Rockbox rocks!

I got my new MP3 player today.

I was expecting a SanDisk Sansa e260 version 2, which is the latest model. While what I got was brand new, I actually got the version 1 of the player instead of version 2.

Some people might be a bit upset at getting the older version. I couldn't be happier.

You see, version 1 let me install Rockbox, which is an open-source software application that runs on the player itself. Rockbox doesn't work yet on version 2.

There are a number of reasons I wanted to do this. For one, my Sansa came with the ability to only play MP3, and WMA audio files. Both of them are fairly common, but still, that is somewhat limiting. And if I had version 2 of the e260, I would have gladly worked within those file formats, which is similar to my old MP3 player.

But by installing Rockbox, I now have the ability to only only play MP3 and WMA files, but also OGG, MPC, AC3, MP4, ADX, Speex, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, Wavpack, Shorten, SID, MOD, NSF, SPC, and MIDI files.

OK, I'll be honest. A lot of those I have never heard of. The key ones for me are OGG (an open-source alternative to MP3), WAV (a common file format that dates back years), MIDI (a simple instrumental format), and FLAC (a format that doesn't compress the audio, giving the best sound quality). And of those, OGG is the most important one.

But there are other advantages of Rockbox over the default software. First, it is very customizable (which is one of the advantages of open-source software in general). Second, there are numerous plugins I can add to increase functionality, from video, picture and text viewers to games.

And, of course, Rockbox plays better with Linux than the built in software. I could have worked around the default software a lot easier on this model than my old MP3 player, but this makes it very easy to work with.