I love my Rockboxed Fuze+

[Sleep mode zZ]

I have tried Rockbox before but then the battery life was really bad. And if I remember correctly, there was some problem playing some files (Vorbis or MPC?). The battery life is ok now. I have not tested playback of different formats but probably that problem is also fixed. There is also now a setting called "3-D Enhancement" that was not there before and that my Clip+ do not have.

One problem is that sometimes navigating the menus is impossible: one short touch seems to be registering as several and the navigating gets really erratic. Restarting the player fixes it.

It would be nice if the "First Buttonpress Enables Backlight Only" and "Buttons Locked" functions could disregard the volume buttons and only apply to the touchpad.

Maybe the navigating (when it works) is a little less frustrating than on the official firmware. Still, touching imaginary buttons on a touchpad requires seeing the touchpad and is error prone.

There is more background noise on the rockboxed Fuze+ than on the OF or rockboxed Clip+. The reason seems to be that the volume control is implemented differently. With the Fuze+ with OF and the rockboxed Clip+ the noise amount rises with the volume control, with the rockboxed Fuze+ the noise is on max regardless of the volume setting. (Hardware amp on max, using software volume control?) As a consequence the background noise is a bit annoying when using sensitive IEMs.

[CrowdAds]

[skamp]

Originally Posted by Sleep mode zZ

Hardware amp on max, using software volume control?

That kinda makes sense. I asked in #rockbox to the developer in charge of the Fuze+ port (pamaury), this is what he answered:

That's right, thanks for making me aware of it. I'll try to change the volume to see if it's better

[skamp]

One problem, is that RMAA can't seem to capture what we're hearing. My measurements (loaded with my Shure SE425s, as well as unloaded) show a nearly perfect score in noise levels and dynamic range, for a 16 bit device.

Pamaury is investigating the issue.

Edit: and I actually triple checked my measurements. I always get the same results. The thing is, you can't really get good or excellent measurements (as opposed to digitally perfect) by accident. If they were perfect (as if I fed RMAA the original, digitally produced sample), every value would be perfect.

[skip252]

I'd think you would have to record the signal and listen to that. IIRC when there was a discussion at HA of whether or not the Clip made background noises using Rockbox the didn't occur using the OF that was how someone demonstrated that it does. You could try creating a silence file using foobar2000 or Audacity and play that at different volumes and see if the background noise increases or not.

[Sleep mode zZ]

There is noise and its not coming from my ears or brain. Intrestingly there is a very big difference between phones. I can't hear the noise with my AKG K420 headphones (open, portable) and can very clearly with JVC HA-FX67 IEMs. The AKGs are quite sensitive and they produce even more sound volume than the JVCs. IEMs attenuate outside sounds and this could make the noise more percievable but the difference seems to be too big for this explanation. Maybe something to do with Impedance? (JVC: 16; AKG: 32)

Anyway, the noise is not Fuze+ specific. I can hear the background noise as well with the (rockboxed) )Clip+ when volume is high enough. Clip+ is also known for measuring well although NwAvGuy included a small note about hiss:

Playing back a very low level signal with my most efficient headphones (the UE SuperFi's) the Clip+ has some very slightly audible hiss. Interestingly it seems (subjectively) slightly worse with the Rockbox firmware but I need to investigate that more. With more typical headphones there's zero audible hiss and even with the SuperFi's the hiss in the recording itself and/or background noise leaking past the headphones usually masks the slight hiss. So, in my opinion, it's not a problem unless you have uber-efficient headphones, listen to pristine recordings, and hate even a tiny bit of hiss.

If Rockboxed Fuze+ have its hardware amplifier on full volume, it will amplify this hiss for those that listen at low volumes. (I usually listen at home with the volume around -40 dB or less.)

[skip252]

@Sleep mode zZ, I'm hoping you didn't interpret my reply as being directed to you as a way saying that the noise doesn't exist. I don't have the Fuze+ but my other sandisk players have a distinct hiss when playing silence files if the volume is high enough. That's true in both Rockbox and the OF.

I usually use full size cans and none of my IEMs are particularly sensitive so it doesn't bother me. I also have older ears so I don't tend to hear hiss as much as some people. One of the few benefits of reaching middle age.

[Sleep mode zZ]

Originally Posted by skip252

@Sleep mode zZ, I'm hoping you didn't interpret my reply as being directed to you as a way saying that the noise doesn't exist.

No, I actually read your post only after I had written my post.

[skamp]

Originally Posted by skip252

I'd think you would have to record the signal and listen to that. […] You could try creating a silence file using foobar2000 or Audacity and play that at different volumes and see if the background noise increases or not.

I did, and it does. But why doesn't RMAA pick it up? When I first started making RMAA measurements (with other gear), I had a rather poor ADC, and RMAA did report high noise and low dynamic range values, so I guess that does work properly. I just can't figure it out.

[humersimpson]

I turned to Rockbox after being frustrated by the touchpad's lack of response and the rave reviews of various threads touting upgrading Fuze+ to RB. For me the jury's still out, though.

The good:
1) My main source of frustration with my OF Fuze+ has been dealt with in that the touchpad is more sensitive and more responsive with Rockbox.
2) When using my Fuze + in the car hooked up to an FM transmitter (my stereo is too old for an aux. port) with a built-in USB port that I use to charge the Fuze + with, the player will now pause when I shut off the car and startup again when I get back in to go somewhere.
3) More advanced features and settings over the OF.

The bad:
1) The touchpad can be too responsive. One touch and it sometimes will scroll up or down more than one line (the OF did, too). Sometimes I have to perform a hard reset because this problem is excessive (i.e. it is difficult to get the cursor to scroll only a single line), other times the scrolling works fine (i.e. it is more like the OF line skipping).
2) Some times the cursor will automatically page down to the last line on the menu. It will not allow scrolling down one line at a time, if you press down the cursor jumps to the bottom of the menu, but will allow scrolling up one line at a time, but if you stop scrolling to select a choice, the cursor pages down before you can make the selection. The only fix is a forced restart.
3) When using the FM transmitter to start the player when it is off (i.e. in the morning when I go to work) sometimes the player hangs up at the Rockbox intro. page requiring me to disconnect the USB cable and forcing a restart. Othertimes it starts up fine and starts playing the first song (Actually, I thought I had found the setting for this because it was booting up my player, but this morning it went back to hanging up at the RB start screen, kept doing it this morning when I was trying to charge it at work with a wall charger).
4) The fonts for the "Now Playing" are the same fonts used for the menu screens, these should be separated so that you can select the font size for the "Now Playing" screen and a separate font size for the Menu screens. I need to use larger fonts for the menus to see what I am trying to select while using my Fuze+ in my car, but then that messes up the "Now Playing" screen.
5) Skipping songs is a chore and its easier to go through the menus to select the song you want even though it may only be a the previous or next song on the list. Skipping forward: sometimes I can skip forward, sometimes I get a screen that shows me the information tagged to a particular song, which is what I don't want/need. Skipping backward: sometimes I can skip back or sometimes I get a screen that provides me repeat and shuffle options and sometimes I get a screen allowing me to vary the song tempo. I thought I narrowed it down to if I pressed "back" on the "back" line the repeat/shuffle option popped up and if I pressed "back" past the "back" line (i.e. closer to the edge of the touchpad) it would allow me to skip back a song, but that turned out to be wrong. A setting turning off this function so that when I press "Back" or "Forward" it will only skip back or forward the number of songs that I press the touchpad for would be useful.
6) This morning, I got into my car and before I turned the car on, the Fuze screen was on and the player was showing it was playing a song, but nothing was coming over the radio when I turned the car on. After a hard reset, it worked fine, but the battery had been run down (which I expected since the screen was probably on all night). I can understand this happening if I had the player setup to "repeat" playing an album or playlist over and over and it was not going to sleep because it kept playing, but I did not enable repeating and the power off setting had been working flawlessly up until last night.
7) Having to hard reset the player much more often.
8) I listen to albums, so sometimes I will play and album through once, then decide that I'd like to re-play the album again, especially if I am driving and would rather re-play an album rather than pull off the road (or cause an accident) to go through the menus looking for a different album to play. The OF this was easy, after the player stopped playing because it finished the last song, all I had to do was hit play again and it would start from song 1 through the last song. Rockbox on the Fuze+ does not do this (I have not found this setting if it does), I have to go back to Database -> Artists, select the artist, select the album and play it again.
9) I will echo another poster who does not like that the button lock feature also locks out the volume controls, which does not happen with the OF.

I have fiddled with the settings to try to work around the above list of "Bad", believe me the list was much larger before adjusting the settings, I had thought I could elminate #3 because of the changes to the settings, but it happened again this morning. The rest, I have found no settings that addresses those issues. Despite all the downsides, I am torn if I want to re-install the OF or if I want to continue with Rockbox. I know RB for the Fuze+ is not considered stable, but there is still a lot of potential there and there are some compelling features, for me, that make me want to stick with it, especially the touchpad sensitivity.

I know folks have put a lot of hard work into porting Rockbox to the Fuze+ and I don't want to sound like I am putting down that effort, I am only providing my honest opinions and issues I have found. It is better in many ways I have not listed, but there are some serious flaws, IMHO, that do not make RB the "slam dunk" better firmware, it really is a choice of which flaws are more acceptable. I am going to give RB as much of a chance as I can, but if I reach the point that I am putting the OF back onto my Fuze+, then I will likely be looking at getting another PMP/MP3 player and it won't be a Sandisk product, which is a shame, I loved the Fuze I had until it became unstable and lost all of the music I had on the internal memory. The + is a better player overall, and had they kept the original type of controller it would be unbeatable, IMHO.

[BruceBanner]

Isn't RB dual bootable? Can't u just decide which FW u want to boot into?

[skamp]

Yes:

To boot into the original firmware, when the player is turned off, press and hold the Volume Down button, and then press and hold the Power button while keeping the Volume Down button pressed. After 5 to 10 seconds the original firmware should boot.

http://download.rockbox.org/daily/ma...#x5-280003.1.3

[Marvin the Martian]

I don't have a Fuze+ anymore, but if I did, I would not even think about using it without Rockbox.

[humersimpson]

Following up from my previous post after having read through the manual and played with the settings more:

Issues #1 and 2 have not reared their ugly heads, other than the normal occasional skipping over a line when moving the cursor down or up, that I mentioned the OF did, too.

Issue #3 - this is normal for RB, I think what was happening was that the settings I had that I thought turned the player off after a set time after it stopped playing music was not the correct setting so it never shut off. When I got in my car in the morning and turned it on, the player was already on, unknown to me, and I thought it was booting up properly.

#4 would take some programming by the RB group to make this happen and is not a setting I can change.

#5 - This is still my biggest issue with RB, right now. There is no settings to disable this. I can minimize the problems as the manual indicates these only crop up if you hit the touchpad in certain locations, but when driving you hit bumps without warning and your hand moves and instead of skipping back to replay a song you get stuck with the shuffle/repeat options or tempo options. I guess this would take some reprogramming, but I am not sure why anyone thought these were necessary functions that needed a shortcut to get to.

#6 - answered in #3, Operator error in having the wrong setting.

#7 - Not been much of an issue aside from forgetting to unplug the USB cable in the morning forcing restarts.

#8 - I think I found the setting for this because it has been working like this lately. I also found a workaround to having to go all the way back to the main menu as what I had been having to do.

#9 - There is no setting to address this. But this is a minor PITA in the grand scheme of things.

Still on the fence with RB, but I am warming to it, going into my 3rd week.

[humersimpson]

Originally Posted by BruceBanner

Isn't RB dual bootable? Can't u just decide which FW u want to boot into?

If you're directing this to me, then as others have said, yes it is. But, at least for me, I don't see the point. Either RB is the answer to making my Fuze+ more liveable or its not. If it is, then I will keep using RB. If not, then I will not waste anymore time or space than I have to, and will remove it from my Fuze+. I have been struggling with my OF Fuze+ for almost a year now. I have only been struggling with my RB'ed Fuze+ for about 2 weeks. I don't need to boot back into the OF to know what it can/can't do and I will know if RB really is the long term solution for my Fuze+.

[BruceBanner]

I mentioned it in a way of a possible workaround. Like, if it suited yer purpose to have the fuze+ in OF mode for car use and RB Mode for when not in car etc. Meaning perhaps each FW has it's +'s and -'s and u can choose which suits you better for a certain situation, no need to necessarily be all or nothing approach.