14 DAY TRIAL // Rockbox, an open-source project providing a complete, feature-rich replacement for the proprietary software of numerous digital audio players, putting users in charge of the device, reaches version 3.14 after many years in development.
In fact, it's been more than four years since we last talked here about Rockbox, since the Rockbox project announced the release of version 3.13, and during all this time its development team was quite busy working on exciting new features, performance improvements, support for new devices, and much more.
"The Rockbox project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Rockbox 3.14. Over 4 years have passed since the last release, and in that time we've been busy adding features and fixing bugs to give you the best Rockbox experience yet on the widest range of targets ever," reads the release announcement.
Here's what's new in Rockbox 3.14
You're probably wondering by now what new features were implemented during all these years, and we're glad to inform you that Rockbox can now be successfully deployed on Sony NWZ E360, E370, and E380, Sansa Fuze+, Creative Zen Mozaic, Zen X-Fi, Zen X-Fi 3, and Zen X-Fi Style, Samsung YH-820, YH-920, and YH-925, as well as Philips GoGear SA9200, HDD16x0, and HDD63x0 series for DAPs.
Apple's iPod Nano 2G was restored to stable following USB improvements, support for album art is now available in FLAC files, support for VGM files was improved, as well as the performance decoding of SPC files on ARMv5 or later devices, and the parsing of MP3 files that have wrongly formatted album art and very long WMA and MP3 files.
Good news for users of Sansa Clip v2, Clip+, Clip Zip, and Fuze v2 DAPs, as Rockbox 3.14 promises to double the life of the battery, as well as for other AMS v2 devices. Moreover, it looks like the backlight and screen lock options are now configurable, USB support was improved for iPod Nano 2G and iPod Classic devices, but also for the Sansa Clip and Fuze models mentioned above.
Among other noteworthy changes implemented in the major Rockbox 3.14 update, we can mention the availability of a new higher quality volume compressor DSP that features configurable attack time, a new high quality resampler that's based on the Hermite polynomials, better video playback and recording support on iPod 6G devices, and better support for older iPod accessories.
A bunch of new Digital Signal Processing (DSP) effects are also present in Rockbox 3.14, including perceptual bass enhancement, fatigue reduction, and Haas effect surround sound. Other than that, there's better touchscreen lock for various devices, the ability to configure the master sampling rate to either 44.1k or 48k, and several new and updated plugins.
These include periodic table plugin, rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) speed-reading plugin, one-time password manager plugin, as well as the 2048 game, an "xworld" interpreter for the "Another World" game, a port of Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection, and a "ghost piece" for various targets. Download Rockbox 3.14 right now from our website or the official homepage of the project.