After working quite well for some years, unfortunately the audio jack of my iPod Video broke down some time ago, only giving sound in one ear. Luckily, you can solve this for under $5 by buying an adapter to plug into the iPod’s connector and installing the Rockbox firmware on the iPod.

Alternative solutions

This is not the only solution to the problem. First of all, you can have the audio jack replaced. Apple won’t do this for you, but there are websites outlining the process (which apparently involves opening up the iPod and doing some soldering). The main downside is that you have to buy a new audio jack, which will surprisingly set you back some $50.

Other than that, the guy at my local Apple Store recommended that I buy the Apple FM-receiver add-on for the iPod. This would also cost about $50, but the add-on also has an audio jack. I did not try this.

I did look for alternatives on the internet, and ordered this, which also provides an audio jack when you attach it to your iPod.

However, there is a problem: this audio jack is connected to the iPod’s line out, and so the volume control for the iPod does not control its volume. Since the volume from the line out is (much) too loud, this makes the iPod inpractical to use.

For $7, I ordered earphones with built-in volume control (”NEW & SEALED PANASONIC VOLUME CONTROL EARPHONES” on eBay), however its lowest volume setting still was too loud.

The solution

First of all, I now use the $5 alternate audio jack on my iPod.

Next, I tried installing the Rockbox on my iPod. This is an alternative firmware which replaces Apple’s. It turns out the released version also does not enable you to controle the line out volume; however, with a fairly trivial patch this can be fixed: for version 3.2 of Rockbox, firmware/sound.c line 261 should read

    audiohw_set_lineout_vol(tenthdb2master(l), tenthdb2master(r));

instead of

    audiohw_set_lineout_vol(tenthdb2master(0), tenthdb2master(0));

Compiling a new version of Rockbox and putting it on your iPod makes the Rockbox volume control change the volume of the line out simultaneously, making my iPod work like a charm for me again!

Pros, Cons, how to get it

Even though I can now use my iPod again, this solution is not perfect.

First of all, you can’t use the original Apple firmware any more which is a pity since it’s a pleasure to use. For audio, Rockbox is quite good as well, even if it has to rescan your iPod every time you put new music on it. It even has skins, some games and extra application that are quite neat. However, you cannot (as far as I know) play video files using Rockbox, and your battery life may be shorter.

The other downside is that you now have a ~4cm extra connector hanging out of your iPod, making it somewhat less elegant to carry around:

Also, you have to go through the bother of installing Rockbox (though that’s not so hard).

For the moment, as I said you can’t use the official Rockbox version. If you want my patched version for the iPod Video, please contact me and I can help you getting it on your iPod. Meanwhile, I think I will contact the Rockbox team to see if they’re willing to include line-out volume control as an extra feature.

Last Modified : April 29th, 2009 Filed under : projects Navigate : Previous post / Next post