08 December 2011, 14:38

Ten years of Rockbox

Rockbox logo

Just in time for its 10th birthday, the developers of Rockbox have released version 3.10 of their alternative open source firmware for digital audio players. Rockbox is mainly used on older MP3 players – including devices from Apple, Archos, Cowon, iRiver, SanDisk and Toshiba – and aims to be "considerably more functional and efficient" than the standard device firmware.

The "Tenth Anniversary Release" of Rockbox adds support for audio codecs including various game music formats (AY, GBS, HES, SGV, VGM, and VGZ). It also includes several notable changes, such as revised playlist management, an audio mixer with independent stereo channels, and faster Ogg/Vorbis decoding. More details about the new version are available in the release notes. Information about the firmware's key features and model-specific features are given on the WhyRockbox wiki page.

For years, installing and updating Rockbox required the user to manually copy the files, but now the Rockbox Utility, an automated installer tool for Rockbox, takes care of the process. Rockbox Utility and its source code is available to download; source code is made available under the terms of the GPLv2 licence.

(ehe)

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