Rockbox on iPod Video 5.5 Gen 30 GB. Need opinion.

**1ny0urfac3** · August 15th, 2008

the recent updates have battery mostly on par with apple, i love rockbox

**fjf** · August 15th, 2008

Thats one of the key feature of rockbox: drag-and-drop folders, no need for tagging music files, avoiding itunes and all that crap. Plus support for many audio file types (including flac, ogg, etc), and a very nice interface. I never used the original firmware.

Originally Posted by Spike-X

I found that constantly updating and scanning the database drained the battery of my 5.5 Gen 80 Gb model, so a while back I wiped it and re-loaded all my music directly from the computer onto the iPod (using it as a portable storage device and dragging the folders straight over, rather than going through a database-based program such as AmaroK).

I find that using it in file browser mode saves on battery life, and I can also edit playlists a lot more easily, as file names are no longer a jumbled mess.

**th3james** · August 15th, 2008

Yeah battery life is much better than it used to be, it never runs out on me. (although i tend to do short trips)

rockbox is amazing, sound quality is vastly better, and library management is much more advanced, not to mention its v hackable

**kpkeerthi** · August 18th, 2008

Thanks for your replies. I'm going to try it when I get time and post back my experiences.
I'm not a sucker for battery life. I just use it for about an hour or so everyday. I'm good if the battery could last atleast 75% of what the stock firmware gives me.

**kpkeerthi** · August 23rd, 2008

Can't wait to share my happiness

Got Rockbox installed. It was super easy to set up. The bootloader installed without a hitch and booted to a nice default screen. Love the default look.

Grabbed extra fonts/themes/icons and customized the look the way I like.

Tried a few VBR (extreme) & 320 kpbs CBR MP3s and the quality of sound is excellent. I was really worried about the quality Rockbox might give but I'm extremely satisfied with it.

I can browse by album, artist, etc. Play numerous other formats, view album arts, set album/track gains and almost anything you could think of. I've got a lot of FLACs and OGGs that I will now be able to play in iPod. If you are experienced and know what you are doing, the 5-band fully-parametric equalizers & crossfeed can do wonders.

I can finally get rid of Banshee I have been using to transfer music. I'm starting to feel that it is getting overly bloated and will now switch over to mpd/sonata. I wrote a simple rsync script to sync my music collection with Rockbox. A simple sync-ipod command is all I would need to do to keep it synced.

Rockbox has been playing for the past 5 hours after a full recharge and still going on great: I find battery life on par with Apple's. I have not measured it exactly but this seems very encouraging.

Overall, I'm more than happy with Rockbox. It does rock, really

**hakimaki** · August 23rd, 2008

Well this thread made me try Rockbox out again on my 5g 30g Ipod. 3 months ago I was getting 2-3 hour battery life, now Im getting 10-14 hours depending on my usage habits. Surely on par with apples firmware now if not better. I take back my previous post. =)