any concrete date yet on when the official rockbox firmware is going public, and if the optical patch is going to be stable enough (i.e bit perfect) to be included in it?
It is bit perfect, it just sometimes hangs and doesn't write the file header properly. So, do not hold your breath for this to come through, it is only b/c of the kindness of preglow that anything is being done at all. I sense he is growing tired of writing the code and will give up in a week or so. Someone else with C experience and PCM stream experince needs to step up to the plate.
The official firmware is public now but still in the beta form.
http://www.rockbox.org/dl.cgi?bin=h120If you want the latest bleeding edge build with all the recording patches compiled (AGC, fat remote meters, SPDIF) try pilot000's build...
http://homepage.sunrise.ch/mysunrise/remartinelli/html/rockbox.htmlAlso,
it will not do 24bit. Apparently it can do 20bit but there needs to be code rewritten in the body of the RB to make the Coldfire processor to be able to handle the 20bit stream.
As for the plug-in powering, 2.5V maybe enough for acoustic shows, anything louder will require at least 5V....the DPA batt boxes supply something like 8-10V depending on the power source (fresh 9V and phantom power respectively, I did the test myself with a MPS6010). FYI, Chris Church is making a variable gain 9V batt box for the micro dot terminated 406X.....it will have a Burr Brown opamp at the heart of it.