Upgrade Your IPod with Free Software and Improve It's Playback Sound

I enjoy my iPod but the quality of the playback sound tended to be a little bit transitory to me. For those who are not old enough to remember, in the 1960's the iPod equivalent was the 2 transistor radio which gave us mobile access to the entire local AM radio station dial and our ear bud was a single plastic ear plug...but I am digressing here. iPod's play MP3 files. MP3 is a lossy compression format which means some of the sound range is loss during the compression of the playback file.

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) sounds a lot better then MP3. It produces a more live sound because hardly anything is loss during the compression of the playback file. The problem with FLAC is the Apple iPod does not play FLAC files. I had decided to start ripping my new CDs into the FLAC format but I needed a way to make them playable on my iPod. I located an open source firmware iPod portable media replacement.

It was loaded with features not even found on my iPod. Its level of audio control is far more advanced than the iPod's. It includes preset and customizable equalizer options with the capability to adjust to a specific decibel (dB). There is also cross-feed sound settings to make audio playback in your ear buds seem closer, more like free standing speakers. And it has low level noise dithering as well as noise shaping dithering capabilities to fix bit depth discrepancies between the firmware's audio decoder and the iPod's. Created by Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org), this FLAC firmware replacement for Apple's iPod customizing ability has made me a true fan of this application.

Rockbox develops firmware replacement for a number of the popular portable media players. All of their builds are works in progress and constantly updated by the cadre of programmers located worldwide who are always tinkering to improve their code. So expect some incompatibility issues from time to time. If you encounter one, don't worry, you can always revert back to your player's original firmware by uninstalling the error pronged install.

You can download the iPod portable media player firmware or the other available portable media player choices from Rockbox's web site. To install it on my iPod I had to connect my iPod to my PC to enable disk mode using iTunes. I experienced a little trouble when I used my USB hub initially and discovered a direct USB connection from my PC to my iPod worked much better. I downloaded the iPod firmware package from Rockbox and installed it. I disconnected my iPod and rebooted it and I was automatically set up to begin installing and playing my new FLAC rips. Well almost, the font was too small for my old eyes so I had to change it which was really simple to do.

The iPod replacement firmware scanned my files, collected the tag data in the database, and created an index which enabled me to create and save customized playlist. Rockbox's iPod replacement firmware certainly taught my iPod some useful new tricks. It does not act like its plain old iPod self anymore.

Resource: Rockbox. Org - http://www.rockbox.org

Tags: rockbox, ipod, ipod replacement firmware, mp3, flac