7.  General Settings

Figure 7.1: The general settings screen

7.1.  Playback

The Playback sub menu allows you to configure settings related to audio playback.

Shuffle.

Alters how Rockbox will select which song to play next.
Options: Yes/No.

Repeat.

Configures settings related to repeating of directories or playlists.
Options: Off / All / One / Shuffle /A-B:

Off.

The current directory or playlist will not repeat when it is finished.

Note: If you have the Auto change directory option set to Yes, Rockbox will move on to the next directory on your hard drive. If the Auto Change Directory option is set to No, playback will stop when the current directory or playlist is finished.

All.

The current directory or playlist will repeat when it is finished.

Note: This option does not shuffle all files on your player. Rockbox is playlist oriented. When you play a song, a directory, or an album, Rockbox creates a playlist and plays it. Thus, to shuffle all songs on the player, you need to create a playlist of all songs on the player, and play that playlist with shuffle mode set to All.

One.

Repeat one track over and over.

Shuffle.

When the current directory or playlist has finished playing, it will be shuffled and then repeated.

A-B.

Repeats between two user defined points within a track, typically used by musicians when attempting to learn a piece of music. This option is more complicated to use than the others as the player must first be placed into A-B repeat mode and then the start and end points defined.
To set the Start Point (A) hold Power and press Left. Setting the End Point (B) is done accordingly using Power and Right. To reset the markers hold Power and press Play.

Play Selected First.

This setting controls what happens when you select a file for playback while shuffle mode is on. If the Play Selected First setting is Yes, the file you selected will be played first. If this setting is No, a random file in the directory will be played first.

Fast-Forward/Rewind.

How fast you want search (fast forward or rewind) to accelerate when you hold down the button. Off means no acceleration. 2x/1s means double the search speed once every second the button is held. 2x/5s means double the search speed once every 5 seconds the button is held.

Anti-Skip Buffer.

This setting allows you to control how much music is stored in the player’s memory whilst playing a song, acting as a buffer against shock or playback problems. The player transfers the selected amount of the forthcoming song into its memory at high speed whilst you are playing the song. It keeps a “rolling” buffer, which keeps feeding more of the forthcoming song into memory as it goes along. If the player is knocked, shaken or jogged heavily while Rockbox is trying to read the hard drive, Rockbox might not be able to read the drive. Rockbox will retry over and over again until it succeeds, but may eventually reach the end of the memory buffer. When that happens, Rockbox must stop playing and wait for more data from the disk, which causes your music to skip. The anti-skip setting tells Rockbox how much extra buffer memory to spare to handle this situation. This setting therefore allows you to reduce the chances of there being a gap or pause during playback of songs.

The anti-skip buffer can be set to various values between 5 seconds and 10 minutes.

Note: Having a large anti-skip buffer tends to use more power, and may reduce your battery life. It is recommended to always use the lowest possible setting that allows correct and continuous playback.

Fade on Stop/Pause.

Enables and disables a fade effect when you pause or stop playing a song. If the Fade on Stop/Pause option is set to Yes, your music will fade out when you stop or pause playback, and fade in when you resume playback.

Party Mode.

Enables unstoppable music playback. When new songs are selected, they are queued at the end of the current dynamic playlist instead of being played immediately. Pausing and stopping playback is disabled as well as skipping songs and launching plugins.

Crossfade.

This setting enables a cross-fader. At the end of a song, the song will fade out as the next song fades in, creating a smooth transition between songs.
Options:

Enable Crossfade.

If set to Off, crossfade is disabled. If set to Always, songs will always crossfade into one another. If set to Shuffle, crossfade is enabled when the shuffle feature is set to Yes, but disabled otherwise. If set to track skip only, tracks will only crossfade when you manually change tracks.

Fade In Delay.

The “fade in delay” is the length of time between when the crossfade process begins and when the new track begins to fade in.

Fade In Duration.

The length of time, in seconds, that it takes your music to fade in.

Fade Out Delay.

The “fade out delay” is the length of time between when the crossfade process begins and when the old track begins to fade out.

Fade Out Duration.

The length of time, in seconds, that it takes your music to fade out.

Fade Out Mode.

If set to Crossfade, one song will fade out and the next song will simultaneously fade in. If set to Mix, the ending song will continue to play as normal until its end, while the starting song will fade in from under it. Mix mode is not used for manual track skips, even if it is selected here.

Note: The crossfade setting is particularly effective when the player is set on shuffle.

Replaygain.

This allows you to control the replaygain function. The purpose of replaygain is to adjust the volume of the music played so that all songs (or albums, depending on your settings) have the same apparent volume. This prevents sudden changes in volume when changing between songs recorded at different volume levels. For replaygain to work, the songs must have been processed by a program that adds replaygain information to the ID3 tags (or Vorbis tags).

Note: APEv2 tags are not currently supported.

Options for replaygain are:

Enable Replaygain.

This turns on/off the replaygain function.

Prevent Clipping.

Avoid clipping of a song’s waveform. If a song would clip during playback, the volume is lowered for that song. Replaygain information is needed for this to work.

Replaygain type.

Choose the type of replaygain to apply:

Album Gain.

Maintain a constant volume level between albums, but keep any intentional volume variations between songs in an album. (If album gain value is not available, uses track gain information).

Track Gain.

Maintain a constant volume level between tracks. If track gain value is not available, no replaygain is applied.

Track Gain if Shuffling.

Maintains a constant volume between tracks if Shuffle is set to Yes. Reverts to album mode if Shuffle is set to No.

Pre-amp.

This allows you to adjust the volume when replaygain is applied. Replaygain often lowers the volume, sometimes quite much, so here you can compensate for that. Please note that a (large) positive pre-amp setting can cause clipping, unless prevent clipping is enabled. The pre-amp can be set to any decibel (dB) value between -12dB and +12dB, in increments of 0.1dB.

Beep Volume.

Controls the volume of the beep that is heard when skipping forward or backward between tracks. The beep is disabled when set to Off.

ID3 Tag Priority.

Select which version of ID3 tag to use if both are present.

Auto-Change Directory.

Control what Rockbox does when it reaches the end of a directory. If Auto-Change Directory is set to Yes, Rockbox will continue to the next directory. If Auto-Change Directory is set to No, playback will stop at the end of the current directory.

Note: You must have the Repeat option set to No for Auto-Change Directory to function properly.

Last.fm Log.

Enables logging of your played tracks for submittal to http://www.last.fm. This service was formely known as Audioscrobbler. When you enable this option, you’ll have to reboot to start the logging. The log-file is called .scrobbler.log,and is to be found in the root directory of your player.

Note: See http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/LastFMLog for a further description, and for tools you can use to submit your Last.fm log.

Cuesheet Support.

Enables reading of cuesheet files for played tracks. If a cuesheet is found for a track, track markers are displayed on the progressbar and it is possible to skip between the tracks within the cuesheet. Also the information found in the cuesheet file will replace the information from the ID3 tags. When you enable this option, you’ll have to reboot for it to come into effect.

7.2.  Playlist

The Playlist sub menu allows you to configure settings related to playlists.

Recursively Insert Directories.

If set to On, then when a directory is inserted or queued into a dynamic playlist, all sub-directories will also be inserted. If set to Ask, Rockbox will prompt the user about whether to include sub-directories.

Warn When Erasing Dynamic Playlist.

If set to Yes, Rockbox will provide a warning if the user attempts to take an action that will cause Rockbox to erase the current dynamic playlist.

7.3.  File View

The File View menu deals with options relating to how the File Browser displays files.

Sort Case Sensitive:

If this option is set to Yes, all files that start with upper case letters will be listed first, followed by all files that begin with lower case letters. If this option is set to NO, then case will be ignored when sorting files.

Sort Directories:

This option controls how Rockbox sorts folders. The default is to sort them alphabetically. By date sorts them with the oldest folder first. By newest date sorts them with the newest folder first.

Sort Files:

This option controls how Rockbox sorts files. All of the options for Sort Directories are available in this option. In addition, there is a By type option which sorts files alphabetically by their type (such as .mp3) then alphabetically within each type.

Show Files:

This option controls which files are displayed in the File Browser.

All:

The File Browser displays all files and directories. Extensions are shown. No files or directories are hidden.

Supported:

The File Browser displays all directories and files supported by Rockbox (see section A.1). Files and directories starting with . (dot) or with the hidden flag set are hidden.

Music:

The File Browser displays only folders, playlists and the supported audio file formats. Extensions are stripped. Files and directories starting with . or with the “hidden” flag set are hidden.

Playlists:

The File Browser displays only directories and playlists, for simplified navigation.

Show Filename Extensions:

This option controls how file extensions are shown in the File Browser.

Off:

The file extensions are never shown.

On:

The file extensions are always shown.

Only unknown types:

Only the extensions of unknown filetypes are shown.

Only when viewing all types:

Only show file extensions when Show Files is set to All.

Follow Playlist:

This option determines what directory the File Browser displays first. If Follow Playlist is set to Yes, when you enter the File Browser from the WPS, you will find yourself in the same directory as the currently playing file. If Follow Playlist is set to No, when you enter the File Browser from the WPS, you will find yourself in the directory you were in when you last left the File Browser.

Show Icons:

Rockbox has the ability to display an icon to the left of the file in the File Browser. For details of these icons, please see section A.1.

Show Path:

If this setting is set to Full Path the full path to the current directory will be displayed on the first line in the File Browser. If set to Current Directory Only only the name of the current directory will be displayed.

7.4.  Database

This sub menu allows you to configure the database. See section 4.2 for more information about using the database.

7.5.  Display

Browse fonts:

Browse the fonts that reside in your /.rockbox/fonts directory. Selecting one will activate it. See section 10.1.2 for further details about fonts.

Browse WPS files:

Opens the File Browser in the /.rockbox/wps directory and displays all .wps files. Selecting one will activate it, stop will exit back to the menu. For further information about the WPS see section 4.3. For information about editing a .wps file see section 10.2.

LCD Settings:

This sub menu contains settings that relate to the display of the player.

Backlight:

The amount of time the backlight shines after a key press. If set to Off, the backlight will not light when a button is pressed. If set to On, the backlight will never shut off. If set to a time (1 to 90 seconds), the backlight will stay lit for that amount of time after a button press.

Backlight on When Plugged:

This setting is equivalent to the Backlight setting except it applies when the player is plugged into the charger.

Caption Backlight:

This option turns on the backlight a number of seconds before the start of a new track, and keeps it on for the same number of seconds after the beginning so that the display can be read to see song information. The amount of time is determined by the value of the backlight timeout setting, but is no less than 5 seconds.

First Keypress Enables Backlight Only:

With this option enabled the first keypress while the backlight is turned off will only turn the backlight on without having any other effect. When disabled the first keypress will also perform its appropriate action.

Upside Down:

Displays the screen so that the top of the display is nearest the buttons. This is sometimes useful when carrying the player in a pocket for easy access to the headphone socket.

Line Selector:

This option allows you to select whether the line selector is a bar of inverted text (Bar (inverse) option) or a small arrow to the left of the menu text (Pointer option).

Clear Backdrop:

Rockbox allows you to select bitmap pictures to use as backdrops, see section 10.1.5 for further information. This option allows you to clear the backdrops that you set.

Background Colour:

Sets the background colour for the LCD display.

Foreground Colour:

Sets the colour used for text and icons.

Reset Colours:

Resets the LCD display to Rockbox’s default colours.

Scrolling

This feature controls how text will scroll in Rockbox. You can configure the following parameters:

Scroll Speed:

Controls how many times per second the scrolling text moves a step.

Scroll Start Delay:

Controls how many milliseconds Rockbox should wait before a new text begins scrolling.

Scroll Step Size:

Controls how many pixels the text scroll should move for each step.

Bidirectional Scroll Limit:

Rockbox has two different scroll methods: always scrolling the text to the left and when the line has ended beginning again at the start, or moving to the left until you can read the end of the line and scroll right until you see the beginning again. Rockbox chooses which method it should use depending of how much it has to scroll left. This setting lets you tell Rockbox where that limit is, expressed in percentage of line length.

Screen Scrolls Out of View:

On lists with long entries that don’t fit on the screen using the complete content will be scrolled right/left. With this option set to Yes the lines can scroll out of view. Otherwise the entries will only scroll as far as they align to the margins.

Screen Scroll Step Size:

Determines how many pixels the text should advance in every click when scrolling the screen.

Paged Scrolling:

When enabled scrolling will page up/down instead of changing lines. This can be useful on slow displays.

Status/Scrollbar:

Settings related to on screen status display and the scrollbar.

Scroll Bar:

Enables or disables the scroll bar at the left.

Status Bar:

Enables or disables the status bar at the upper side.

Volume Display:

Controls whether the volume is displayed as a graphic or a numeric value on the Status Bar. If you select a numeric display, volume is displayed in decibels. cross-reference to volume setting.

Battery Display:

Controls whether the battery charge status is displayed as a graphic or numerical percentage value on the Status Bar.

Peak Meter:

The peak meter can be configured with a number of parameters.

Peak Release:

This determines how fast the bar shrinks when the music becomes softer. Lower values make the peak meter look smoother. Expressed in scale units per 10ms.

Peak Hold Time:

Specifies the time after which the peak indicator will reset. For example, if you set this value to 5s, the peak indicator displays the loudest volume value that occurred within the last 5 seconds. Larger values are useful if you want to find the peak level of a song, which might be of interest when copying music from the player via the analogue output to some other recording device.

Clip Hold Time:

The number of seconds that the clipping indicator will be visible after clipping is detected.

Clip Counter:

Show the number of times the clip indicator went active during recording in front of the peakmeters.

Scale:

Select whether the peak meter displays linear or logarithmic values. The human ear perceives loudness on a logarithmic scale. If the Scale setting is set to Logarithmic (dB) scale, the volume values are scaled logarithmically. The volume meters of digital audio devices usually are scaled this way. On the other hand, if you are interested in the power level that is applied to your headphones you should choose Linear display. This setting cannot be displayed in units like volts or watts because such units depend on your headphones.

Minimum and maximum range:

These two options define the full value range that the peak meter displays. Recommended values for the Logarithmic (dB) setting are -40 dB for minimum and 0 dB for maximum. Recommended values for Linear display are 0 and 100%. Note that -40 dB is approximately 1% in linear value, but if you change the minimum setting in linear mode slightly and then change to the dB scale, there will be a large change. You can use these values for ‘zooming’ into the peak meter.

Default Codepage:

A codepage describes the way extended characters that aren’t available within the ASCII character set are encoded. ID3v1 tags don’t have a codepage encoding contained so Rockbox needs to know what encoding has been used when generating these tags. This should be “ISO-8859-1” but to support languages outside Western Europe most applications use the setting of your operating system instead. If your operating system uses a different codepage and you’re getting garbled extended characters you should adjust this settings. In most cases sticking to “ISO-8859-1” would be sufficient.

7.6.  System

7.6.1.  Start Screen

Set the screen that Rockbox will start in. Selecting Resume Playback will resume playback where it was when the player was shut off if there is a playlist to resume and will then end up in the WPS. Selecting Previous Screen will make Rockbox start in the screen it was when the player was shut off.

7.6.2.  Battery

Options relating to the batteryin the player.

Battery Capacity:

This setting can be used to tell Rockbox what capacity (in mAh) of battery is being used inside it. The default is , which is the capacity value for the standard batteries shipped with the player. Rockbox uses this value to estimate remaining battery life for the statusbar and WPS. Changing this setting has no effect what-so-ever on actual battery life. This setting only affects the accuracy of the battery life estimation as shown on screen.

7.6.3.  Disk

Options relating to the hard disk.

Disk Spindown:

Rockbox has a timer that makes it spin down the hard disk after it is idle for a certain amount of time. This setting controls the amount of time between the last user activity and the time that the disk spins down. This idle time is only affected by user activity, like navigating through the File Browser. When the hard disk spins up to fill the audio buffer, it automatically spins down afterwards.

Directory Cache:

Rockbox has the ability to cache the contents of your drive in RAM. The Directory Cache takes a small amount of memory away from Rockbox that would otherwise be used to buffer music, but it speeds up navigation in the File Browser by eliminating the slight pause between the time a navigation button is pressed and the time Rockbox responds. Turning this setting On activates the directory cache, and turning it Off deactivates the directory cache.

Note: The first time you set the directory cache to On, Rockbox will request a reboot of the player and upon restarting take a few minutes to scan the drive. Thereafter, the directory cache will work in the background.

7.6.4.  Time and Date

Time related menu options.

Set Time/Date:

Set current time and date.

Time Format:

Choose 12 or 24 Hour clock.

7.6.5.  Idle Poweroff

Rockbox can be configured to turn off power after the unit has been idle for a defined number of minutes. The player is idle when playback is stopped or paused. It is not idle while the USB or charger is connected, or while recording. Settings are either Off or 1 to 10 minutes in 1 minute steps. Then 15,30,45 and 60 minutes are available.

7.6.6.  Limits

This sub menu relates to limits in the Rockbox operating system.

Max files in dir browser:

This setting controls the limit on the number of files that you can put in any particular directory in the File Browser. You can configure the size to be between 50 and 10,000 files in steps of 50. The default is 400. Higher values will shorten the music buffer, so you should increase this setting only if you have directories with a large number of files.

Max playlist size:

This setting controls the maximum size of a playlist. The playlist size can be between 1,000 and 20,000 files, in steps of 1,000 (default is 10,000). Higher values will shorten the music buffer, so you should increase this setting only if you have very large playlists.

7.6.7.  Car Adapter Mode

This option turns On and Off the car ignition auto stop function.

Car Adapter Mode:

When using the player in a car, Car Adapter Mode automatically stops playback on the player when power (i.e. from cigarette lighter power adapter) to the external DC in jack is turned off. If the Car Adapter Mode is set to On, Rockbox will pause playback when the external power off condition is detected. Rockbox will then shutdown the player after the length of time set in the Idle Poweroff setting (see above). If power to the DC in jack is turned back on before the Idle Poweroff function has shut the player off, playback will be resumed 5 seconds after the power is applied. This delay is to allow for the time while the car engine is being started.

Once the player is shut off either manually, or automatically with the Idle Poweroff function, it must be powered up manually to resume playback.

7.7.  Bookmarking

Bookmarks allow you to save your current position within a track so that you can return to it at a later time. Bookmarks are saved on a per folder basis. In other words, all of the files in the same folder have their bookmarks stored together in the folder where the files are located. You can store multiple bookmarks for the same track.

Bookmark on Stop.

This option controls whether Rockbox writes a bookmark to the disk when playback is stopped. Setting this to No turns automatic bookmarking completely off. In contrast Yes turns automatic bookmarking on while Ask asks on stopping the track if a bookmark should be created. With the above options Yes and Ask if there is an existing .bmark file the current position information will be added to the front of the existing list, up to the maximum number of allowed bookmarks per file (currently 10). If no .bmark file exists, one will be created with the new bookmark information. Finally, if the Maintain a list of Recently Used Bookmarks option is enabled, the bookmarking information will be added to recent bookmarks list.

Yes – Recent Only.

Turns on automatic bookmarking – One bookmark only

Ask – Recent Only.

Asks if a bookmark should be created when stopping track – One bookmark only

With the two Recent Only options, nothing is written to the .bmark file. If the Maintain a list of Recently Used Bookmarks option is enabled, the bookmarking information will however be added to recent bookmarks list.

Note: The Resume function remembers your position in the most recently accessed track regardless of how the Bookmark on Stop option is set.

Load Last Bookmark.

When the Load Last Bookmark option is set to Yes, Rockbox automatically returns to the position of the last bookmark within a file when that file is played.

When the Load Last Bookmark option is set to Ask, Rockbox will give the user the option of starting from the beginning of the track of or from the bookmark.

When the Load Last Bookmark option is set to No, playback always starts from the beginning of the track, and the user must play the bookmark or use the Load Bookmark function in the Main Menu, while the file is playing, to resume at the bookmarked location.

Maintain a list of Recently Used Bookmarks.

This list of Most Recent Bookmarks (MRB’s) may be accessed through the Recent Bookmarks option of the Bookmarks sub menu of the Main Menu. When set to Yes each new bookmark will be added to the MRB list. Setting this to No disables the addition of bookmarks to the MRB list. Unique Only will remove an old bookmark for the current track from the MRB list and replace it with the new one if a bookmark in the MRB list already existed. Otherwise this will behave like the Yes setting. The above information was obtained by reading the source code, but my C is rather rusty...

7.8.  Language

This setting controls the language of the Rockbox user interface. Selecting a language will activate it. The language files must be in the /.rockbox/langs/ directory. See section 10.1.3 for further details about languages.

7.9.  Voice

Voice Menus.

This option controls the voicing of menus/settings as they are selected by the cursor. In order for this to work, a voice file must be present in the /.rockbox/langs/ directory on the player. Voice files are large and are not shipped with Rockbox by default. The voice file is the name of the language for which it is made, followed by the extension .voice. So for English, the file name would be english.voice. This option is on by default, but will do nothing unless the appropriate voice file is installed in the correct place on the player. The Voice Menus have several limitations:

• Setting the Sound Option Channels to Karaoke may disable voice menus.
• Plugins and the wake up alarm do not support voice features.

Voice Directories.

This option controls voicing of directory names. A voice file must be present for this to work. Several options are available.

Spell.

Speak the directory name by spelling it out letter by letter. Support is provided only for the most common letters, numbers and punctuation.

Numbers.

Each directory is assigned a number based upon its position in the file list. They are then announced as “Directory 1”, “Directory 2” etc.

Off.

No attempt will be made to speak directory names.

You can use pre-generated .talk clips to have directory names spoken properly, but you must enable this explicitly (see below).

Use Directory .talk Clips.

This option turns on the use of .talk clips for directories.

On.

Use special pre-recorded MP3 files (_dirname.talk) in each directory. These must be generated in advance, and are typically produced synthetically using a text-to-speech engine on a PC.

Off.

No checking is made for directory .talk clips; they are not used even if present. This can reduce disk activity.

Use of a .talk clip takes precedence over other directory name voicing. Otherwise (e.g. if a .talk clip is not available), voicing uses the method set under Voice Directories above.

Voice Filenames.

This option controls voicing of filenames. Again, a voice file must be present for this to work. The options provided are Spell, Numbers, and Off which function the same as for Voice Directories. You can use pre-generated .talk clips to have filenames spoken properly, but you must enable this explicitly (see below).

Use File .talk Clips.

This option turns on the use of .talk clips for files.

On.

Use special pre-recorded MP3 files for each file. This functions the same as for directories except that the .talk clip file must have the same name as the described file with an extra .talk extension (e.g. Punkadiddle.mp3 would require a file called Punkadiddle.mp3.talk).

Off.

No checking is made for file .talk clips; they are not used even if present. This can reduce disk activity.

Use of a .talk clip takes precedence over other filename voicing. Otherwise (e.g. if a .talk clip is not available), voicing uses the method set under Voice Filenames above.

See http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/VoiceHowto for more details on configuring speech support in Rockbox.