Sansa Clip sound quality - original firmware superior to Rockbox?

[moleface]

I noticed a distinct change in my v1 Clip immediately after I installed Rockbox. The original firmware sounds really smooth and rounded, while Rockbox initially sounded very harsh and "digital" in contrast. I almost convinced myself that it was the placebo effect, but I've found a few posts online that describe the exact same shift in the Clip's sound signature that I noticed.

The Rockbox sound quality isn't a deal breaker for me - I'm not even convinced that the Clip's new sound signature is a bad thing. The new features outweigh the slight difference, and I don't even notice what I'm missing as long as I'm not listening to the two firmwares side by side.

This made me wonder though- could the Clip's pleasing sound signature be the result of some sort of software EQ tweak in the original firmware that's not inherent to the hardware itself?

[CrowdAds]

[saratoga]

dfkt posted some RMAA plots showing no real difference between the two, but I can't remember if they were the Clip or Clip+. If you think you've got a problem, run RMAA on your player and post the results for rockbox and the OF. If theres a difference its probably not too hard to fix.

[Van78]

Dear group

I got the same issue I think. I own a Fuze V1 I think and got the newest hot Rockbox on it. Superb stuff BUT listening to audiobooks is no fun!

As said above the speaker sounds metallic and digital and everything but warm.


I have the equalizer ON.
Tried eq. settings and am stuck with VOCAL.
But anyhow nothing helps.


There are so many settings under equalizer. Are they all set by a prefdefined Eq. setting that we can load in Rockbox or may it be that there are some settings out of default and faulty since may be I once altered things there without knowing what I did?!


If so, please give me the default settings and may be some good for audiobooks.

thanks

[saratoga]

You should probably just turn EQ off.

[keyb_gr]

I have a hunch re: what the problem might be... The audiobooks' sample rate is not 44.1 kHz, right? Problem is, Rockbox' DSP is fixed at 44.1 kHz, and resampling quality is beyond lousy to save on computing time (linear interpolation with loads of aliasing). I would expect anything at <=24 kHz to sound pretty nasty.

IIRC someone did check in a patch for a better-quality resampler at some point, but I have no idea whether it still works.