For a couple of years now I have been the happy owner of an iRiver H320 digital audio player with 20gb hard disk on board. This device has a couple of advantages compared to an iPod IMHO, like longer battery life, no iTunes needed for synchronizing music files and better sound quality.
One thing that is possible with an iPod though that I could not do with my iRiver is scrobbling songs, either by using iSproggler (for Windows) or iScrobbler (for Mac). At least, that’s what I thought!
A while ago I read about Rockbox. This is an open source replacement firmware for MP3 players which is also compatible with the iRiver H3xx series. When I was browsing through the feature list (which is quite impressive by the way!), I found out that Rockbox also supports Last.fm. This is something I have always loved to have on my MP3 player. And because Rockbox supports gapless playback too, I decided to give it a try and install it on my H320.
And I have to say I am impressed by Rockbox! I have played with it for a couple of hours while reading the online manual and I’m still discovering new features each time I boot up my H320. Gapless playback works like a charm and I have had no problems with scrobbling tracks. Rockbox keeps track of the songs you listen to in a logfile that’s maintained in the root of the hard drive. You can upload the songs in a couple of ways. I prefer using the LogScrobbler Windows Client by kernelsanders.
So finally I can enjoy my favorite music anywhere and keep track of the songs I’ve played for Last.fm at the same time!
(Originally posted on my Last.fm journal)