented. This means that every time you play an audio ﬁle, a socalled “dynamic playlist” is generated, unless you play a saved playlist. You can modify the dynamic playlist while playing and also save it to a ﬁle. If you do not want to use playlists you can simply play your ﬁles directory based. Playlists are covered in detail in section 4.4 (page 33).

From the menu you can customise Rockbox. Rockbox itself is very customisable. Also there are some special menus for quick access to frequently used functions.

Context Menu

Some views, especially the ﬁle browser and the WPS have a context menu. From the ﬁle browser this can be accessed with Long Mode. The contents of the context menu vary, depending on the situation it gets called. The context menu itself presents you with some operations you can perform with the currently highlighted ﬁle. In the ﬁle browser this is the ﬁle (or directory) that is highlighted by the cursor. From the WPS this is the currently playing ﬁle. Also there are some actions that do not apply to the current ﬁle but refer to the screen from which the context menu gets called. One example is the playback menu, which can be called using the context menu from within the WPS.

3.2. Customising Rockbox

Rockbox’ User Interface can be customised using “Themes”. Themes usually only aﬀect the visual appearance, but an advanced user can create a theme that also changes various other settings like ﬁle view, LCD settings and all other settings that can be modiﬁed

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 3. Quick Start 21

using .cfg ﬁles. This topic is discussed in more detail in section 12.3 (page 153). The Rockbox distribution comes with some themes that should look nice on your player.

Note: Some of the themes shipped with Rockbox need additional fonts from the fonts

package, so make sure you installed them. Also, if you downloaded additional themes from the Internet make sure you have the needed fonts installed as otherwise the theme may not display properly.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 22

4. Browsing and playing

4.1. File Browser

Figure 4.1.: The ﬁle browser

Rockbox lets you browse your music in either of two ways. The File Browser lets you navigate through the ﬁles and directories on your player, entering directories and executing the default action on each ﬁle. To help diﬀerentiate ﬁles, each ﬁle format is displayed with an icon.

The Database Browser, on the other hand, allows you to navigate through the music on your player using categories like album, artist, genre, etc.

You can select whether to browse using the File Browser or the Database Browser by selecting either Files or Database in the Main Menu. If you choose the File Browser, the Show Files setting lets you select what types of ﬁles you wish to view. See section 8.2 (page 63) for more information on the Show Files setting.

Note: The File Browser allows you to manipulate your ﬁles in ways that are not

available within the Database Browser. Read more about Database in section 4.2 (page 26). The remainder of this section deals with the File Browser.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 23

4.1.1. File Browser Controls

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up/Volume Down

Go to previous/next item in list. If you are on the ﬁrst/last entry, the cursor will wrap to the last/ﬁrst entry.

Rewind Rewind Go to the parent directory. Play or Forward

Play or Forward

Execute the default action on the selected ﬁle or enter a directory.

Play Play If there is an audio ﬁle playing, return

to the While Playing Screen (WPS) without stopping playback.

Long Play Long Play Stop audio playback. Long Mode Long Mode Enter the Context Menu. Rec Menu Enter the Main Menu. Long Rec Long Menu Switch to the Quick Screen (see sec-

tion 5.13 (page 45)).

Rec+ Mode Activate the Hotkey function (see sec-

tion 4.5 (page 37)).

4.1.2. Context Menu

Figure 4.2.: The Context Menu

The Context Menu allows you to perform certain operations on ﬁles or directories. To access the Context Menu, position the selector over a ﬁle or directory and access the context menu with Long Mode.

Note: The Context Menu is a context sensitive menu. If the Context Menu is

invoked on a ﬁle, it will display options available for ﬁles. If the Context Menu is invoked on a directory, it will display options for directories.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 24

The Context Menu contains the following options (unless otherwise noted, each option pertains both to ﬁles and directories):

Playlist. Enters the Playlist Submenu (see section 4.4.3 (page 35)).

Playlist Catalogue. Enters the Playlist Catalogue Submenu (see section 4.4.2 (page 34)).

Rename. This function lets the user modify the name of a ﬁle or directory.

Cut. Copies the name of the currently selected ﬁle or directory to the clipboard and

marks it to be ‘cut’.

Copy. Copies the name of the currently selected ﬁle or directory to the clipboard and

marks it to be ‘copied’.

Paste. Only visible if a ﬁle or directory name is on the clipboard. When selected it will

move or copy the clipboard to the current directory.

Delete. Deletes the currently selected ﬁle. This option applies only to ﬁles, and not to

directories. Rockbox will ask for conﬁrmation before deleting a ﬁle. Press Play to conﬁrm deletion or any other key to cancel.

Delete Directory. Deletes the currently selected directory and all of the ﬁles and subdi-

rectories it may contain. Deleted directories cannot be recovered. Use this feature with caution!

Set As Backdrop. Set the selected bmp ﬁle as background image. The bitmaps need to

meet the conditions explained in section 12.1.5 (page 146).

Open with. Runs a viewer plugin on the ﬁle. Normally, when a ﬁle is selected in Rock-

box, Rockbox automatically detects the ﬁle type and runs the appropriate plugin. The Open With function can be used to override the default action and select a viewer by hand. For example, this function can be used to view a text ﬁle even if the ﬁle has a non-standard extension (i.e., the ﬁle has an extension of something other than .txt). See section 11.3 (page 118) for more details on viewers.

Create Directory. Create a new directory in the current directory on the disk.

Properties. Shows properties such as size and the time and date of the last modiﬁcation

for the selected ﬁle. If used on a directory, the number of ﬁles and subdirectories will be shown, as well as the total size.

Set As Recording Directory. Save recordings in the selected directory.

Start File Browser Here. This option allows users to set the currently selected directory

as the default start directory for the ﬁle browser. This option is not available for ﬁles.

Note: If you have Auto-Change Directory and Constrain Auto-Change

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 25

enabled, the directories returned will be constrained to the directory you have chosen here and those below it. See section 7.12 (page 59)

Add to Shortcuts. Adds a link to the selected item in the shortcuts.link ﬁle. If the

ﬁle does not already exist it will be created in the root directory. Note that if you create a shortcut to a ﬁle, Rockbox will not open it upon selecting, but simply bring you to its location in the File Browser.

4.1.3. Virtual Keyboard

Figure 4.3.: The virtual keyboard

This is the virtual keyboard that is used when entering text in Rockbox, for example when renaming a ﬁle or creating a new directory. The virtual keyboard can be easily changed by making a text ﬁle with the required layout. More information on how to achieve this can be found on the Rockbox website at ZLoadableKeyboardLayouts.

Note: When the cursor is on the input line, Play deletes the preceding character

Key Remote Key Action

Rewind / Forward

Move the cursor on the virtual keyboard. If you move out of the picker area, you get the previous/next page of characters (if there is more than one).

Volume Up / Volume Down

Move the cursor on the virtual keyboard. If you move out of the picker area you get to the line edit mode.

Mode Mode Flip to the next page of characters (if

there is more than one).

Play Play Insert the selected keyboard letter at the

current line cursor position.

Long Play Long Play Exit the virtual keyboard and save any

changes.

Rec Rec Exit the virtual keyboard without saving

any changes.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 26

4.2. Database

4.2.1. Introduction

This chapter describes the Rockbox music database system. Using the information contained in the tags (ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis Comments, Apev2, etc.) in your audio ﬁles, Rockbox builds and maintains a database of the music ﬁles on your player and allows you to browse them by Artist, Album, Genre, Song Name, etc. The criteria the database uses to sort the songs can be completely customised. More information on how to achieve this can be found on the Rockbox website at ZDataBase.

4.2.2. Initializing the Database

The ﬁrst time you use the database, Rockbox will scan your disk for audio ﬁles. This can take quite a while depending on the number of ﬁles on your player. This scan happens in the background, so you can choose to return to the Main Menu and continue to listen to music. If you shut down your player, the scan will continue next time you turn it on. After the scan is ﬁnished you may be prompted to restart your player before you can use the database.

Ignoring Directories During Database Initialization

You may have directories on your player whose contents should not be added to the database. Placing a ﬁle named database.ignore in a directory will exclude the ﬁles in that directory and all its subdirectories from scanning their tags and adding them to the database. This will speed up the database initialization.

If a subdirectory of an ‘ignored’ directory should still be scanned, place a ﬁle named database.unignore in it. The ﬁles in that directory and its subdirectories will be scanned and added to the database.

4.2.3. The Database Menu

Auto Update If Auto update is set to on, each time the player boots, the database

will automatically be updated.

Initialize Now You can force Rockbox to rescan your disk for tagged ﬁles by using the

Initialize Now function in the Database Menu. Warning: Initialize Now removes all database ﬁles (removing runtimedb data

also) and rebuilds the database from scratch.

Update Now Update now causes the database to detect new and deleted ﬁles

Note: Unlike the Auto Update function, Update Now will update the database

regardless of whether the Directory Cache is enabled. Thus, an update using Update now may take a long time.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 27

Unlike Initialize Now, the Update Now function does not remove runtime database information.

Gather Runtime Data When enabled, rockbox will record how often and how long a

track is being played, when it was last played and its rating. This information can be displayed in the WPS and is used in the database browser to, for example, show the most played, unplayed and most recently played tracks.

Export Modiﬁcations This allows for the runtime data to be exported to the ﬁle

/.rockbox/database_changelog.txt, which backs up the runtime data in ASCII format. This is needed when database structures change, because new code cannot read old database code. But, all modiﬁcations exported to ASCII format should be readable by all database versions.

Import Modiﬁcations. Allows the /.rockbox/database_changelog.txt backup to be

conveniently loaded into the database. If Auto Update is enabled this is per- formed automatically when the database is initialized.

4.2.4. Using the Database

Once the database has been initialized, you can browse your music by Artist, Album, Genre, Song Name, etc. To use the database, go to the Main Menu and select Database.

Note: You may need to increase the value of the Max Entries in File Browser

setting (Settings → General Settings → System → Limits) in order to view long lists of tracks in the ID3 database browser.

There is no option to turn oﬀ database completely. If you do not want to use it just do not do the initial build of the database and do not load it to RAM.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 28

Tag Type Origin

ﬁlename string system album string id tag albumartist string id tag artist string id tag comment string id tag composer string id tag genre string id tag grouping string id tag title string id tag bitrate numeric id tag discnum numeric id tag year numeric id tag tracknum numeric id tag/ﬁlename autoscore numeric runtime db lastplayed numeric runtime db playcount numeric runtime db Pm (play time min)

numeric runtime db

Ps (play time - sec) numeric runtime db rating numeric runtime db commitid numeric system entryage numeric system length numeric system Lm (track len min)

numeric system

Ls (track len - sec) numeric system

4.3. While Playing Screen

The While Playing Screen (WPS) displays various pieces of information about the currently playing audio ﬁle. The appearance of the WPS can be conﬁgured using WPS conﬁguration ﬁles. The items shown depend on your conﬁguration – all items can be turned on or oﬀ independently. Refer to section D (page 167) for details on how to change the display of the WPS.

• Status bar: The Status bar shows Battery level, charger status, volume, play mode, repeat mode, shuﬄe mode. In contrast to all other items, the status bar is always at the top of the screen.

• (Scrolling) path and ﬁlename of the current song.

• The ID3 track name.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 29

• The ID3 album name.

• The ID3 artist name.

• Bit rate. VBR ﬁles display average bitrate and “(avg)”

• Elapsed and total time.

• A slidebar progress meter representing where in the song you are.

• Peak meter.

See section 12.2 (page 147) for details of customising your WPS (While Playing

Screen).

4.3.1. WPS Key Controls

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up / Volume Down

Volume up/down.

Rewind Rewind Go to beginning of track, or if pressed

while in the ﬁrst seconds of a track, go

to the previous track. Long Rewind Long Rewind Rewind in track. Forward Forward Go to the next track. Long Forward Long Forward Fast forward in track. Play Play Toggle play/pause. Long Play Long Play Stop playback.

Mode Mode Return to the File Browser /

Database.

Long Mode Long Mode Enter WPS Context Menu. Rec Menu Enter Main Menu.

Long Rec Long Menu Switch to the Quick Screen (see sec-

tion 5.13 (page 45)). Rec+ Mode Activate the Hotkey function (see sec-

tion 4.5 (page 37)). Short Forward + Long

Forward

Short Forward + Long

Forward

Skip to the next directory.

Short Rewind + Long Rewind

Skip to the previous directory.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 30

4.3.2. Peak Meter

The peak meter can be displayed on the While Playing Screen and consists of several indicators. For a picture of the peak meter, please see the While Recording Screen in section 5.8.1 (page 41).

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 does not 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: 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): 0 dB, -3 dB, -6 dB, -9 dB, -12 dB, -18 dB, -24 dB, -30 dB, -40 dB, -50 dB, -60 dB.

4.3.3. The WPS Context Menu

Like the context menu for the File Browser, the WPS Context Menu allows you quick access to some often used functions.

Playlist

The Playlist submenu allows you to view, save, search and reshuﬄe the current playlist. These and other operations are detailed in section 4.4 (page 33). To change settings for the Playlist Viewer press Long Mode while viewing the current playlist to bring up the Playlist Viewer Menu. In this menu, you can ﬁnd the Playlist Viewer Settings.

Playlist Viewer Settings

Show Icons. This toggles display of the icon for the currently selected playlist entry and

the icon for moving a playlist entry

Show Indices. This toggles display of the line numbering for the playlist

Track Display. This toggles between ﬁlename only and full path for playlist entries

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 31

Playlist catalogue

View catalogue. This lists all playlists that are part of the Playlist catalogue. You can

load a new playlist directly from this list.

Add to playlist. Adds the currently playing ﬁle to a playlist. Select the playlist you

want the ﬁle to be added to and it will get appended to that playlist.

Add to new playlist. Similar to the previous entry this will add the currently playing

track to a playlist. You need to enter a name for the new playlist ﬁrst.

Sound Settings

This is a shortcut to the Sound Settings Menu, where you can conﬁgure volume, bass, treble, and other settings aﬀecting the sound of your music. See section 6 (page 47) for more information.

Playback Settings

This is a shortcut to the Playback Settings Menu, where you can conﬁgure shuﬄe, repeat, party mode, skip length and other settings aﬀecting the playback of your music.

Rating

The menu entry is only shown if Gather Runtime Information is enabled. It allows the assignment of a personal rating value (0 – 10) to a track which can be displayed in the WPS and used in the Database browser. The value wraps at 10.

Bookmarks

This allows you to create a bookmark in the currently-playing track.

Show Track Info

Figure 4.4.: The track info viewer

This screen is accessible from the WPS screen, and provides a detailed view of all the identity information about the current track. This info is known as meta data and

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 32

is stored in audio ﬁle formats to keep information on artist, album etc. To access this screen, press Long Mode to access the WPS Context Menu and select Show Track Info.

Open With...

This Open With function is the same as the Open With function in the ﬁle browser’s Context Menu.

Delete

Delete the currently playing ﬁle. The ﬁle will be deleted but the playback of the ﬁle will not stop immediately. Instead, the part of the ﬁle that has already been buﬀered (i.e. read into the player’s memory) will be played. This may even be the whole track.

Pitch

The Pitch Screen allows you to change the rate of playback (i.e. the playback speed and at the same time the pitch) of your player. The rate value can be adjusted between 50% and 200%. 50% means half the normal playback speed and a pitch that is an octave lower than the normal pitch. 200% means double playback speed and a pitch that is an octave higher than the normal pitch.

The rate can be changed in two modes: procentual and semitone. Initially, procentual

mode is active.

If you’ve enabled the Timestretch option in Sound Settings and have since re-

booted, you can also use timestretch mode. This allows you to change the playback speed without aﬀecting the pitch, and vice versa.

In timestretch mode there are separate displays for pitch and speed, and each can be altered independently. Due to the limitations of the algorithm, speed is limited to be between 35% and 250% of the current pitch value. Pitch must maintain the same ratio as well as remain between 50% and 200%.

The value of the rate, pitch and speed is not persistent, i.e. after the player is turned on it will always be set to 100%. However, the rate, pitch and speed information will be stored in any bookmarks you may create (see section 8.7 (page 69)) and will be restored upon playing back those bookmarks.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 33

Key Remote Key Action

Mode Mode Toggle pitch changing mode (cycle

through all available modes).

Volume Up / Volume Down

Increase / Decrease pitch by 0.1% (in procentual mode) or 0.1 semitone (in semitone mode).

Long Volume

Up / Long Volume Down

Long Volume Up / Long Volume Down

Increase / Decrease pitch by 1% (in procentual mode) or a semitone (in semitone mode).

Rewind / Forward

Temporarily change pitch by 2% (beatmatch), or modify speed (in timestretch mode).

Rec Rec Reset pitch and speed to 100%. Play Play Leave the Pitch Screen.

4.4. Working with Playlists

4.4.1. Playlist terminology

Some common terms that are used in Rockbox when referring to playlists:

Directory. A playlist! One of the keys to getting the most out of Rockbox is under-

standing that Rockbox always considers the song that it is playing to be part of a playlist, and in some situations, Rockbox will create a playlist automatically. For example, if you are playing the contents of a directory, Rockbox will automatically create a playlist containing all songs in it. This means that just about anything that is described in this chapter with respect to playlists also applies to directories.

Dynamic playlist. A dynamic playlist is a playlist that is created “On the ﬂy.” Any

time you insert or queue tracks using the Playlist submenu (see section 4.4.3 (page 35)), you are creating (or adding to) a dynamic playlist.

Insert. In Rockbox, to Insert an item into a playlist means putting an item into a

playlist and leaving it there, even after it is played. As you will see later in this chapter, Rockbox can Insert into a playlist in several places.

Queue. In Rockbox, to Queue a song means to put the song into a playlist and then

to remove the song from the playlist once it has been played. The only diﬀerence between Insert and Queue is that the Queue option removes the song from the playlist once it has been played, and the Insert option does not.

4.4.2. Creating playlists

Rockbox can create playlists in four diﬀerent ways.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 34

By selecting (“playing”) a song from the File Browser

Whenever a song is selected from the File Browser with Play or Forward, Rockbox will automatically create a playlist containing all of the songs in that directory and start playback with the selected song.

Note: If you already have created a dynamic playlist, playing a new song will erase the

current dynamic playlist and create a new one. If you want to add a song to the current playlist rather than erasing the current playlist, see the section below on how to add music to a playlist.

By using Insert and Queue functions

If playback is stopped, the Insert and Queue functions can be used as described in

4.4.3 to create a new playlist instead of adding to an existing one. This will erase any

dynamic playlist.

By using the Playlist catalogue

The Playlist catalogue makes it possible to modify and create playlists that are not currently playing. To do this select Playlist catalogue in the Context Menu. There you will have two choices, Add to playlist adds the selected track or directory to an existing playlist and Add to a new playlist creates a new playlist containing the selected track or directory.

Note: All playlists in the Playlist catalogue are stored by default in the /Playlists

directory in the root of your player’s disk and playlists stored in other locations are not included in the catalogue. It is however possible to move existing playlists there (see section 4.1.2 (page 23)).

By using the Main Menu

To create a playlist containing all music on your player, you can use the Create Playlist command in the Playlists menu found in the Main Menu. The created

playlist will be named root.m3u8 and saved in the root of your player’s disk.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 35

4.4.3. Adding music to playlists

Adding music to a dynamic playlist

Figure 4.5.: The Playlist Submenu

The Playlist Submenu is a submenu in the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2 (page 23)), it allows you to put tracks into a “dynamic playlist”. If there is no music currently playing, Rockbox will create a new dynamic playlist and put the selected track(s) into it. If there is music currently playing, Rockbox will put the selected track(s) into the current playlist. The place in which the newly selected tracks are added to the playlist is determined by the following options:

Insert. Add track(s) immediately after any tracks added via the most recent Insert

operation. If no tracks have yet been added via an Insert, new tracks will be added immediately after the current playing track. If playback is stopped a new dynamic playlist will get created with the selected tracks.

Insert Next. Add track(s) immediately after current playing track, no matter what else

has been inserted.

Insert Last. Add track(s) to end of playlist.

Insert Shuﬄed. Add track(s) to the playlist in a random order.

Insert Last Shuﬄed. Add tracks in a random order to the end of the playlist.

Queue. Queue is the same as Insert except queued tracks are deleted immediately from

the playlist after they have been played. Also, queued tracks are not saved to the playlist ﬁle (see section 5.10 (page 43)).

Queue Next. Queue track(s) immediately after current playing track.

Queue Last. Queue track(s) at end of playlist.

Queue Shuﬄed. Queue track(s) in a random order.

Queue Last Shuﬄed. Queue tracks in a random order at the end of the playlist.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 36

Play Next. Replaces all but the current playing track with track(s). Current playing

track is queued.

The Playlist Submenu can be used to add either single tracks or entire directories to a playlist. If the Playlist Submenu is invoked on a single track, it will put only that track into the playlist. On the other hand, if the Playlist Submenu is invoked on a directory, Rockbox adds all of the tracks in that directory to the playlist.

Note: You can control whether or not Rockbox includes the contents of subdirectories

when adding an entire directory to a playlist. Set the Settings → General Settings → Playlist → Recursively Insert Directories setting to Yes if you would like

Rockbox to include tracks in subdirectories as well as tracks in the currently-selected directory.

Dynamic playlists are saved so resume will restore them exactly as they were before shutdown.

Note: To view, save or reshuﬄe the current dynamic playlist use the Playlist sub

menu in the WPS context menu or in the Main Menu.

4.4.4. Modifying playlists

Reshuﬄing

Reshuﬄing the current playlist is easily done from the Playlist sub menu in the WPS, just select Reshuffle.

Moving and removing tracks

To move or remove a track from the current playlist enter the Playlist Viewer by selecting View Current Playlist in the Playlist submenu in the WPS context menu or the Main Menu. Once in the Playlist Viewer open the context menu on the track you want to move or remove. If you want to move the track, select Move in the context menu and then move the blinking cursor to the place where you want the track to be moved and conﬁrm with Play or Forward. To remove a track, simply select Remove in the context menu.

4.4.5. Saving playlists

To save the current playlist either enter the Playlist submenu in the WPS Context Menu (see section 4.3.3 (page 30)) and select Save Current Playlist or enter the Playlist Options menu in the Main Menu and select Save Current Playlist.

Either method will bring you to the Virtual Keyboard (see section 4.1.3 (page 25)), enter a ﬁlename for your playlist and accept it and you are done.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 37

4.4.6. Loading saved playlists

Through the File Browser

Playlist ﬁles, like regular music tracks, can be selected through the File Browser. When loading a playlist from disk it will replace the current dynamic playlist.

Through the Playlist catalogue

The Playlist catalogue oﬀers a shortcut to all playlists in your player’s speciﬁed playlist directory. It can be used like the File Browser.

4.5. Hotkeys

Hotkeys are shortcut keys for use in the File Browser and WPS screen. To use one, press Rec+ Mode within the File Browser or Rec+ Mode within the WPS screen. The assigned function will launch with reference to the current ﬁle or directory, if applicable. Each screen has its own assignment. If there is no assignment for a given screen, the hotkey is ignored.

The default assignment for the File Browser hotkey is Off, while the default for the WPS hotkey is View Playlist.

The hotkey assignments are changed in the Hotkey menu (see section 8.11 (page 74)) under General Settings.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 38

5. The Main Menu

5.1. Introducing the Main Menu

Figure 5.1.: The main menu

The Main Menu is the screen from which all of the Rockbox functions can be accessed. This is the ﬁrst screen you will see when starting Rockbox. To return to the Main Menu, press the Rec button.

All settings are stored on the unit. However, Rockbox does not access the hard disk solely for the purpose of saving settings. Instead, Rockbox will save settings when it accesses the hard disk the next time, for example when reﬁlling the music buﬀer or navigating through the File Browser. Changes to settings may therefore not be saved unless the player is shut down safely (see section 3.1.2 (page 19)).

5.2. Navigating the Main Menu

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Down Volume Down Select the next option in the menu.

Inside a setting, increase the value or choose next option.

Volume Up Volume Up Select the previous option in the menu.

Inside a setting,decrease the value or choose previous option.

Play or Forward

Forward Select option.

Rewind Rewind Exit menu or setting, or move to parent

menu.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 39

5.3. Recent Bookmarks

Figure 5.2.: The list bookmarks screen

If the Save a list of recently created bookmarks option is enabled then you can view a list of several recent bookmarks here and select one to jump straight to that track.

Note: Bookmarking only works when tracks are launched from the ﬁle browser, and

does not currently work for tracks launched via the database. In addition, they do not currently work with dynamic playlists.

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Down Volume Down Select the next bookmark. Volume Up Volume Up Select the previous bookmark. Play or Forward

Forward Resume from the selected bookmark.

Rewind Rewind Exit Recent Bookmark menu.

Long Rec Long Rec Delete the currently selected bookmark. Long Mode Long Mode Enter the context menu for the selected

bookmark.

There are two options in the context menu:

Resume will commence playback of the currently selected bookmark entry.

Delete will remove the currently selected bookmark entry from the list.

This entry is not shown in the Main Menu when the option is oﬀ (the default setting). See section 8.7 (page 69) for more details on conﬁguring bookmarking in Rockbox.

5.4. Files

Browse the ﬁles on your player (see section 4.1 (page 22)).

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 40

5.5. Database

Browse by the meta-data in your audio ﬁles (see section 4.2 (page 26)).

5.6. Now Playing/Resume Playback

Go to the While Playing Screen and resume if music playback is stopped or paused and there is something to resume (see section 4.3 (page 28)).

5.7. Settings

The Settings menu allows you to set or adjust many parameters that aﬀect the way your player works. There are many submenus for diﬀerent parameter areas. Every time you are setting a value of a parameter, and that value is selected from a list of some predeﬁned available values, you can press Long Mode, and the selection cursor will jump to the default value for the parameter. You can then conﬁrm or cancel the value. This is useful if you have changed the value of the parameter from the default to some other value and would like to restore the default value.

5.7.1. Sound Settings

The Sound Settings menu oﬀers a selection of sound properties you may change to customise your listening experience. The details of this menu are covered in section 6 (page 47).

5.7.2. Playback Settings

The Playback Settings menu allows you to conﬁgure settings related to audio playback. The details of this menu are covered in section 7 (page 55).

5.7.3. General Settings

The General Settings menu allows you to customise the way Rockbox looks and the way it plays music. The details of this menu are covered in section 8 (page 62).

5.7.4. Theme Settings

The Theme Settings menu contains options that control the visual appearance of Rockbox. The details of this menu are covered in section 9 (page 75).

5.7.5. Recording Settings

The Recording Settings menu allows you to conﬁgure settings related to recording. The details of this menu are covered in detail in section 10 (page 77).

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 41

5.7.6. Manage Settings

The Manage Settings option allows the saving and re-loading of user conﬁguration settings, browsing the hard drive for alternate ﬁrmwares, and ﬁnally resetting your player back to initial conﬁguration. The details of this menu are covered in section 12.3 (page 153).

5.8. Recording

5.8.1. While Recording Screen

Figure 5.3.: The while recording screen

Selecting the Recording option in the Main Menu enters the Recording Screen, whilst pressing Long Mode enters the Recording Settings (see section 10 (page 77)). The Recording Screen shows the time elapsed and the size of the ﬁle being recorded. A peak meter is present to allow you set gain correctly. There is also a volume setting, this will only aﬀect the output level of the player and does not aﬀect the recorded sound. If enabled in the peak meter settings, a counter in front of the peak meters shows the number of times the clip indicator was activated during recording. The counter is reset to zero when starting a new recording.

Note: When you start a recording, the hard disk will spin up. This will cause the peak

meters to freeze in the process. This is expected behaviour, and nothing to worry about. The recording continues during the spin up.

The frequency and channels settings are shown in the status bar.

The controls for this screen are:

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 42

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up / Volume Down

Select setting.

Rewind / Forward

Adjust selected setting.

Play Play Start recording.

While recording: pause recording (press again to continue).

Long Play Long Play Exit Recording Screen.

While recording: Stop recording.

Long Rec Menu Open Recording Settings (see sec-

tion 10 (page 77)).

5.9. FM Radio

Figure 5.4.: The FM radio screen

This menu option switches to the radio screen. The FM radio has the ability to remember station frequency settings (presets). Since stations and their frequencies vary depending on location, it is possible to load these settings from a ﬁle. Such ﬁles should have the ﬁlename extension .fmr and reside in the directory /.rockbox/fmpresets (note that this directory does not exist after the initial Rockbox installation; you should create it manually). To load the settings, i.e. a set of FM stations, from a preset ﬁle, just “play” it from the ﬁle browser. Rockbox will “remember” and use it in PRESET mode until another ﬁle has been selected. Some preset ﬁles are available here: ZFmPresets.

It is also possible to record the FM radio while listening. To start recording, enter the FM radio settings menu with Long Mode and then select Recording. At this point, you will be switched to the Recording Screen. Further information on Recording can be found in section 5.8 (page 41).

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 43

Key Remote Key Action

Rewind, Forward

Change frequency in SCAN mode or jump to next/previous station in PRE- SET mode.

Long Rewind, Long Forward

Seek to next station in SCAN mode.

Volume Up, Volume Down

Change volume.

Rec Menu Leave the radio screen with the radio

playing.

Long Play Long Play Stop the radio and return to Main

Menu.

Play Play Mute radio playback. Long Rec Long Rec Switch between SCAN and PRESET

mode.

Mode Mode Open a list of radio presets. You can view

all the presets that you have, and switch to the station.

Long Mode Long Mode Display the FM radio settings menu.

Saving a preset: Up to 64 of your favourite stations can be saved as presets. Long

Mode to go to the menu, then select Add preset. Enter the name (maximum number of characters is 32). Press Long Play to save.

Selecting a preset: Mode to go to the presets list. Use Volume Up and Volume

Down to move the cursor and then press Play or Forward to select. Use Rewind

to leave the preset list without selecting anything.

Removing a preset: Mode to go to the presets list. Use Volume Up and Volume

Down to move the cursor and then press Long Mode on the preset that you wish

to remove, then select Remove Preset.

Note: The radio will turn oﬀ when starting playback of an audio ﬁle.

5.10. Playlists

This menu allows you to work with playlists. Playlists can be created in three ways. Playing a ﬁle in a directory causes all the ﬁles in it to be placed in a playlist. Playlists can be created manually by either using the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2 (page 23)) or using the Playlist menu. Both automatically and manually created playlists can be edited using this menu.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 44

Create Playlist: Rockbox will create a playlist with all tracks in the current directory

and all sub-directories. The playlist will be created one directory level “up” from where you currently are.

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 the current directory.

View Catalogue: Provides a simple interface to maintain several playlists (see sec-

tion 4.4 (page 33)).

5.11. Plugins

With this option you can load and run various plugins that have been written for Rockbox. There are a wide variety of these supplied with Rockbox, including several games, some impressive demos and a number of utilities. A detailed description of the diﬀerent plugins is to be found in section 11 (page 81).

5.12. System

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). The battery status. Hard disk size and the amount of free space on the disk.

Credits: Display the list of contributors.

Running Time: Shows the runtime of your player in hours, minutes and seconds.

Running Time: This item shows the cumulative overall runtime of your player

since you either disconnected it from charging (in Rockbox) or manually reset this item. A manual reset is done through pressing any button, followed by pressing Play or Forward.

Top Time: This item shows the cumulative overall runtime of your player since

you last manually reset this item. A manual reset is done through pressing any button, followed by pressing Play or Forward.

Debug (Keep Out!): This sub menu is intended to be used only by Rockbox developers.

It shows hardware, disk, battery status and other technical information.

Warning: It is not recommended that users access this menu unless instructed

to do so in the course of ﬁxing a problem with Rockbox. If you think you have messed up your settings by use of this menu please try to reset all settings before asking for help.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 45

5.13. Quick Screen

Although the Quick Screen is accessible from nearly everywhere, not just the Main Menu, it is worth mentioning here. It allows rapid access to your four favourite settings.

The default settings are Shuffle (section 7 (page 55)), Repeat (section 7 (page 55)) and the Show Files (section 8.2 (page 63)) options, but almost all conﬁgurable options in Rockbox can be placed on this screen. To change the options, navigate through the menus to the setting you want to add and press Long Mode. In the menu which appears you will be given options to place the setting on the Quick Screen.

Press Long Rec to access it and Rec to exit. The direction buttons will modify the individual setting values as indicated by the arrow icons. Please note that the settings at opposite sides of the screen cycle through the available options in opposite directions. Therefore if you select the same setting at e.g. the top and bottom of the quickscreen, then pressing up and down will cycle through this setting in opposite directions.

5.14. Shortcuts

This menu item is a container for user deﬁned shortcuts to ﬁles, folders or settings. With a shortcut,

• A ﬁle can be “run” (i.e. a music ﬁle played, plugin started or a .cfg loaded)

• The ﬁle browser can be opened with the cursor positioned at a speciﬁed ﬁle or

folder

• A ﬁle’s or folder’s “Current Playlist” context menu item can be displayed

• A setting can be conﬁgured (any which can be added to the Quick Screen)

• A debug menu item can be displayed (useful for developers mostly)

• The sleep timer can be conﬁgured

• The player can be turned oﬀ

Note: Shortcuts into the database are not possible

Shortcuts are loaded from the ﬁle /.rockbox/shortcuts.txt which lists each item to be displayed. Each shortcut looks like the following:

Example

[shortcut] type: <shortcut type> data: <what the shortcut actually links to> name: <what the shortcut should be displayed as> icon: <number of the theme icon to use (see ZCustomIcons)> talkclip: <filename of a talk clip to speak when voice menus are enabled>

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 5. The Main Menu 46

Only “type” and “data” are required (except if type is “separator” in which case “data” is also not required).

Available types are:

ﬁle data is the name of the ﬁle to “run”

browse data is the ﬁle or the folder to open the ﬁle browser at

playlist menu data is the ﬁle or the folder to open the “Current Playlist” context menu

item on

setting data is the conﬁg name of the setting you want to change (see section E

(page 183) for the list of the possible settings)

debug data is the name of the debug menu item to display

separator data is ignored; name can be used to display text, or left blank to make the

list more accessible with visual gaps

time data needs to be “sleep X” where X is the number of minutes to run the sleep

timer for (0 to disable). name is required for this shortcut type.

shutdown data is ignored; name can be used to display text

If the name/icon items are not speciﬁed, a sensible default will be used.

Note: For the “browse” type, if you want the ﬁle browser to start inside a folder, make

sure the data has the trailing slash (i.e /Music/ instead of /Music). Without the trailing slash, it will cause the ﬁle broser to open with /Music selected instead.

The ﬁle shortcuts.txt can be edited with any text editor. Most items can also be added to it through their context menu item “Add to shortcuts”. A reboot is needed for manual changes to shortcuts.txt to be applied.

Shortcuts can be manually removed by selecting the one you wish to remove and pressing Long Mode.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 47

6. Sound Settings

Figure 6.1.: The sound settings screen

The sound settings menu oﬀers a selection of sound settings you may change to customise your listening experience.

6.1. Volume

This setting adjusts the volume of your music. Like most professional audio gear and many consumer audio products, Rockbox uses a decibel scale where 0 dB is a reference that indicates the maximum volume that the player can produce without possible distortion (clipping). All values lower than this reference will be negative and yield a progressively softer volume. Values higher than 0 dB are available and can be used to raise the volume more than would otherwise be possible. These volume levels will ordinarily lead to distorted sound, but might work nicely for music that has an otherwise low volume level. The volume can be adjusted from a minimum of -73 dB to a maximum of +6 dB.

6.2. Bass

This setting emphasises or suppresses the lower (bass) frequencies in the sound. A value of 0 dB means that bass sounds are unaltered (ﬂat response). The minimum setting is

-24 dB and the maximum is 24 dB.

6.3. Volume Limit

This setting adjusts the maximum volume of your music. The setting is by default set to the maximum volume which equals to no limit. To set a volume limit, select a volume

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 48

from the list and the maximum volume will be limited to the selected value all over the system.

6.4. Treble

This setting emphasises or suppresses the higher (treble) frequencies in the sound. A value of 0 dB means that treble sounds are unaltered (ﬂat response). The minimum setting is -24 dB and the maximum is 24 dB.

6.5. Balance

This setting controls the balance between the left and right channels. 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, positive numbers increase the volume of the right channel relative to the left.

6.6. Channels

A stereo audio signal consists of two channels, left and right. The Channels setting determines if these channels are to be combined in any way, and if so, in what manner they will be combined. Available options are:

Stereo. Leave the audio signal unmodiﬁed.

Mono. Combine both channels and send the resulting signal to both stereo channels,

resulting in a monophonic output.

Custom. Allows you to manually specify a stereo width with the Stereo Width setting

described later in this chapter.

Mono Left. Plays the left channel in both stereo channels.

Mono Right. Plays the right channel in both stereo channels.

Karaoke. Removes all sound that is common to both channels. Since most music is

recorded with vocals being equally present in both channels to make the singer sound centrally placed, this often (but not always) has the eﬀect of removing the voice track from a song. This setting also very often has other undesirable eﬀects on the sound.

6.7. Stereo Width

Stereo width allows you to manually specify the eﬀect that is applied when the Channels setting is set to “custom”. All values below 100% will progressively mix the contents

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 49

of one channel into the other. This has the eﬀect of gradually centering the stereo image, until you have monophonic sound at 0%. Values above 100% will progressively remove components in one channel that is also present in the other. This has the eﬀect of widening the stereo ﬁeld. A value of 100% will leave the stereo ﬁeld unaltered.

6.8. Crossfeed

Crossfeed attempts to make the experience of listening to music on headphones more similar to listening to music with stereo speakers. When you listen to music through speakers, each ear will hear sound originating from both speakers. However, the sound from the left speaker reaches your right ear slightly later than it does your left ear, and vice versa.

The human ear and brain together are very good at interpreting the time diﬀerences between direct sounds and reﬂected sounds and using that information to identify the direction that the sound is coming from. On the other hand, when listening to headphones, each ear hears only the stereo channel corresponding to it. The left ear hears only the left channel and the right ear hears only the right channel. The result is that sound from headphones does not provide the same spatial cues to your ear and brain as speakers, and might for that reason sound unnatural to some listeners.

The crossfeed function uses an algorithm to feed a delayed and ﬁltered portion of the signal from the right channel into the left channel and vice versa in order to simulate the spatial cues that the ear and brain receive when listening to a set of loudspeakers placed in front of the listener. The result is a more natural stereo image that can be especially appreciated in older rock and jazz records, where one instrument is often hard-panned to just one of the speakers. Many people will ﬁnd such records tiring to listen to using earphones and no crossfeed eﬀect.

Crossfeed has the following settings:

Crossfeed. Selects whether the crossfeed eﬀect is to be enabled or not.

Direct Gain. How much the level of the audio that travels the direct path from a speaker

to the corresponding ear is supposed to be decreased.

Cross Gain. How much the level of the audio that travels the cross path from a speaker

to the opposite ear is to be decreased.

High-Frequency Attenuation. How much the upper frequencies of the cross path audio

will be dampened. Note that the total level of the higher frequencies will be a combination of both this setting and the Cross Gain setting.

High-Frequency Cutoﬀ. Decides at which frequency the cross path audio will start to

be cut by the amount described by the High-Frequency Attenuation setting.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 50

Most users will ﬁnd the default settings to yield satisfactory results, but for the more adventurous user the settings can be ﬁne-tuned to provide a virtual speaker placement suited to ones preference. Beware that the crossfeed function is capable of making the audio distort if you choose settings which result in a too high output level.

6.9. Equalizer

Figure 6.2.: The graphical equalizer

Rockbox features a parametric equalizer (EQ). In contrast to non-parametric equalizers, a parametric EQ enables adjusting the center frequency, gain, and width of EQ bands separately. The ability to adjust the frequency and width of bands enables more precise control of the EQ frequency response while avoiding the use of a large number of bands (often 12+) needed in a non-parametric EQ.

The graphic below illustrates how the width of 10kHz band can be adjusted to cover a wider (lower Q) or narrower (higher Q) range of frequencies.

In some ways the EQ is similar to the Bass and Treble settings described earlier, but

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 51

the EQ allows you to control the sound much more carefully. Note that the parameteric EQ bands will be applied in addition to any bass or treble tone controls.

Note: A maximum of 10 EQ bands are possible on most devices, but using more than

are required will waste battery and introduce additional rounding noise. For best results, use the fewest number of bands required.

Rockbox’s parametric EQ is composed of up to ten diﬀerent bands:

Band 0: Low shelf ﬁlter. The low shelf ﬁlter boosts or lowers all frequencies below a

certain frequency limit, much as the “bass” control found on ordinary stereo systems does. Adjust the “cutoﬀ” frequency parameter to decide where the shelving starts to take eﬀect. For example, a cutoﬀ frequency of 50 Hz will adjust only very low frequencies. A cutoﬀ frequency of 200 Hz, on the other hand, will adjust a much wider range of bass frequencies. The “gain” parameter controls how much the loudness of the band is adjusted. Positive numbers make the EQ band louder, while negative numbers make that EQ band quieter. The “Q” parameter should always be set to 0.7 for the shelving ﬁlters. Higher values will add a small boost around the cutoﬀ frequency that is almost always undesirable.

Bands 1-8: Peaking ﬁlters. Peaking EQ ﬁlters boost or lower a frequency range cen-

tered at the centre frequency chosen. Graphic equalizers in home stereos are usually peaking ﬁlters. The peaking ﬁlters in Rockbox’s EQ lets you adjust three diﬀerent parameters for EQ bands 1 through 8. The “centre” parameter controls the centre frequency of the frequency range that is aﬀected as described above. The “gain” parameter controls how much each band is adjusted, and works as for the low shelf ﬁlter. Finally, the “Q” parameter controls how wide or narrow the aﬀected frequency range is. Higher Q values will aﬀect a narrower band of frequencies, while lower Q values will aﬀect a wider band of frequencies.

Band 9: High shelf ﬁlter. A high shelf ﬁlter boosts or lowers all frequencies above a

certain frequency limit, much as the “treble” control found on ordinary stereo systems does. The high shelf ﬁlter is adjusted the same way as the low shelf ﬁlter, except that it works on the high end of the frequency spectrum rather than the low end.

As a general guide, EQ band 0 should be used for low frequencies, EQ bands 1 through 8 should be used for mids, and EQ band 9 should be used for highs.

Enable EQ. This option controls whether the EQ is on or oﬀ.

Graphical EQ. This option brings up a graphic EQ screen, which allows adjustment of

each of the three parameters described above (gain, centre frequency, and Q) for each of the ﬁve EQ bands.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 52

Key Remote Key Action

Forward Forward Raises the highlighted parameter. Rewind Rewind Lowers the highlighted parameter. Volume Up Volume Up Moves to the previous EQ band. Volume Down Volume Down Moves to the next EQ band. Play Play Toggles the cursor among the three pa-

rameters (gain, centre frequency, Q) for the selected EQ band

Rec Rec Exits the graphic EQ screen.

Pre-cut. If too much positive gain is added through the graphical EQ, your music may

distort. The Precut setting allows you to apply a global negative gain to decoded audio, cancelling out positive gain from the EQ. This will prevent distortion when boosting certain frequency ranges, at the expense of making audio quieter.

Alternatively, precut can be used with a ﬂat EQ curve to implement a volume cap. For example, on a player that allows overdriving the headphone output to +6dB, maximum volume can be capped to +0dB by applying 6dB of precut. Note that precut is not applied if EQ is disabled.

Simple EQ. This option provides an easier alternative for those who are daunted by all

of the parameters that can be adjusted using the graphical EQ. With the Simple EQ, the only parameter that can be adjusted is the gain.

Advanced EQ. This sub menu provides options for adjusting the same parameters as the

Graphical EQ. The only diﬀerence is that the parameters are adjusted through textual menus rather than through a graphic interface.

Save EQ Preset. This option saves the current EQ conﬁguration in a .cfg ﬁle.

Browse EQ Presets. This menu displays a list of EQ presets, as well as any EQ con-

ﬁgurations saved using the Save EQ Preset option. Users unfamiliar with the operation of a parametric EQ may wish to use the presets instead of trying to conﬁgure the EQ, or use the presets for designing their own custom EQ settings.

6.10. Dithering

This setting controls the dithering and noise shaping functionality of Rockbox.

Most of Rockbox’ audio ﬁle decoders work at a higher bit depth than the 16 bits used for output on the player’s audio connectors. The simplest way to convert from one bit depth to another is simply discarding all the surplus bits. This is the default behaviour, and adds distortion to the signal that will vary in character along with the desired sound.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 53

Dithering adds low-level noise to the signal prior to throwing away the surplus bits, which gives the resulting signal a uniform noise ﬂoor which is independent of the signal. Most people ﬁnd this noise preferable to the time-varying noise heard when not performing dithering.

After dithering, noise shaping is performed. This basically just pushes the dithering noise to the parts of the frequency spectrum humans cannot hear so easily. In Rockbox’ case, some of the noise is pushed up to above 10 kHz.

This setting will be put to its best use when listening to dynamic music with frequently occuring quiet parts, classical music being a typical example. It is worth noting that the eﬀects of dithering and noise shaping are very subtle, and not easily noticable.

Rockbox uses highpass triangular distribution noise as the dithering noise source, and a third order noise shaper.

6.11. Timestretch

Enabling Timestretch allows you to change the playback speed without it aﬀecting the pitch of the recording. After enabling this feature and rebooting, you can access this via the Pitch Screen. This function is intended for speech playback and may signiﬁcantly dilute your listening experience with more complex audio. See section 4.3.3 (page 32) for more details about how to use the feature.

6.12. Compressor

The Compressor reduces, or compresses, the dynamic range of the audio signal. This makes the quieter and louder sections closer to the same volume level by progressively reducing the gain of louder signals. When subsequently ampliﬁed, this has the eﬀect of making the quieter sections louder while keeping the louder sections from clipping. This allows listening to the quiet sections of dynamic material in noisy environments while preventing sudden loud sections from being overbearing.

There are several settings associated with the compressor. The ﬁrst, and most important, is the Threshold. The threshold is the audio input level at which the compressor begins to act. Any level louder than the threshold will be compressed to some extent. The maximum amount of compression, or the quietest level at which the compressor will operate, is -24 dB. The default of Oﬀ disables the compressor.

The Makeup Gain setting has two options: Oﬀ and Auto. Oﬀ means that the compressed audio will not be ampliﬁed after compression. The default of Auto will amplify the signal so that the loudest possible signal after compression will be just under the clipping limit. This is desirable because the compressed signal without makeup gain is quieter than the input signal. Makeup Gain in Auto restores the signal to the maximum possible level and brings the quieter audio up with it. This is what makes it possible to hear the quieter audio in noisy environments.

The Ratio setting determines how aggressively the compressor reduces gain above the threshold. For example, the 2:1 setting means that for each two decibels of input

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 6. Sound Settings 54

signal above the threshold, the compressor will only allow the output to appear as one decibel. The higher the ratio, the harder the signal is compressed. The ratio setting of Limit means essentially a ratio of inﬁnity to one. In this case, the output signal is not allowed to exceed the threshold at all.

The Knee setting determines how abrupt the transition is from a non-compressed signal to a compressed signal. Hard Knee means that the transition occurs precisely at the threshold. The Soft Knee setting smoothes the transition from plus or minus three decibels around the threshold.

The Attack Time setting sets the delay in milliseconds between the input signal exceeding the activation threshold and acting upon it.

The Release Time setting sets the recovery time after the signal is compressed. Once the compressor determines that compression is necessary, the input signal is reduced appropriately, but the gain isn’t allowed to immediately return to normal levels. This is necessary to reduce artifacts such as “pumping.” Instead, the gain is allowed to return to normal at the chosen rate. Release Time is the time for the gain to recover by 10 dB.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 7. Playback Settings 55

7. Playback Settings

The Playback Settings menu allows you to conﬁgure settings related to audio playback.

7.1. Shuﬄe

Turning shuﬄe on will cause Rockbox to randomly re-order the playlist. Thus, to shuﬄe all of the audio ﬁles on the player, you ﬁrst need to create a playlist containing all of them. For more information on creating playlists refer to section 4.4 (page 33). Options: Yes/No.

7.2. Repeat

Conﬁgures settings related to repeating of directories or playlists. Options: Off / All / One / Shuffle / A-B:

Oﬀ. The current playlist will not repeat when it is ﬁnished.

Note: If you have the Auto-Change Directory option set to Yes, Rockbox

will move on to the next directory on your hard drive. If the Auto-Change Directory option is set to No, playback will stop when the current directory or

playlist is ﬁnished.

All. The current playlist will repeat when it is ﬁnished.

One. Repeat one track over and over.

Shuﬄe. When the current playlist has ﬁnished playing, it will be shuﬄed and then

repeated.

A-B. Repeats between two user deﬁned points within a track, typically used by musi-

cians when attempting to learn a piece of music. This option is more complicated to use than the others as the player must ﬁrst be placed into A-B repeat mode and then the start and end points deﬁned.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 7. Playback Settings 56

7.3. Play Selected First

This setting controls what happens when you select a ﬁle for playback while shuﬄe mode is on. If the Play Selected First setting is Yes, the ﬁle you selected will be played ﬁrst. If this setting is No, a random ﬁle in the directory will be played ﬁrst.

7.4. Fast-Forward/Rewind

These settings control the speed and acceleration during fast forward and rewind. The setting FF/RW Min Step controls the initial speed and FF/RW Accel controls the acceleration.

7.5. Anti-Skip Buﬀer

This setting controls how early Rockbox starts reﬁlling the music buﬀer from the hard drive when playing. A longer Anti-Skip Buﬀer helps prevent skips in music playback if Rockbox has trouble reading from the disk. This can happen if the player is knocked, shaken or jogged heavily while Rockbox is trying to read the hard drive.

The anti-skip buﬀer can be set to various values between 5 seconds and 10 minutes.

Note: 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.

7.6. Fade on Stop/Pause

Enables and disables a fade eﬀect when you pause or stop playing a song. If the Fade on Stop/Pause option is set to Yes, your music will fade out when you stop or pause playback, and fade in when you resume playback.

7.7. Party Mode

Enables unstoppable music playback. When new songs are selected, they are queued at the end of the current dynamic playlist instead of being played immediately. Pausing and stopping playback is disabled as well as skipping songs and launching plugins.

7.8. Crossfade

This section controls the behavior of the crossfader. The crossfader, when enabled, smoothly fades one track into the next. This can occur in two situations: an automatic track change or a manual track skip. An automatic track change occurs at the end of

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 7. Playback Settings 57

the track, moving to the next track in the playlist without user intervention. A manual track skip goes to the next track immediately when the appropriate button is pressed.

Options for crossfade settings are:

Enable Crossfade. If set to Off, crossfade is disabled and all track changes are gapless.

If set to Automatic Track Change Only, crossfade occurs for automatic track changes, but not for manual track skips. The next setting, Manual Track Skip

Only, is the opposite: tracks will only crossfade when manually skipped. If set to Shuffle, crossfade is enabled for all track changes, automatic or manual, when the shuﬄe feature is set to Yes, but disabled otherwise. If set to Shuffle or Manual Track Skip then crossfade will be active either when shuﬄe is set to Yes or the track is manually skipped. If set to Always, tracks will always crossfade

into one another.

Fade In Delay. The “fade in delay” is the length of time between when the crossfade

process begins and when the new track begins to fade in.

Fade In Duration. The length of time, in seconds, that it takes your music to fade in

once the Fade In Delay has ended.

Fade Out Delay. The “fade out delay” is the length of time between when the crossfade

process begins and when the old track begins to fade out.

Fade Out Duration. The length of time, in seconds, that it takes your music to fade

out once the Fade Out Delay has ended.

Fade Out Mode. If set to Crossfade, one song will fade out and the next song will

simultaneously fade in. If set to Mix, the ending song will not fade out at all, and will continue to play as normal until its end with the starting song fading in from under it. Mix mode is not used for manual track skips, even if it is selected here.

Note: The rules above apply except in the instance where Fade Out Delay plus Fade

Out Duration is less then Fade In Delay (which would create a gap in the audio). In this case, the Fade In Delay is reduced to eliminate the gap.

The graphic below illustrates how the diﬀerent settings work in practice.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 7. Playback Settings 58

7.9. Replaygain

This allows you to control the replaygain function. The purpose of replaygain is to adjust the volume of the music played so that all songs (or albums, depending on your settings) have the same apparent volume. This prevents sudden changes in volume when changing between songs recorded at diﬀerent volume levels. For replaygain to work, the songs must have been processed by a program that adds replaygain information to the ID3 tags (or Vorbis tags).

Options for replaygain are:

Replaygain Type. Choose the type of replaygain to apply:

Album Gain. Maintain a constant volume level between albums, but keep any

intentional volume variations between songs in an album. (If album gain value is not available, uses track gain information).

Track Gain. Maintain a constant volume level between tracks. If track gain value

is not available, no replaygain is applied.

Track Gain If Shuﬄing. Maintains a constant volume between tracks if Shuffle

is set to Yes. Reverts to album mode if Shuffle is set to No.

Oﬀ. Do not process replaygain information, i.e. turn oﬀ the replaygain function.

Prevent Clipping. Avoid clipping of a song’s waveform. If a song would clip during

playback, the volume is lowered for that song. Replaygain information is needed for this to work.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 7. Playback Settings 59

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 -12 dB and +12 dB, in increments of 0.5 dB.

7.10. Track Skip Beep

Controls the volume of the beep that is heard when skipping forward or backward between tracks. The beep is disabled when set to Off.

7.11. Auto-Change Directory

Control what Rockbox does when it reaches the end of a directory. If Auto-Change Directory is set to Yes, Rockbox will continue to the next directory. If Auto-Change Directory is set to No, playback will stop at the end of the current playlist. Using

the Random feature requires you to ﬁrst generate a folder list via the Random Folder Advance Conﬁguration plugin (see section 11.4.12 (page 141)).

Note: You must have the Repeat option set to No for Auto-Change Directory to

function properly.

Note: This feature only works when songs have been played from the ﬁle browser. Using

it with the database may cause unexpected behaviour.

7.12. Constrain Auto-Change

If enabled and you have set Start File Browser Here to a directory other than root, Auto-Change Directory will be constrained to the directory you have chosen and

those below it. See section 4.1.2 (page 24).

7.13. Last.fm Log

Enables logging of your played tracks for submittal to http://www.last.fm. This service was formerly known as Audioscrobbler. When you enable this option, you’ll have to reboot to start the logging. The log-ﬁle is called .scrobbler-timeless.log,and is to be found in the root directory of your player.

Note: See ZLastFMLog for a further description, and for tools you can use to submit

your Last.fm log.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 7. Playback Settings 60

7.14. Cuesheet Support

Enables reading of cuesheet ﬁles for played tracks. If a cuesheet is found for a track, track markers are displayed on the progressbar and it is possible to skip between the tracks within the cuesheet. Also the information found in the cuesheet ﬁle will replace the information from the ID3 tags. When you enable this option, you’ll have to reboot for it to come into eﬀect.

Cuesheet ﬁles should have the same ﬁle name as the audio ﬁle they reference, except with the extension .cue. This ﬁle can either reside in the same directory as the audio ﬁle (checked ﬁrst), or within the .rockbox/cue directory.

The contents of a cuesheet ﬁle can also be embedded within the metadata of an audio ﬁle. There is currently support for the FLAC tag/ Vorbis comment CUESHEET or the ID3v2 TXXX CUESHEET tag.

7.15. Skip Length

Designed to speed up navigation when listening to long audio tracks, Skip Length changes the behaviour of the Rewind and Forward buttons so that they skip by a given time instead of skipping to a new track. The Skip to Outro option changes the behaviour so that the buttons skip to just before the end of the track, so that the last few seconds are played before the next track.

7.16. Prevent Track Skipping

If this option is enabled, the ability to manually skip tracks is disabled in order to avoid accidental track skips. It does not prevent changing tracks if a track ends, which can be achieved by combining this option with Repeat set to One

7.17. Rewind Before Resume

When restarting a track or a bookmark, a short rewind can be done before the playback is started. This can be useful when listening to speech material, to help remember what was being said just before playback was stopped. The size of the rewind can be set to various values between 0 (oﬀ) and 60 seconds.

Note: This option does not apply to resuming a paused track. Use the next option for

rewinding on pause.

Note: The actual rewind distance may diﬀer a little from the requested value, depending

on the ﬁle in question.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 7. Playback Settings 61

7.18. Rewind on Pause

This option rewinds the current track by a small amount whenever it is paused (not stopped). The amount to rewind can be set between 0 and 15 seconds.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 62

8. General Settings

Figure 8.1.: The general settings screen

8.1. Playlist

The Playlist sub menu allows you to conﬁgure settings related to playlists. Recursively Insert Directories. If set to On, then when a directory is inserted or queued

into a dynamic playlist, all subdirectories will also be inserted. If set to Ask, Rockbox will prompt the user about whether to include sub-directories.

Warn When Erasing Dynamic Playlist. If set to Yes, Rockbox will provide a warning

if the user attempts to take an action that will cause Rockbox to erase the current dynamic playlist.

8.2. File View

The File View menu deals with options relating to how the File Browser displays ﬁles. Sort Case Sensitive. If this option is set to Yes, all ﬁles that start with upper case

letters will be listed ﬁrst, followed by all ﬁles that begin with lower case letters. If this option is set to NO, then case will be ignored when sorting ﬁles.

Sort Directories. This option controls how Rockbox sorts directories. The default is to

sort them alphabetically. By date sorts them with the oldest directory ﬁrst. By newest date sorts them with the newest directory ﬁrst.

Sort Files. This option controls how Rockbox sorts ﬁles. All of the options for Sort

Directories are available in this option. In addition, there is a By type option

which sorts ﬁles alphabetically by their type (such as .mp3) then alphabetically within each type.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 63

Interpret numbers when sorting. As whole numbers enables a sorting algorithm which

is similar to the default sorting of, for example, Windows Explorer, Mac OS X’s Finder or Nautilus, with regards to numbers at the beginning or within ﬁlenames. It combines consecutive digits to a number used for sorting, taking leading zeros into account. As digits disables this algorithm, and causes every digit to be compared separately. The following table demonstrates the two sorting methods.

As whole numbers As digits

03 Jackson.mp3 03 Jackson.mp3 1 Ring Of Fire.mp3 1 Ring Of Fire.mp3 2 I Walk The Line.mp3 10 A Thing Called Love.mp3 10 A Thing Called Love.mp3 2 I Walk The Line.mp3 Episode 1.ogg Episode 1.ogg Episode 57.ogg Episode 233.ogg Episode 233.ogg Episode 57.ogg

Show Files. This option controls which ﬁles are displayed in the File Browser.

All. The File Browser displays all ﬁles and directories. Extensions are shown.

No ﬁles or directories are hidden.

Supported. The File Browser displays all directories and ﬁles supported by

Rockbox (see section A.1 (page 158)). Files and directories starting with . (dot) or with the hidden ﬂag set are hidden.

Music. The File Browser displays only directories, playlists and the supported

audio ﬁle formats. Extensions are stripped. Files and directories starting with . or with the “hidden” ﬂag set are hidden.

Playlists. The File Browser displays only directories and playlists, for simpliﬁed

navigation.

Show Filename Extensions. This option controls how ﬁle extensions are shown in the

File Browser.

Oﬀ. The ﬁle extensions are never shown.

On. The ﬁle extensions are always shown.

Only unknown types. Only the extensions of unknown ﬁletypes are shown. Only when viewing all types. Only show ﬁle extensions when Show Files is set

to All.

Follow Playlist. This option determines what directory the File Browser displays

ﬁrst. If Follow Playlist is set to Yes, when you enter the File Browser from the WPS, you will ﬁnd yourself in the same directory as the currently playing ﬁle.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 64

If Follow Playlist is set to No, when you enter the File Browser from the WPS, you will ﬁnd yourself in the directory you were in when you last left the File Browser.

Show Path. If this setting is set to Full Path the full path to the current directory

will be displayed on the ﬁrst line in the File Browser. If set to Current Directory Only only the name of the current directory will be displayed.

This has a similar eﬀect on the Database browser. If set to Current Directory Only or Full Path, then the title of each menu will be displayed on the ﬁrst line in the Database Browser.

8.3. Database

This sub menu allows you to conﬁgure the database. See section 4.2 (page 26) for more information about using the database.

8.4. Display

LCD Settings. This sub menu 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 (While Plugged In). This setting is equivalent to the Backlight set-

ting except it applies when the player is plugged into the charger.

Backlight on Hold. This setting controls the behavior of the backlight when the

Hold switch is toggled. If set to Normal the backlight will behave as usual. If set to Off the backlight will be turned oﬀ immediately when the Hold switch is engaged and if set to On the backlight will be turned on and stay on while the Hold switch is engaged.

Caption Backlight. This option turns on the backlight a number of seconds before

the start of a new track, and keeps it on for the same number of seconds after the beginning so that the display can be read to see song information. The amount of time is determined by the value of the backlight timeout setting, but is no less than 5 seconds.

First Keypress Enables Backlight Only. With this option enabled the ﬁrst key-

press while the backlight is turned oﬀ will only turn the backlight on without having any other eﬀect. When disabled the ﬁrst keypress will also perform its appropriate action.

Contrast. Changes the contrast of your LCD display.

Warning: Setting the contrast too dark or too light can make it hard to ﬁnd

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 65

this menu option again!

LCD Mode. This setting lets you invert the colours of the display.

Upside Down. Displays the screen so that the top of the display is nearest the

buttons. This is sometimes useful when carrying the player in a pocket for easy access to the headphone socket.

Scrolling. This feature controls how text will scroll in Rockbox. You can conﬁgure the

following parameters:

Scroll Speed. Sets how many times per second the automatic horizontal scrolling

text will move a step.

Scroll Start Delay. Controls how many milliseconds Rockbox should wait before

a new text begins automatically scrolling.

Scroll Step Size. Deﬁnes the number of pixels the text should move for each step,

as used by the Scroll Speed setting.

Bidirectional Scroll Limit. Rockbox has two diﬀerent automatic horizontal scrolling

methods: 1) always scrolling the text to the left until the line has ended and then beginning again at the start, and 2) moving to the left until you can read the end of the line and then scrolling right until you see the beginning again. Rockbox chooses which method it should use depending of how much it has to scroll to the left. This setting lets you tell Rockbox where that limit is, expressed in percentage of the line length.

Screen Scrolls Out of View. Screens can be manually scrolled horizontally by

pressing Long Forward/Rewind. Setting this option to Yes will keep the list entries at their ﬁxed positions and allow them to be scrolled out of view, whereas No will only scroll those entries which surpass the right margin.

Screen Scroll Step Size. Deﬁnes the number of pixels the horizontal manual screen

scroll should move for each step.

Paged Scrolling. When set to Yes scrolling vertically on pages that surpass the

screen size will page up/down instead of simply changing lines. This can be useful on slow displays.

List Acceleration Start Delay. This setting enables the acceleration of scroll speed

in lists when holding Volume Up or Volume Down. When set to Off the acceleration is disabled. When any other value is set the acceleration will start to accelerate after holding Volume Up or Volume Down for the chosen time (in seconds).

List Acceleration Speed. This setting controls how fast the scroll speed acceler-

ates. The scroll speed will increase every N seconds. For example, selecting

Speed up every 3s will increase the scroll speed every 3 seconds while Vol- ume Up or Volume Down is held.

Peak Meter. The peak meter can be conﬁgured with a number of parameters.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 66

Peak Release. This determines how fast the bar shrinks when the music becomes

softer. Lower values make the peak meter look smoother. Expressed in scale units per 10 ms.

Peak Hold Time. Speciﬁes the time after which the peak indicator will reset. For

example, if you set this value to 5 s, the peak indicator displays the loudest volume value that occurred within the last 5 seconds. Larger values are useful if you want to ﬁnd the peak level of a song, which might be of interest when copying music from the player via the analogue output to some other recording device.

Clip Hold Time. The number of seconds that the clipping indicator will be visible

after clipping is detected.

Clip Counter. Show the number of times the clip indicator went active during

recording in front of the peak meters.

Scale. Select whether the peak meter displays linear or logarithmic values. The

human ear perceives loudness on a logarithmic scale. If the Scale setting is set to Logarithmic (dB) scale, the volume values are scaled logarithmically. The volume meters of digital audio devices usually are scaled this way. On the other hand, if you are interested in the power level that is applied to your headphones you should choose Linear display. This setting cannot be displayed in units like volts or watts because such units depend on your headphones.

Minimum and maximum range. These two options deﬁne the full value range

that the peak meter displays. Recommended values for the Logarithmic (dB) setting are -40 dB for minimum and 0 dB for maximum. Recommended values for Linear display are 0 and 100%. Note that -40 dB is approximately 1% in linear value, but if you change the minimum setting in linear mode slightly and then change to the dB scale, there will be a large change. You can use these values for ‘zooming’ into the peak meter.

Default Codepage. A codepage describes the way extended characters that are not

available within the ASCII character set are encoded. ID3v1 tags do not have a codepage encoding contained so Rockbox needs to know what encoding has been used when generating these tags. This should be “ISO-8859-1” but to support languages outside Western Europe most applications use the setting of your operating system instead. If your operating system uses a diﬀerent codepage and you are getting garbled extended characters you should adjust this settings. In most cases sticking to “ISO-8859-1” would be suﬃcient.

8.5. System

8.5.1. Battery

Options relating to the battery in the player.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 67

Battery Capacity. This setting can be used to tell Rockbox what capacity (in mAh)

the battery being used has. The default is 950 mAh, which is the capacity value for the standard battery shipped with the player. Rockbox uses this value for runtime estimation, not battery percentage calculation. Changing this setting has no eﬀect whatsoever on actual battery life. This setting only aﬀects the accuracy of the runtime estimation as shown on screen. Rockbox does not automatically distinguish between the “L” models and the “simple” models which determine the default value. If your player is an M3L set the value to 2250 mAh for more accuracy in the runtime estimation.

8.5.2. Disk

Options relating to the hard disk.

Disk Spindown. Rockbox has a timer that makes it spin down the hard disk after it is

idle for a certain amount of time. This setting controls the amount of time between the last user activity and the time that the disk spins down. This idle time is only aﬀected by user activity, like navigating through the File Browser. When the hard disk spins up to ﬁll the audio buﬀer, it automatically spins down afterwards.

Directory Cache. Rockbox has the ability to cache the contents of your drive in RAM.

The Directory Cache takes a small amount of memory away from Rockbox that would otherwise be used to buﬀer music, but it speeds up navigation in the ﬁle browser by eliminating the slight pause between the time a navigation button is pressed and the time Rockbox responds. Turning this setting on activates the directory cache, and turning it oﬀ deactivates the directory cache.

Note: The ﬁrst time you enable the directory cache, Rockbox will request a reboot

of the player and upon restarting take a few minutes to scan the drive. After this, the directory cache will work in the background.

8.5.3. Limits

This sub menu relates to limits in the Rockbox operating system.

Max Entries in File Browser. This setting controls the limit on the number of ﬁles that

you can see in any particular directory in the ﬁle browser. You can conﬁgure the size to be between 50 and 10,000 ﬁles in steps of 50. The default is 400. Higher values will shorten the music buﬀer, so you should increase this setting only if you have directories with a large number of ﬁles.

Max Playlist Size. This setting controls the maximum size of a playlist. The playlist

size can be between 1,000 and 32,000 ﬁles, in steps of 1,000 (default is 10,000). Higher values will shorten the music buﬀer, so you should increase this setting only if you have very large playlists.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 68

Glyphs To Cache. This sets the default memory allocation size for fonts in unique

glyphs. This should be set to the number of unique language glyphs and punctuation marks that are frequently displayed. The default is 250.

Note: You will need to restart your player for changes to Max Entries in File

Browser or Max Playlist Size to take eﬀect while Glyphs To Cache will aﬀect the next font load.

8.5.4. Use Shortcuts Menu Instead of Quick Screen

This option activates the shortcuts menu instead of opening the quick screen when enabled.

8.5.5. Keyclick

This menu controls key clicks on button presses.

Keyclick. This setting controls how strong the keyclicks are. If set to Off, the keyclicks

will be disabled.

Keyclick repeats. This setting turns keyclick repeats On and Off. If set to On, the

keyclicks will be repeated when you hold down a button. If set to Off, you will hear only one click.

8.6. Startup/Shutdown

The Startup/Shutdown sub menu allows you to conﬁgure items which are run at startup, or initiate a shutdown when conditions are met.

8.6.1. Start Screen

Set the screen that Rockbox will start in. The default is the main menu but the following options are available:

Previous Screen. Start Rockbox in the same screen as when it was shut oﬀ.

Main Menu. Show the main menu.

Files. Display the ﬁle browser, starting in the root directory of your player.

Database. Show the default database view.

Resume Playback. Go to the WPS and and resume playback from where it was before

turning oﬀ (if there is a playlist to resume).

Settings. Display the main settings menu.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 69

Recording. Start the player in the recording screen (recording does not start automati-

cally).

FM Radio. Go to the radio screen and start playing.

Recent Bookmarks. Show the list of recent bookmarks as described in section 8.7

(page 69). Bookmarking needs to be enabled.

8.6.2. Idle Poweroﬀ

Rockbox can be conﬁgured to turn oﬀ power after the unit has been idle for a deﬁned number of minutes. The player is idle when playback is stopped or paused. It is not idle while the USB or charger is connected , or while recording. Settings are either Off or 1 to 10 minutes in 1 minute steps. Then 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes are available.

8.6.3. Sleep Timer

The Sleep Timer powers oﬀ your player after a given time, whether playing or not.

Start Sleep Timer (duration): Shown when the Sleep Timer is inactive, this option

will initiate a Sleep Timer with the duration shown in brackets.

Cancel Sleep Timer (remaining ): Shown when the Sleep Timer is active, this option

will cancel the current Sleep Timer. The time remaining before completion is shown in brackets.

Default Sleep Timer Duration: The default number of minutes a new Sleep Timer

will run for. The values range from 5 minutes to 5 hours in 5 minute steps. If a timer is currently active, the timer’s duration will be set to the newly entered value. The value set is persistent, see section E (page 183).

Start Sleep Timer On Boot: If set, a Sleep Timer will be initiated when the device

starts.

Restart Sleep Timer On Keypress: If set, when a Sleep Timer is active and a key is

pressed, the Sleep Timer will be restarted with the initial duration.

8.7. Bookmarking

Bookmarks allow you to save your current position within a track so that you can return to it at a later time. Bookmarks also store rate, pitch and speed information from the Pitch Screen (see section 4.3.3 (page 32)). Bookmarks are saved on a per directory basis or for individual (saved) playlists. You can store multiple bookmarks, even for the same track. When there’s already a bookmark for a directory or playlist, new bookmarks are added before existing ones.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 70

Bookmarks are stored next to the directory or playlist they reference, in a ﬁle with the same name as the directory or playlist and a “.bmark” extension. To load a bookmark, select the bookmark ﬁle and then select the bookmark to load. There are other ways to load a bookmarks mentioned below.

Note: Bookmarking only works when tracks are launched from the ﬁle browser, and

does not work for tracks launched via the database. In addition, they do not work with dynamic playlists.

Bookmark on Stop. This option controls whether Rockbox creates a bookmark when

playback is stopped manually.

No. Do not create bookmarks.

Yes. Always create bookmarks.

Ask. Ask if a bookmark should be created.

Yes – Recent Only. Always create a bookmark, but only in the recent bookmarks

list.

Ask – Recent Only. Ask if a bookmark should be created, but only add it to the

recent bookmarks list.

When either Yes – Recent Only or Ask – Recent Only is selected, bookmarks are only created if the Maintain a List of Recent Bookmarks is enabled.

Note: The Resume function remembers your position in the most recently ac-

cessed track regardless of how the Bookmark on Stop option is set.

Update on Stop. If set to “No”, this setting has no eﬀect and does not aﬀect any other

settings. If set to “Yes”, and the ﬁle to which a new bookmark would be added already exists, this option overrides the previous setting (Bookmark on Stop) and unconditionally creates a bookmark. This is useful if you don’t generally want to create bookmarks but only want to add them to already existing bookmark ﬁles. In this case you should set the setting Bookmark on Stop to “No” and the setting Update on Stop to “Yes”.

Load Last Bookmark. This option controls if Rockbox should automatically load a

bookmark for a ﬁle, when that ﬁle is played.

No Always start from the beginning of the track or playlist.

Yes Automatically return to the position of the last bookmark. Start from the

beginning if there are no bookmarks.

Ask Ask if playback should start from the beginning of the track or from one of

the bookmarks.

Maintain a list of Recent Bookmarks. If this option is enabled, a list of the most re-

cently created bookmarks may be accessed through the Recent Bookmarks option in the Main Menu. This list contains up to ten entries.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 71

No Do not keep a list of recently used bookmarks. This also removes the Recent

Bookmarks from the Main Menu.

Yes Keep a list of recently used bookmarks. Each new bookmark is added to the

list of recent bookmarks.

Unique Only Add each new bookmark to the list of recently used bookmarks, but

only keep one bookmark from the current directory or playlist; any previous entries are removed.

The following keys can be used to navigate in any bookmark list.

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Down Volume Down Selects the next bookmark. Volume Up Volume Up Selects the previous bookmark. Play or Forward

Forward Resumes from the selected bookmark.

Rewind Rewind Exits Recent Bookmark menu

Long Rec Long Rec Deletes the currently selected bookmark Long Mode Long Mode Enters the context menu for the selected

bookmark.

There are two options in the context menu:

• Resume will commence playback of the currently selected bookmark entry.

• Delete will remove the currently selected bookmark entry from the list.

8.8. Automatic resume

The automatic resume feature stores and recalls resume positions for all tracks without user intervention. These resume points are stored in the database, and thus automatic resume only works when the database has been initialized.

When automatic resume is enabled, manually selected tracks resume playback at their last playback position. It does not matter in which way you start the track; tracks are resumed whether they are navigated to through the database browser or ﬁle browser, by starting a playlist, or by skipping through tracks in the current playlist. (As an exception, when a track is resumed by loading a bookmark, the playback position saved in the bookmark takes precedence.)

Optionally, you can also enable automatic resume for automatic track transitions. In this case, the next track will be resumed as well instead of starting playback at its beginning. This is most useful for podcasts, and can be enabled on a per-directory basis.

A track’s resume position is updated whenever playback of that track stops, including when explicitly stopping the track, powering oﬀ the player, or starting playback of another track.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 72

If you intend to start a track from its beginning but notice that it was resumed, you can press Rewind in the WPS to skip back to its beginning. When pressing Rewind again in the ﬁrst few seconds of a track to go to the previous track, the previously (on ﬁrst button press) saved resume position is retained. Therefore, you can also use Rewind and Forward to skip across tracks in a playlist without losing their resume position.

Automatic resume. This option enables or disables automatic resume globally. When

Rockbox detects that the database (which is needed for this feature) has not been initialized yet, it asks whether it should be initialized right away.

Resume on automatic track change. Controls whether the next track in an automatic

track transition should be resumed at its last playback position as well.

No. Automatic resume works only for manual track selection.

Yes. Always attempt to resume – for both manual and automatic track changes.

In custom directories only. Conﬁgure directories in which to enable resume on

automatic track change. Selecting this option starts the text editor, in which you can enter the (absolute, case-insensitive) directory names separated by colons (“:”).

A typical value is “/podcast”, which matches all ﬁles in directories /PODCAST, /Podcast or /podcast and their subdirectories, but not in directories /podcasts (mind the trailing “s”) or /audio/podcast.

8.9. Language

This setting controls the language of the Rockbox user interface. Selecting a language will activate it. The language ﬁles must be in the /.rockbox/langs/ directory. See section 12.1.4 (page 146) for further details about languages.

8.10. Voice

Voice Menus. This option controls the voicing of menus/settings as they are selected

by the cursor. In order for this to work, a voice ﬁle must be present in the /.rockbox/langs/ directory on the player. Voice ﬁles are large 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, but will do nothing unless the appropriate voice ﬁle is installed in the correct place on the player. The Voice Menus have several limitations:

• Setting the Sound Option Channels to Karaoke may disable voice menus.

• Plugins do not support voice features.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 73

Voice Directories. This option controls voicing of directory names. A voice ﬁle must be

present for this to work. Several options are available.

Spell. Speak the directory name by spelling it out letter by letter. Support is

provided only for the most common letters, numbers 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.

You can use pre-generated .talk clips to have directory names spoken properly, but you must enable this explicitly (see below).

Use Directory .talk Clips. This option turns on the use of .talk clips for directories.

On. Use special pre-recorded 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.

Oﬀ. No checking is made for directory .talk clips; they are not used even if present.

This can reduce disk activity.

Use of a .talk clip takes precedence over other directory name voicing. Otherwise (e.g. if a .talk clip is not available), voicing uses the method set under Voice Directories above.

Voice Filenames. This option controls voicing of ﬁlenames. Again, a voice ﬁle must be

present for this to work. The options provided are Spell, Numbers, and Off which function the same as for Voice Directories. You can use pre-generated .talk clips to have ﬁlenames spoken properly, but you must enable this explicitly (see below).

Use File .talk Clips. This option turns on the use of .talk clips for ﬁles.

On. Use special pre-recorded ﬁles for each ﬁle. This functions the same as for

directories except that the .talk clip ﬁle must have the same name as the described ﬁle with an extra .talk extension (e.g. Punkadiddle.mp3 would require a ﬁle called Punkadiddle.mp3.talk).

Oﬀ. No checking is made for ﬁle .talk clips; they are not used even if present. This

can reduce disk activity.

Use of a .talk clip takes precedence over other ﬁlename voicing. Otherwise (e.g. if a .talk clip is not available), voicing uses the method set under Voice Filenames above.

Say File Type. This option turns on voicing of ﬁle types when Voice Filenames is set

to Spell or Numbers. When Voice Directories is set to Spell, “Directory” will be voiced after each spelled out directory.

Announce Battery Level. When this option is enabled the battery level is announced

when it falls under 50%, 30% and 15%.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 8. General Settings 74

See ZVoiceHowto for more details on conﬁguring speech support in Rockbox.

8.11. Hotkey

WPS Hotkey.

File Browser Hotkey.

These options set the hotkey function for their respective screens (see section 4.5 (page 37)). The default for the WPS is View Playlist. The File Browser default is

Off.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 9. Theme Settings 75

9. Theme Settings

The Theme Settings menu oﬀers options that you can change to customize the visual appearance of Rockbox.

Browse Theme Files. This option will display all the currently installed themes on the

player, press Play or Forward to load the chosen theme and apply it.

A theme is a conﬁguration ﬁle, stored in a speciﬁc directory, that typically changes the WPS , font used and on some platforms additional information such as background image and text colours.

There are a number of themes that ship with Rockbox. If none of these suit your needs, many more can be downloaded from http://themes.rockbox.org/index.php?

target=m3.

Note: Themes do not have to be purely visual. It is quite possible to create a theme

that switches between audio conﬁgurations for use in the car, with headphones and when connected to an external ampliﬁer. See section 12.2.2 (page 147) for more details.

Font. Browse the installed fonts on your player. Selecting one will activate it. See

section 12.1.3 (page 145) for further details about fonts.

While Playing Screen. Opens the File Browser in the /.rockbox/wps directory and

displays all .wps ﬁles. Selecting one will activate it, Rewind will exit back to the menu. For further information about the WPS see section 4.3 (page 28). For information about editing a .wps ﬁle see section 12.2 (page 147).

Show Icons. Rockbox has the ability to display an icon to the left of the ﬁle in the File

Browser. For details of these icons, see section A.1 (page 158). These icons can

also be customised. See the ZIconSets and ZCustomIcons Wiki pages for details.

Clear Backdrop. Rockbox allows you to select bitmap pictures to use as backdrops, see

section 12.1.5 (page 146) for further information. This option allows you to clear the backdrops that you set.

Status/Scrollbar. Settings related to on screen status display and the scrollbar.

Scroll Bar. Allows you to choose where the vertical scroll bar should appear.

Scroll Bar Width. Allows you to choose the width of the scroll bar (in pixels).

Default value is 6.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 9. Theme Settings 76

Status Bar. Allows you to choose where to display the statusbar.

Volume Display. Controls whether the volume is displayed as a graphic or a nu-

meric value on the Status Bar. If you select a numeric display, volume is displayed in decibels. See section 6.1 (page 47) for more on the volume setting.

Battery Display. Controls whether the battery charge status is displayed as a

graphic or numerical percentage value on the Status Bar.

Line Selector Type. This option allows you to select which type of line selector to use.

Pointer. A small arrow to the left of the menu text.

Bar (inverse). A bar with inverted foreground and background colour.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 10. Recording Settings 77

10. Recording Settings

Figure 10.1.: The recording settings screen

Note: To change the location where recordings are stored open the Context Menu

(see section 4.1.2 (page 23)) on the directory where you want to store them in the File Browser and select Set As Recording Directory.

10.1. Format

Choose which format to save your recording in. The available choices are the two uncompressed formats PCM Wave and AIFF, the losslessly compressed WavPack and the lossy MPEG Layer 3.

10.2. Encoder Settings (MP3 only)

This sets the bitrate when using the MPEG Layer 3 format.

10.3. Frequency

Choose the recording frequency (sample rate). 88.2 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 22.05 kHz and

11.025 kHz are available. Higher sample rates use up more disk space, but give better sound quality.

Note: The 11.025 kHz setting is not available when using MPEG Layer 3 format.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 10. Recording Settings 78

10.4. Source

Choose the source of the recording. The options are: Microphone, Line In and FM Radio. For more information on recording from the radio see section 5.9 (page 42).

10.5. Channels

This allows you to select mono or stereo recording. Please note that for mono recording, only the left channel is recorded. Mono recordings are usually somewhat smaller than stereo.

10.6. Mono Mode

When conﬁgured to record to mono and the source is a stereo signal, use this setting to conﬁgure how the mono signal is created. Options are L, R and L+R.

10.7. File Split Options

This sub menu contains options for ﬁle splitting, which can be used to split up long recordings into manageable pieces. The splits are seamless (frame accurate), no audio is lost at the split point. The break between recordings is only the time required to stop and restart the recording, on the order of 2 – 4 seconds.

Split Measure. This option controls whether to split the recording when the Split

Filesize is reached or when the Split Time has elapsed.

What to do when Splitting. This controls what will happen when the splitting condi-

tion is fulﬁlled the two available options here are Start a new file or Stop recording.

Split Time. Set the time to record between each split, if time is used as Split Measure.

Options (hours:minutes between splits): Oﬀ, 00:05, 00:10, 00:15, 00:30, 1:00, 1:14 (74 minute CD), 1:20 (80 minute CD), 2:00, 4:00, 8:00, 10:00, 12:00, 18:00, 24:00.

Split Filesize. Set the ﬁlesize to record between each split, if ﬁlesize is used as Split

Measure.

10.8. Prerecord Time

This setting buﬀers a small amount of audio so that when the record button is pressed, the recording will begin from that number of seconds earlier. This is useful for ensuring that a recording begins before a cue that is being waited for.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 10. Recording Settings 79

10.9. Clear Recording Directory

Resets the location where the recorded ﬁles are saved to the root of your player’s drive.

10.10. Clipping Light

Causes the backlight to ﬂash on when clipping has been detected. Options: Off, Main unit only, Main and remote unit, Remote unit only.

10.11. Trigger

When you record a source you often are only interested in the sound and not the silence in between. The recording trigger provides you with a tool to automatically distinguish between sound and silence and record the sound only. Unfortunately it is not very easy to make this distinction between silence and sound because you hardly ever encounter real silence. There always are background noises. What is considered as background noise depends on the situation. For example during a lecture the very low noise of rustling paper might be considered as background noise. During a rock concert the murmur of the audience might be considered background noise which is much louder compared to rustling paper. Also the duration of the signal matters. When you record speech you want to record every syllable. When you record live music you may not be interested in that chord the guitarist plays for two minutes before the show to verify his amp is turned on. The trigger features numerous parameters to adapt its behaviour to the desired situation.

Trigger. This parameter speciﬁes the trigger mode. When set to Off the recording must

be started manually and apart from the Prerecord time no other parameter has any eﬀect. Once will have the trigger start one recording only; after the recording has ﬁnished the input signal will not start another recording. Repeat will have the trigger start multiple recordings.

Trigtype. Add description of Trigtype Options: Stop, Pause, New File.

Prerecord Time. This speciﬁes the time that is included into the recording before the

trigger event occurs. This is very useful if you record a signal that fades in. Usually you want to set the prerecord time greater than or equal to the start duration. That ensures that you record the entire sound. Strictly speaking the prerecord time is not a special parameter of the trigger. It is available during normal recordings too.

Start Above. The start threshold deﬁnes the minimal volume a sound must have to start

the recording. It is displayed numerically in the line “Start Above”. Note that the unit of the threshold depends on the settings of the peak meter. (i.e. When the peak meter displays dB you can adjust the level in dB and when the peak meter is set to linear the threshold is displayed as percentage.) In the peak meter at the bottom of the screen the start threshold is displayed graphically by a little triangle

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 10. Recording Settings 80

pointing to the right. There are two special values. The value Off turns the start condition oﬀ. With this setting you have to start the recording manually and the trigger only stops the recording according to the stop condition. The setting -inf sets the trigger to the absolute minimum. This setting only makes sense when you record via a digital input as even the noise of the device itself would exceed this threshold immediately.

for at least. The start duration deﬁnes the minimal duration that a signal must ex-

ceed the start threshold to start the recording. Depending on your situation you may want to set this setting to 0 (e.g. when copying a song from a commercial medium) or to quite big values. Because sound is not continuous by nature (think of percussion) negligible dropouts are tolerated during this start duration.

Stop Below. When the sound level drops below the stop threshold the recording is

stopped. It is displayed numerically in the line “Stop Below”. Just like the start threshold the unit of the stop threshold depends on the settings of the peak meter. There’s also a small triangular marker in the peak meter at the bottom of the screen. In contrast to the start threshold marker it points to the left. The value Off turns the stop condition oﬀ. With this setting you have to stop the recording manually.

for at least. This time speciﬁes the duration the signal must drop below the stop thresh-

old to stop the recording. By selecting high values you can ensure that, for example, trailing fade-outs are recorded entirely.

Presplit Gap. When the signal drops below the stop threshold for the time speciﬁed by

the presplit gap a new recording may be started when the signal raises above the start threshold. Thus the value of the presplit gap should be smaller than the stop hold time. Otherwise the recording would stop anyway and the presplit gap has no eﬀect. For most uses I recommend to set this parameter equal to the stop hold time. Sometimes you may encounter a sound source (e.g. a CD) where the songs have fade outs and hardly any gaps between the tracks. Here you can set the stop hold time to long values to ensure that all fade outs are recorded completely. By specifying a short presplit gap you still can split the recording into separate tracks whenever the trigger start condition is met.

More information can be found at ZVolumeTriggeredRecording.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 81

11. Plugins

Plugins are programs that Rockbox can load and run. Only one plugin can be loaded at a time. Plugins have exclusive control over the user interface. This means you cannot switch back and forth between a plugin and Rockbox. When a plugin is loaded, you need to exit it to return to the Rockbox interface. Most plugins will not interfere with music playback but some of them will stop playback while running. Plugins have the ﬁle extension .rock. Most of them can be started from Browse Plugins in the Main Menu.

Viewer plugins get started automatically by opening an associated ﬁle (i.e. text ﬁles, chip8 games), or from the Open with option on the Context Menu.

11.1. Games

See also the Chip-8 emulator in section 11.3.2 (page 119) .

11.1.1. 2048

2048 is a simple, addictive puzzle game played by moving tiles in around on a 4x4 grid. Tiles slide as far as possible in the direction chosen by the player each turn until they are stopped by either another tile or the edge of the grid. If two tiles of the same number collide while moving, they merge into a tile with the total value of the two tiles that collided. The resulting tile cannot merge with another the same move. After each move, a tile with the value of 2 or 4 is created in an empty spot on the grid.

The game is won when a tile with a value of 2048 is created, and the player loses when there are no more possible moves.

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up, Volume Down, Rewind, Forward

Forward, Rewind, Volume Down, Volume Up

Slide tiles

Rec Rec Go to menu

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 82

11.1.2. Blackjack

Figure 11.1.: Blackjack

Blackjack, a game played in casinos around the world, is now available in the palm of your hand! The rules are simple: try to get as close to 21 without going over or simply beat out the dealer for the best hand. Although this may not seem diﬃcult, blackjack is a game renowned for the strategy involved. This version includes the ability to split, buy insurance, and double down.

For the full set of rules to the game, and other fascinating information visit

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/blackjack-rules.php

Key Remote Key Action

Enter betting amount Hit (Draw new card) / Select Stay (End hand) Double down Pause game and go to menu / Cancel

11.1.3. BrickMania

Figure 11.2.: BrickMania

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 83

BrickMania is a clone of the classic game Breakout. The aim of the game is to destroy all the bricks by hitting them with the ball once or more. Sometimes a special item falls down when you destroy a brick. For a special item to take eﬀect, you must catch it with the paddle. Look out for the bad ones.

Special items

Displayed Name Description

N Normal Returns paddle to normal. D Die Ball dies; lose a life. L Life Gain a life. F Fire Allows you to shoot bricks with paddle. G Glue Ball sticks to paddle each time it hits. B Ball Immediately ﬁres another ball.

FL Flip Flip left / right movement.

Key Remote Key Action

Moves the paddle Release the ball / Fire Open menu / Quit

11.1.4. Bubbles

Figure 11.3.: Bubbles

The goal of the game is to beat each level as quickly as possible by clearing the board of all bubbles. Bubbles are removed from the board when a cluster of three of more of the same type is formed. The game is over when any bubbles on the board extend below the bottom line. To make things more diﬃcult, the entire board is shifted down every

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 84

time a certain number of shots have been ﬁred. Points are awarded depending on how quickly the level was completed.

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up Forward Pause game Rewind / Forward

Volume Down

/ Volume Up

Aim the bubble

Mode Mode Fire bubble Rec or Long Rec

Rec Exit to menu

11.1.5. Chessbox

Figure 11.4.: Chessbox

Chessbox is a one-person chess game with computer artiﬁcial intelligence. The chess engine is a port of GNU Chess 2 by John Stanback.

It also works as a PGN ﬁle viewer. Instead of executing the game from the plugin menu, look for any ﬁle with .pgn extension in the ﬁle browser and execute it. Chessbox will show the list of matches included in the ﬁle and allow you to select the one you want to watch. After that, you can scroll back and forth through the moves of the game. If the menu is invoked while in the viewer, the user is allowed to select a new match from the same ﬁle or quit the game.

“Force play” while the computer is thinking will cause it to make its move immediately. If done while it’s your turn, the computer will move for you and ﬂip the board so that you are playing from the other side. If you want, you can force play an entire game and watch the artiﬁcial intelligence ﬁght against itself.

When you quit the game the current state will be saved and restored when you resume the game. The menu also allows the user to reload the last game saved, save the current position and start a new game without having to quit the game.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 85

Keys

Key Remote Key Action

Direction keys Move the cursor

Pick up / Drop piece Change level Force play Show the menu

11.1.6. Chopper

Figure 11.5.: Chopper

Navigate a cavernous maze without banging into walls, the ceiling, or the ﬂoor. How long can you ﬂy your chopper?

Key Remote Key Action

Make chopper ﬂy Enter menu

11.1.7. Dice

Dice is a simple dice rolling simulator. Select number and type of dice to roll in a menu and start by choosing “Roll Dice”. The result is shown as individual numbers as well as the total of the rolled dice.

Key Remote Key Action

Mode Mode Roll dice again Rec Rec Quit

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 86

11.1.8. Doom

Figure 11.6.: Doom

This is the famous Doom game.

Getting started

For the game to run you need .wad game ﬁles located in /.rockbox/doom/ on your player. Create the directory and save the following ﬁles there:

rockdoom.wad. The Rockbox .wad, based on prboom.wad from prboom-2.2.6

Your wad ﬁles. Copy all Doom wads you wish to play into that directory.

The needed ﬁles can be found at ZPluginDoom

To play addon wads create the addons directory within the doom directory. Place wad ﬁles in this directory. Currently doom only supports a maximum number of 10 addons.

A free alternative for Doom 2 is FreeDoom (http://freedoom.sourceforge.net). This can be used in place of doom2.wad, or it may be used as an addon in Doom, by placing it in the addons directory.

Menus

Rockdoom Menu. The Rockdoom menu is shown when Doom is ﬁrst launched. This is

the only time it can be accessed (before starting the game). To re-adjust Rockdoom options, you will need to quit your current game and restart the plugin.

Main Menu. The Doom plugin has a main menu, which is brought up before a game

is started. It has the following entries:

Game. Select which (oﬃcial) wad to launch Addon. Select which unoﬃcial addon wad to launch (From /.rockbox/doom/addons

directory)

Demos. Select which demo ﬁle to play on game start Options. Conﬁgure low-level Doom options Play Game. Launch the wad/addon/Demo chosen

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 87

Options Menu. This menu has the following options:

Sound. Enable or Disable sound in Doom Set Keys. Change the game key conﬁguration Time Demo. Run a timed demo, to test game speed on a player (Only runs on

Doom Shareware)

Player Bobbing. Enable or Disable player up/Down movement Translucency. Enable or Disable sprite translucency (Fireballs, Plasma...) Fake Contrast. Enable or Disable modiﬁed game lighting Always Run. Make the player always run Headsup Display. Show the player status when in fullscreen Statusbar Always Red. Disable colour response statusbar

InGame Main Menu. This menu can only be accessed from within a running game,

and is displayed by

New Game. Start a new game Options. In game options Load Game. Load a saved game Save Game. Save the current game Quit. Quit the game

InGame Options Menu. This menu has the following options:

End Game. Ends the current game Messages. Enable or Disable in game messages Screen Size. Shrink or Enlarge the displayed portion of the game Gamma. Change the brightness (Gamma) of the game Sound Volume. Change the sound, music and system volume

Note: In game music is not currently supported

Keys

Key Remote Key Action

Move Forward Down Turn Left Turn Right Shoot Open InGame Menu Enter Change Weapon

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 88

Playing the game

After installation of the wad ﬁles is complete you can start the game. more description

is needed

11.1.9. Flipit

Figure 11.7.: Flipit

Flipping the colour of the token under the cursor also ﬂips the tokens above, below, left and right of the cursor. The aim is to end up with a screen containing tokens of only one colour.

Key Remote Key Action

Move the cursor Flip Shuﬄe Solve Solve step by step Quit the game

11.1.10. Goban

Figure 11.8.: Goban

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 89

Goban is a a plugin for playing, viewing and recording games of Go (also known as Weiqi, Baduk, Igo and Goe). It uses standard Smart Game Format (SGF) ﬁles for saving and loading games. You can ﬁnd a short introduction to Go at http://senseis.xmp.

net/?WhatIsGo and more information about SGF ﬁles can be read at http://senseis.xmp. net/?SmartGameFormat or the SGF speciﬁcation at http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/.

This plugin can load all modern SGF ﬁles (ﬁle format 3 or 4) with few problems. It attempts to preserve SGF properties which it doesn’t understand, and most common SGF properties are handled fully. It is possible to view (and edit if you like) Kogo’s Joseki Dictionary (http://waterﬁre.us/joseki.htm) with this plugin, although the load and save times can be on the order of a minute or two on particularly slow devices. Large SGF ﬁles may stop audio playback for the duration of the plugin’s run in order to free up more memory and some very large SGF ﬁles will not even load on devices with little available memory.

Note: The plugin does NOT support SGF ﬁles with multiple games in one ﬁle. These

are rare, but if you have one don’t even try it (the ﬁle will most likely be corrupted if you save over it). You have been warned.

The ﬁle /sgf/gbn_def.sgf is used by the plugin to store any unsaved changes in the most recently loaded game. This means that if you forget to save your changes, you should load /sgf/gbn_def.sgf immediately to oﬄoad the changes to another ﬁle. If you load another ﬁle ﬁrst then your changes will be lost permanently. The /sgf/gbn_def.sgf ﬁle is also the ﬁle loaded if another is not selected.

The information panel which displays the current move number may also contain these markers:

Mark Meaning

+ There are nodes after the current node in the SGF tree. * There are sibling variations which can be navigated to using the Next Vari-

ation menu option of the Context Menu.

C There is a comment at the current node. It can be viewed/edited using the

Add/Edit Comment menu option of the Context Menu.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 90

Controls

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up Move cursor up Volume Down Move cursor down Rewind Move cursor left Forward Move cursor right

Play a move (or use a tool if play-mode has been changed). Retreat one node in the game tree Advance one node in the game tree Main Menu

Menus

Main Menu. The main menu for game setup and access to other menus.

New. Create a new game with your choice of board size and handicaps.

Save. Save the current state of the game. It will be saved to /sgf/gbn_def.sgf

unless otherwise set.

Save As. Save to a speciﬁed ﬁle.

Game Info. View and modify the metadata of the current game.

Playback Control. Control the playback of the current playlist and modify the

volume of your player.

Zoom Level. Zoom in or out on the board. If you set the zoom level, it will be

saved and used again the next time you open this plugin.

Options. Open the Options Menu.

Context Menu. Open the Context Menu which allows you to set play modes and

other tools.

Quit. Leave the plugin. Any unsaved changes are saved to /sgf/gbn_def.sgf.

Game Info. The menu for modifying game info (metadata) of the current game. This

information will be saved to the SGF ﬁle and can be viewed in almost all SGF readers.

Basic Info. Shows a quick view of the basic game metadata, if any has been set

(otherwise does nothing). This option does not allow editing.

Time Limit. The time limit of the current game.

Overtime. The overtime settings of the current game.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 91

Result. The result of the current game. This text must follow the format speciﬁed

at http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/properties.html#RE to be read by other SGF readers. Some examples are B+R (Black wins by resignation), B+5.5 (Black wins by 5.5 points), W+T (White wins on Time).

Handicap. The handicap of the current game.

Komi. The komi of the current game (compensation to the white player for black

having the ﬁrst move).

Ruleset. The name of the ruleset in use for this game. The NZ and GOE rulesets

include suicide as a legal move (for multi-stone suicide only); the rest do not.

Black Player. The name of the black player.

Black Rank. Black’s rank, in dan or kyu.

Black Team. The name of black’s team, if any.

White Player. The name of the white player.

White Rank. White’s rank, in dan or kyu.

White Team. The name of white’s team, if any.

Date. The date that this game took place. This text must follow the format

speciﬁed at http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/properties.html#DT to be read by other SGF readers.

Event. The name of the event which this game was a part of, if any.

Place. The place that this game took place.

Round. If part of a tournament, the round number for this game.

Done. Return to the previous menu.

Options. Customize the behavior of the plugin in certain ways.

Show Child Variations? Enable this to mark child variations on he board if there

are more than one. Note: variations which don’t start with a move are not visible in this way.

Disable Idle Poweroﬀ? Enable this if you do not want the player to turn oﬀ after

a certain period of inactivity (depends on your global Rockbox settings).

Idle Autosave Time. Set the amount of idle time to wait before automatically

saving any unsaved changes. These autosaves go to the ﬁle /sgf/gbn_def.sgf regardless of if you have loaded a game or used Save As to save the game before or not. Set to Off to disable this functionality completely.

Automatically Show Comments? If this is enabled and you navigate to a node

containing game comments, they will automatically be displayed.

Context Menu. The menu for choosing diﬀerent play modes and tools, adding or edit-

ing comments, adding pass moves, or switching between sibling variations.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 92

Play Mode. Play moves normally on the board. If there are child moves from the

current node, this mode will let you follow variations by simply playing the ﬁrst move in the sequence. Unless it is following a variation, this mode will not allow you to play illegal moves. This is the default mode before another is set after loading a game or creating a new one.

Add Black Mode. Add black stones to the board as desired. These stones are not

moves and do not perform captures or count as ko threats.

Add White Mode. Add white stones to the board as desired. These stones are

not moves and do not perform captures or count as ko threats.

Erase Stone Mode. Remove stones from the board as desired. These removed

stones are not counted as captured, they are simply removed.

Pass. Play a single pass move. This does not change the mode of play.

Next Variation. If the game is at the ﬁrst move in a variation, this will navigate

to the next variation after the current one. This is the only way to reach variations which start with adding or removing stones, as you cannot follow them by “playing” the same move.

Force Play Mode. The same as Play Mode except that this mode will allow you

to play illegal moves such as retaking a ko immediately without a ko threat, suicide on rulesets which don’t allow it (including single stone suicide), and playing a move where there is already a stone.

Mark Mode. Add generic marks to the board, or remove them.

Circle Mode. Add circle marks to the board, or remove them.

Square Mode. Add square marks to the board, or remove them.

Triangle Mode. Add triangle marks to the board, or remove them.

Label Mode. Add one character labels to the board. Each label starts at the

letter ‘a’ and each subsequent application of a label will increment the letter. To remove a label, click on it until it cycles through the allowed letters and disappears.

Add/Edit Comment. Add or edit a comment at the current node.

Done. Go back to the previous screen.

11.1.11. Invadrox

WARNING! Image not found

Figure 11.9.: Invadrox

Invadrox is a clone of the classic arcade game Space Invaders. Kill those pesky aliens before they get to you. Remember, they increase speed, drop down and reverse direction after every pass!

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 93

Key Remote Key Action

Move left Move right Fire Quit

11.1.12. Jackpot

Figure 11.10.: Jackpot

This is a jackpot slot machine game. At the beginning of the game you have 20$. Payouts are given when three matching symbols come up.

Key Remote Key Action

Mode Mode Play Rec Rec Exit the game

11.1.13. Jewels

Figure 11.11.: Jewels

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 94

Jewels is a simple yet addicting game which involves swapping pairs of jewels in order to form connected segments of three or more of the same type.

The goal of the game is to score as many points as possible before running out of available moves. Higher points are awarded to larger combos. The game advances to the next level after every one hundred points and randomly clears several jewels.

In puzzle mode the aim of the game is to connect the puzzles, by skilful swapping pairs of jewels.

Key Remote Key Action

Move the cursor around the jewels Select a jewel Menu

11.1.14. MazezaM

Figure 11.12.: MazezaM

The goal of this puzzle game is to escape a dungeon consisting of ten “mazezams”. These are rooms containing rows of blocks which can be shifted left or right. You can move the rows only by pushing them and if you move the rows carelessly, you will get stuck. You can have another go by selecting “retry level” from the menu, but this will cost you a life. You start the game with three lives. Luckily, there are checkpoints at levels four and eight.

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up, Volume Down, Rewind, Forward

Forward, Rewind, Volume Down, Volume Up

Move Character

Rec Rec Menu

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 95

11.1.15. Minesweeper

Figure 11.13.: Minesweeper plugin

The classic game of minesweeper. The aim of the game is to uncover all of the squares on the board. If a mine is uncovered then the game is over. If a mine is not uncovered, then the number of mines adjacent to the current square is revealed. The aim is to use the information you are given to work out where the mines are and avoid them. When the player is certain that they know the location of a mine, it can be tagged to avoid accidentally “stepping” on it.

Key Remote Key Action

Move the cursor across the mineﬁeld Toggle ﬂag on / oﬀ Reveal the contents of the current square Display the current game status Exit the game

11.1.16. Pegbox

Figure 11.14.: pegbox

To beat each level, you must destroy all of the pegs. If two like pegs are pushed into each other they disappear except for triangles which form a solid block and crosses which

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 96

allow you to choose a replacement block.

Key Remote Key Action

to move around to choose peg to restart level to go up a level to go down a level to quit

11.1.17. Pong

Figure 11.15.: Pong

Pong is a simple one or two player “tennis game”. Whenever a player misses the ball the other scores.

The game starts in demo mode, with the CPU controlling both sides.

As soon as a button to control one of the paddles is pressed, control of that paddle passes to the player, so for a single player game, just press the appropriate buttons to control the side you want to play. For a two player game, both players should just press the appropriate buttons for their side.

Key Remote Key Action

Left player up Left player down Right player up Right player down Quit

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 97

11.1.18. Reversi

This is a simple implementation of the Reversi game. The objective of the game is to have a majority of own coloured pieces showing at the end of the game. The game rules can be found in the internet.

You can choose to play manually (you place both the white and dark pieces) or to play against a (not very smart) robot.

11.1.19. Robotﬁndskitten

Figure 11.16.: Robotﬁndskitten

In this game, you are robot (#). Your job is to ﬁnd kitten. This task is complicated by the existence of various things which are not kitten. Robot must touch items to determine if they are kitten or not. The game ends when robotﬁndskitten.

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Up, Volume Down, Rewind, Forward

Forward, Rewind, Volume Down, Volume Up

Move robot

Rec Rec Quit

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 98

11.1.20. Rockblox

Figure 11.17.: Rockblox

Rockblox is a Rockbox version of the classic falling blocks game from Russia. The aim of the game is to make the falling blocks of diﬀerent shapes form full rows. Whenever a row is completed, it will be cleared away, and you gain points. For every ten lines completed, the game level increases, making the blocks fall faster. If the pile of blocks reaches the ceiling, the game is over.

Key Remote Key Action

Restart game Move left Move right Move down Rotate anticlockwise Rotate clockwise Drop

Hold switch Pause

Quit

11.1.21. Rockblox1d

Rockblox1d is a game for people who ﬁnd rockblox too hard. In this version the second dimension is missing so the user only has to move the bricks down. No horizontal moving anymore and no need to rotate the brick!

Key Remote Key Action

Volume Down Move down faster Rec or Long Rec

Quit

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 99

11.1.22. Sliding Puzzle

Figure 11.18.: Sliding puzzle

The classic sliding puzzle game. Rearrange the pieces so that you can see the whole picture, or switch to number tiles if you like it a little easier Includes one picture puzzle, but you can switch the puzzle picture to be the album art of the currently playing music track, if one exists (see section C (page 165)). You can also use the sliding puzzle plugin as a viewer for supported image types, to turn your own pictures into a puzzle.

Key controls:

Key Remote Key Action

Move Tile Shuﬄe Switch between pictures (default puzzle, album art, and your own image if launched via Open With), and numbered tiles Stop the game

11.1.23. Snake

Figure 11.19.: Snake

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Chapter 11. Plugins 100

This is the popular snake game. The aim is to grow your snake as large as possible by eating the dots that appear on the screen. The game will end when the snake touches either the borders of the screen or itself.

Key Remote Key Action

Change levels (1 is slowest, 9 is fastest) Toggle Play/Pause Go to the plugin’s menu

11.1.24. Snake 2

Figure 11.20.: Snake 2 – The Snake Strikes Back

Another version of the Snake game. Move the snake around, and eat the apples that pop up on the screen. Each time an apple is eaten, the snake gets longer. The game ends when the snake hits a wall, or runs into itself.

Key Remote Key Action

Steer the snake Pause and resume the game Quit

In game A, the maze stays the same, in game B after an increasing number of apples eaten the maze is replaced by a new one.

The Rockbox manual (version rUnversioned directory-141216) Iaudio M3

Iaudio M3, M3 Rockbox Firmware Update Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual