alternate firmware?
 

Is there a (perhaps alternate) firmware that works better than 1.14?

There's no alternative firmware available for the i9, only these and FW V1.14 was the last one released. I doubt there will be any others because the i9 has been replaced by the i10

So no plans to rockbox this thing?

On the subject of rockbox i noticed the D2 has a rockbox port, does it include all the jeteffect and BBE effects in the rockbox?

AFAIK, No.

You can boot to either fw but the cowon jeteffects is not mixed into rockbox fw. And the rockbox D2 port status is: unstable but you can read about it here.

ok... so i read about dfkt's alternative now playing screen for the i9, so he kinda did sum work or summin to get that happening. How hard would it be to change button mapping? Like what i mean specifically is, you know when u push the power button to hold, the + - volume buttons become Fwd Prev instead, how hard would it be to assign a different function to either buttons?

To me this would seem something alot of people might like (for s9, J3 etc), sometimes people don't want an overhaul of firmware like rockbox, but just tweaks.

So is anyone out there in the know how able to talk about this?