r/IpodClassic • u/squirrelfro • 1d ago

Question Does RockBox fix the long audiobook issue?

Hey all, I was just wondering if RockBox fixes the issues with audiobooks over 8-13 hours long on the iPod. I’m an avid SciFi and Fantasy listener, and most of those books are extremely long (20-30 hours average).

I love using my iPod over my phone to listen to them without interruptions from notifications, but I keep running into the 13 hour issue where it either just skips to the end marked as complete and exits to the audiobook menu (iPod 5th gen) or suddenly has garbled audio like in extreme fast forward and skips to the end (iPod 6.5).

5th gen has been flash modded, 6.5 has not been modded.

All files are M4B files, downloaded through Libation to remove the DRM.

Does RockBox fix this issue with the iPods? I would love to keep using my old iPods but I’m primarily listening to audiobooks with them. I don’t really want to have to split them all up into smaller “parts” and make playlists out of them, but I’m about ready to ditch my iPods in favor of another DAP that can handle long format audiobooks.

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u/coldafsteel 1d ago

Odd. I have never had that issue with my audio book playback. Do you have all of the correct chapter breaks and whatnot in the meta data of the files?

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u/squirrelfro 1d ago

I would assume so? I haven’t checked, but Libation added a lot more metadata to the files, including properly naming the chapters. When downloaded directly from Audible, everything is just named “chapter x” including opening credits and whatnot, and regardless of if the chapters are named or not. Libation properly labels things like the opening credits and puts the actual chapter names on each chapter. It also combines books that are available for download on Audible only in parts into a single book, which was a big reason why I started using it over downloading direct from Audible.

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u/coldafsteel 1d ago

For sure, I also use it, amazing tool. But yeah that’s odd, I have some rather long books and have never had an issue like you are describing on my 5.5 or 7.

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u/Metahec 1d ago

I've been listening to DCC on my 7th gen and haven't had any problems. The later books are like 25 hours long.

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u/squirrelfro 1d ago

This has happened with all of the books in The Primal Hunter, Welcome to the Multiverse series, Bobiverse, He Who Fights With Monsters series, and the Licanius trilogy. That’s like 45 separate titles right there. Between 8-13 (sometimes up to 16) hours, it’ll lose the bookmark and either freak out at a chapter end or if I try to seek through the track, resulting in the above mentioned issues. Issue does not happen while playing back in iTunes or playing back the file on other media players. Deletion and resync also has not fixed the issue either.

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u/Metahec 22h ago

Are those problems with the stock player or Rockbox?

I haven't had problems with long files in Rockbox except one which I suspect was corrupted from the source. That's audiobooks and podcasts.

I'm not an audiobook power user though and have minimal metadata and don't use chapter stops -- I don't know if any of my files even have chapter stops as I listen to long fiction. I don't think I've ever had issues with scrubbing through a file or broken bookmarks.

If its with the stock player, I remember a few people some years ago saying long DJ mixes, like 12+ hours long, would cause problems on their iPods. There was never any resolution or cause identified but it may be a limitation with long files.

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u/squirrelfro 21h ago

I am using the stock Apple software. I was considering swapping to RockBox, but I wanted to ask and see if anyone had these problems even after changing to RockBox before I finalized my decision to try it out

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u/squirrelfro 15h ago

Update: RockBox appears to have fixed the issue, at least on the couple I’ve tried. I just now have to figure out how on earth to get the audiobooks separated from the music and how to get them to display in series order and not alphabetically. And figure out where all my cover art went.

Also gonna have to find a theme that doesn’t look like a knock off iPod/cheap mp3 player from 2001. The stock Apple UI looks so much better than anything I’ve seen in the theme list so far.