I was so against Rockbox for a long time until I got a Clip Zip and couldn’t stand its firmware. Since then I got used to Rockbox, and rarely use the original firmware. Rockbox makes the player much more customizable and more capable. Rockbox provides a great equilizer that doesn’t mess up the sound like the equilizer in the original does, and Rockbox provides crossfeed, which lets you mix part of one channel into the other so that headphone listening become much more like listening to speakers. Most recordings were made with the intention of being played on speakers, where both ears hear both channels.
Initially Rockbox seems scary due to all its settings. It is so easy to install automatically, you just need to enter the mountpoint(drive letter the pc assigned to the player). In the few months I have been using Rockbox it has been extremely stable.
