The Rockbox Manual
for
Sansa e200 and e200R Series
rockbox.org
February 20, 2015
2
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.
c
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”.
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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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.4. Enabling Speech Support (optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3. Running Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4. Updating Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5. Uninstalling Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5.1. Automatic Uninstallation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5.2. Manual Uninstallation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.6. Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3. Quick Start 20
3.1. Basic Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.1.1. The player’s controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.1.2. Turning the player on and off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1.3. Starting the original firmware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1.4. Putting music on your player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1.5. The first contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1.6. Basic controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.1.7. Basic concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2. Customising Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3. USB Charging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4. Browsing and playing 24
4.1. File Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.1.1. File Browser Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.1.2. Context Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.1.3. Virtual Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
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4.2. Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.2.2. Initializing the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.2.3. The Database Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.2.4. Using the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.3. While Playing Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.3.1. WPS Key Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.3.2. Peak Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.3.3. The WPS Context Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.4. Working with Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.4.1. Playlist terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.4.2. Creating playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.4.3. Adding music to playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.4.4. Modifying playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.4.5. Saving playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.4.6. Loading saved playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.5. Hotkeys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5. The Main Menu 41
5.1. Introducing the Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5.2. Navigating the Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5.3. Recent Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5.4. Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.5. Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.6. Now Playing/Resume Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.7. Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.7.1. Sound Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.7.2. Playback Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.7.3. General Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.7.4. Theme Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.7.5. Recording Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.7.6. Manage Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.8. Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.8.1. While Recording Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.9. FM Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5.10. Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
5.11. Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
5.12. System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
5.13. Quick Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
5.14. Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6. Sound Settings 51
6.1. Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.2. Bass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
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6.3. Volume Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.4. Treble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.5. Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.6. Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.7. Stereo Width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.8. Crossfeed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.9. Equalizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
6.10. Dithering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.11. Timestretch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.12. Haas Surround . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.13. Perceptual Bass Enhancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
6.14. Auditory Fatigue Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
6.15. Compressor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
7. Playback Settings 60
7.1. Shuffle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.2. Repeat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.3. Play Selected First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.4. Fast-Forward/Rewind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.5. Fade on Stop/Pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.6. Party Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.7. Crossfade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.8. Replaygain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
7.9. Track Skip Beep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
7.10. Auto-Change Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
7.11. Constrain Auto-Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.12. Last.fm Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.13. Cuesheet Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.14. Skip Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.15. Prevent Track Skipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.16. Rewind Before Resume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.17. Rewind on Pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.18. Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8. General Settings 66
8.1. Playlist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
8.2. File View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
8.3. Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.4. Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.5. System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.5.1. Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.5.2. Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.5.3. Use Shortcuts Menu Instead of Quick Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.5.4. Car Adapter Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
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8.5.5. Wheel Light Timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.5.6. Keyclick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.5.7. USB HID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.5.8. USB Keypad Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.5.9. USB Hide Internal Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
8.6. Startup/Shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
8.6.1. Start Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
8.6.2. Idle Poweroff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
8.6.3. Sleep Timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
8.7. Bookmarking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
8.8. Automatic resume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.9. Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.10. Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
8.11. Hotkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
9. Theme Settings 81
10.Recording Settings 83
10.1. Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.2. Encoder Settings (MP3 only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.3. Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.4. Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.5. Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.6. Mono Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.7. File Split Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.8. Prerecord Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.9. Clear Recording Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.10.Clipping Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.11.Trigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
11.Time and Date 87
12.Plugins 88
12.1. Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
12.1.1. 2048 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
12.1.2. Blackjack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
12.1.3. BrickMania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
12.1.4. Bubbles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
12.1.5. Chessbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
12.1.6. Clix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
12.1.7. Chopper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
12.1.8. Codebuster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
12.1.9. Dice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
12.1.10.Doom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
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12.1.11.Flipit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
12.1.12.Goban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
12.1.13.Invadrox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
12.1.14.Jackpot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
12.1.15.Jewels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
12.1.16.MazezaM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
12.1.17.Minesweeper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
12.1.18.Pacbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
12.1.19.Pegbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
12.1.20.Pong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
12.1.21.Reversi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
12.1.22.Robotfindskitten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
12.1.23.Rockblox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12.1.24.Rockblox1d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12.1.25.Sliding Puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
12.1.26.Snake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
12.1.27.Snake 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
12.1.28.Sokoban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
12.1.29.Solitaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
12.1.30.Spacerocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
12.1.31.Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
12.1.32.Sudoku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
12.1.33.Wormlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
12.1.34.Xobox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
12.1.35.XWorld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
12.2. Demos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
12.2.1. Bounce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
12.2.2. Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
12.2.3. Cube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
12.2.4. Demystify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
12.2.5. Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
12.2.6. Fractals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
12.2.7. Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
12.2.8. Mosaique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
12.2.9. Oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
12.2.10.PictureFlow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
12.2.11.Plasma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
12.2.12.Rocklife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
12.2.13.Snow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
12.2.14.Starfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
12.2.15.VU meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
12.3. Viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
12.3.1. Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
12.3.2. Chip-8 Emulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
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12.3.3. Frotz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
12.3.4. Image Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
12.3.5. Lua scripting language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
12.3.6. Midiplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
12.3.7. MPEG Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
12.3.8. MP3 Encoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
12.3.9. Rockboy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
12.3.10.Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
12.3.11.Shopper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
12.3.12.Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
12.3.13.Text Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
12.3.14.Theme Remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
12.3.15.VBRfix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
12.3.16.ZXBox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
12.4. Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
12.4.1. Alarm Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
12.4.2. Battery Benchmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
12.4.3. Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
12.4.4. Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
12.4.5. Chess Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
12.4.6. Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
12.4.7. Disk Tidy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
12.4.8. Keybox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
12.4.9. Lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
12.4.10.Lrcplayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
12.4.11.md5sum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
12.4.12.Metronome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
12.4.13.Periodic Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
12.4.14.Pitch Detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
12.4.15.Random Folder Advance Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
12.4.16.Resistor Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
12.4.17.Rockpaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
12.4.18.Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
12.4.19.Stopwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
12.4.20.Text Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
13.Advanced Topics 176
13.1. Customising the User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
13.1.1. Customising The Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
13.1.2. Getting Extras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
13.1.3. Loading Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
13.1.4. Loading Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
13.1.5. Changing Filetype Colours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
13.1.6. Loading Backdrops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
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13.1.7. UI Viewport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
13.2. Configuring the Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
13.2.1. Themeing – General Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
13.2.2. Themes – Create Your Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
13.2.3. Info Viewport (SBS only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
13.2.4. Additional Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
13.3. Managing Rockbox Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13.3.1. Introduction to .cfg Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13.3.2. Specifications for .cfg Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
13.3.3. The Manage Settings menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
13.4. Firmware Loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
13.4.1. Using ROLO (Rockbox Loader) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
13.5. Optimising battery runtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
13.5.1. Display backlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
13.5.2. Display power-off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
13.5.3. Replaygain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
13.5.4. Peak Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
13.5.5. Audio format and bitrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
13.5.6. Sound settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
A. File formats 190
A.1. Supported file formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
B. Audio and metadata formats 192
B.1. Supported audio formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
B.1.1. Lossy Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
B.1.2. Lossless Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
B.1.3. Other Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
B.1.4. Codec featureset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
B.2. Supported metadata tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
B.2.1. Featureset for generic metadata tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
B.2.2. Featureset for codec specific metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
B.2.3. Limitations of metadata handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
C. Album Art 198
C.1. Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
C.2. Where to put album art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
D. Theme Tags 200
D.1. Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
D.2. Hardware Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
D.3. Information from the track tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
D.4. Viewports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
D.5. Additional Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
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D.6. Misc Coloring Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
D.7. Power Related Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
D.8. Information about the file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
D.9. Playlist/Song Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
D.10.Playlist Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
D.11.Runtime Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
D.12.Sound (DSP) settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
D.13.Hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
D.14.Virtual LED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
D.15.Repeat Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
D.16.Playback Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
D.17.Current Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
D.18.List Title (.sbs only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
D.19.Changing Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
D.20.Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
D.21.Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
D.21.1.How to display the album art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
D.22.FM Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
D.23.Alignment and language direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
D.24.Conditional Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
D.25.Subline Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
D.26.Time and Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
D.27.Text Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
D.28.Bar Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
D.28.1.Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
D.29.Other Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
E. Config file options 217
F. Menu Overview 223
G. User feedback 224
G.1. Bug reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
G.1.1. Rules for submitting new bug reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
G.2. Feature ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
G.2.1. Rules for submitting a new feature idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
G.2.2. Features we will not implement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
H. Credits 226
I. Licenses 230
I.1. GNU Free Documentation License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
I.2. The GNU General Public License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
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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
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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 224) 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. “Sansa 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
b
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.
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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
NOTE: These instructions will not work on the “Rhapsody” version of the
E200 series (also known as E200R). Please follow the instructions at http:
//www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200RInstallation.
Supported hardware versions. The e200 and e200R Series is available in multiple ver-
sions, and you need to make sure which you have by checking the Sandisk firmware
version number under Settings → Info. The v1 firmware is named 01.xx.xx, while
the v2 firmware begins with 03. Make sure that you are following the instructions
from the correct manual.
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.
Note: The following steps require you to change the setting in Settings → USB
b
Mode to MSC from within the original firmware.
Warning: Never extract files to your player while it is in recovery mode.
!
Administrator/Root rights. Installing the bootloader portion of Rockbox requires you
to have administrative (Windows) or root (Linux) rights. Consequently when
doing either the automatic or manual bootloader install, please ensure that you
are logged in with an administrator account or have root rights.
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
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Chapter 2. Installation 14
encounter a problem, then the manual way is still available to you.
There are three separate components, two of which need to be installed in order to
run Rockbox:
The Sansa bootloader. The Sansa bootloader is the program that tells your player how
to load and start the original firmware. It is also responsible for any emergency,
recovery, or disk modes on your player. This bootloader is stored in special flash
memory in your Sansa and comes factory-installed. It is not necessary to modify
this in order to install Rockbox.
The Rockbox bootloader. The Rockbox bootloader is loaded from disk by the Sansa
bootloader. It is responsible for loading the Rockbox firmware and for providing
the dual boot function. It directly replaces the Sansa firmware in the player’s boot
sequence.
The Rockbox firmware. Similar to the Sansa firmware, 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.
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.
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Chapter 2. Installation 15
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/.
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-
b
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 17) 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,
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Chapter 2. Installation 16
then you do not need to follow the next section and can skip straight to section 2.2.3
(page 17)
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 in MSC mode 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
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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.
Installing the bootloader
Bootloader installation from Windows
1. Download sansapatcher.exe from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-
sansa/sansapatcher/win32/sansapatcher.exe and run it whilst logged in with an
administrator account.
2. If all has gone well, you should see some information displayed about your e200
and e200R Series and a message asking you if you wish to install the Rockbox
bootloader. Press i followed by ENTER, and sansapatcher will now install the
bootloader. After a short time you should see the message “[INFO] Bootloader
installed successfully.” Press ENTER again to exit sansapatcher.
Bootloader installation from Mac OS X
1. Attach your player to your Mac and wait for its icon to appear in Finder.
2. Download and open sansa.dmg from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-
sansa/sansapatcher/macosx/sansapatcher.dmg and then double-click on the sansap-
atcher icon inside.
3. If all has gone well, you should see some information displayed about your player
and a message asking you if you wish to install the Rockbox bootloader. Press i
followed by ENTER, and sansapatcher will now unmount your player and install
the bootloader. After a short time you should see the message “[INFO] Bootloader
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Chapter 2. Installation 17
installed successfully.” Press ENTER again to exit sansapatcher and then quit the
Terminal application.
Bootloader installation from Linux
1. Download sansapatcher from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/
sansapatcher/linux32x86/sansapatcher (32-bit x86 binary) or http://download.rockbox.
org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/sansapatcher/linux64amd64/sansapatcher (64-bit amd64
binary). You can save this anywhere you wish, but the next steps will assume you
have saved it in your home directory.
2. Attach your player to your computer.
3. Open up a terminal window and type the following commands:
Code
cd $HOME
chmod +x sansapatcher
./sansapatcher
Note: You need to be the root user in order for sansapatcher to have sufficient
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permission to perform raw disk access to your player.
4. If all has gone well, you should see some information displayed about your e200
and e200R Series and a message asking you if you wish to install the Rockbox
bootloader. Press i followed by ENTER, and sansapatcher will now install the
bootloader. After a short time you should see the message “[INFO] Bootloader
installed successfully.” Press ENTER again to exit sansapatcher.
2.2.3. Finishing the install
Safely eject / unmount the USB drive, unplug the cable and restart.
Your e200 will automatically reboot and Rockbox should load.
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 79) 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.
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2.3. Running Rockbox
When you turn the unit on, Rockbox should load.
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
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components.
2.5. Uninstalling Rockbox
Note: The Rockbox bootloader allows you to choose between Rockbox and the original
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firmware. (See section 3.1.3 (page 21) for more information.)
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 Sansa software, connect the player to
your computer, and follow the instructions to install the bootloader, but when prompted
by sansapatcher, enter u for uninstall, instead of i for install. As in the installation, it
may be necessary to first put your player into MSC mode.
If you wish to clean up your disk, you may also wish to delete the .rockbox directory
and its contents. Turn the Sansa off. Turn the player back on and the original Sansa
software will load.
2.6. Troubleshooting
Bootloader install problems If you have trouble installing the bootloader, please ensure
that you are either logged in as an administrator (Windows), or you have root rights
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Chapter 2. Installation 19
(Linux)
“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.
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Chapter 3. Quick Start 20
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
detail in the following paragraph. Additional information for blind users is available on
¸
the Rockbox website at ZBlindFAQ.
Hold the player with the turning wheel at the front and bottom. On the bottom left
of the front of the player is a raised round button, the Power button. Above and to the
left of this, on the outside of the turning wheel are four buttons. These are the Play,
Submenu, Left and Right buttons. Inside the wheel is the Select button. Turning
the wheel to the right activates the Scroll Forward function, and to the left, the Scroll
Backward function.
On the right of the unit is a slot for inserting flash cards. On the bottom is the
connector for the USB cable. On the left is the Rec button, and on the top, there is the
headphone socket to the right, and the Hold switch. Moving this switch to the right
activates hold mode in which none of the other buttons have any effect. Just to the left
of the Hold switch is a small hole which contains the internal microphone.
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3.1.2. Turning the player on and off
To turn on and off your Rockbox enabled player use the following keys:
Key Action
Power Start Rockbox
Long Power Shutdown Rockbox
On shutdown, Rockbox automatically saves its settings.
If you have problems with your settings, such as accidentally having set the colours to
black on black, they can be reset at boot time. See the Reset Settings in section 13.3.3
(page 187) for details.
In the unlikely event of a software failure, hardware poweroff or reset can be performed
by holding down Power until the player shuts off or reboots.
3.1.3. Starting the original firmware
Rockbox has a dual-boot feature. To boot into the original firmware, press and hold the
Left button while turning on the player.
3.1.4. Putting music on your player
Note: Due to a bug in some OS X versions, the player can not be mounted, unless the
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USB HID feature is disabled. See section 8.5.7 (page 72) for more information.
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 198) for the requirements
for Album Art to work properly. See section B.1 (page 192) for a list of supported
audio formats.
3.1.5. 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
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Chapter 3. Quick Start 22
(page 41)). To browse the files on your player, select Files (see section 4.1 (page 24)),
and to browse in a view that is based on the meta-data1of your audio files, select
Database (see section 4.2 (page 28)).
3.1.6. 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 Scroll Forward and Scroll Backward to move around the selection.
Use Select or Right to select an item. Note that the scroll speed is accelerating the
faster you rotate the wheel. 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 31). 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 Power button
or return to the file browser while keeping playback running using Select. In list views
you can go back one step with Left.
3.1.7. 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 36).
Menu
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 Select. 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.
1
ID3 Tags, Vorbis comments, etc.
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Chapter 3. Quick Start 23
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
using .cfg files. This topic is discussed in more detail in section 13.3 (page 185). 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
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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.
3.3. USB Charging
To charge your player over USB, hold any button while plugging it in. This will prevent
it from connecting to your computer and let you continue to use it normally. Your player
must already be in Rockbox for this to function.
Note: Be aware that this button may still perform its normal function, so it is recom-
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mended to use a button without harmful side effects, such as Select.
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Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 24
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 67) for more information on the Show Files setting.
Note: The File Browser allows you to manipulate your files in ways that are not
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available within the Database Browser. Read more about Database in section 4.2
(page 28). The remainder of this section deals with the File Browser.
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Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 25
4.1.1. File Browser Controls
Key Action
Scroll
Backward/Scroll
Forward
Go to previous/next item in list. If you
are on the first/last entry, the cursor will
wrap to the last/first entry.
Left Go to the parent directory.
Select or Right Execute the default action on the selected
file or enter a directory.
Play If there is an audio file playing, return
to the While Playing Screen (WPS)
without stopping playback.
Power Stop audio playback.
Long Select Enter the Context Menu.
Submenu Enter the Main Menu.
Long Submenu Switch to the Quick Screen (see sec-
tion 5.13 (page 49)).
Long Rec Switch to the Recording Screen.
Rec Activate the Hotkey function (see sec-
tion 4.5 (page 40)).
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 Select.
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Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 26
Note: The Context Menu is a context sensitive menu. If the Context Menu is
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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 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 38)).
Playlist Catalogue. Enters the Playlist Catalogue Submenu (see section 4.4.2 (page 37)).
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 Select
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 13.1.6 (page 178).
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 12.3 (page 135) 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.
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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
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enabled, the directories returned will be constrained to the directory you have
chosen here and those below it. See section 7.11 (page 64)
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.
Also you can switch to Morse code input mode by changing the Use Morse Code
Input setting or by pressing Rec in the virtual keyboard.
Note: When the cursor is on the input line, Select deletes the preceding character
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Key Action
Rec + Left / Rec
+ Right
Move the line cursor within the text line.
Submenu Delete the character before the line cur-
sor.
Left / Right 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).
Scroll Backward
/ Scroll Forward
Move the cursor on the virtual keyboard.
If you move out of the picker area you get
to the line edit mode.
Rec + Select Flip to the next page of characters (if
there is more than one).
Select Insert the selected keyboard letter at the
current line cursor position.
Play Exit the virtual keyboard and save any
changes.
Power Exit the virtual keyboard without saving
any changes.
Select Tap to select a character in Morse code
input mode.
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.
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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
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regardless of whether the Directory Cache is enabled. Thus, an update using
Update now may take a long time.
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.
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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
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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.
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
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