Audiophone for iOS 7 [1.0.1 released]

[DarthNerdus]

Invoked Code LLC (aka – me) is extremely excited to announce that our new iPhone app, Audiophone, was released Thursday on the App Store. Audiophone is a Subsonic client designed and built for iOS 7.

For it's 1.0 release, Audiophone has the following features (including some more technical details, since this seems to be the right crowd!):

• Fresh iOS 7 inspired design
• Beautiful use of album art to influence design
• Easily access playback controls and the current playlist
• Gapless Playback
• AirPlay Support
• One tap album shuffle
• Artist Search
• Lock Screen/Control Center/Headphone Remote Functionality
• Browse Genres and play generated genre mixes

• Local storage of database (as accessed) for fast navigation
• Pre-buffering of the next song (including album art for display) for gapless playback
• Album art retrieval from Discogs was included for albums that were missing art, but will be removed in 1.0.1 due to their recent API changes. (Sorry!)

Audiophone is available now on the App Store for $4.99. Check out the website for more information or to subscribe to our newsletter for release updates.

Now that 1.0 has been released and the foundation has been laid, I have plans to quickly implement features that will bring Audiophone to feature parity (at least for the features I feel are essential and fit within the app) with others in the market while maintain a fresh, fast, and clean UI. I also have plans for many future features that I haven't seen explored yet! That being said, the prioritization of future features will be based solely on user feedback. I welcome everyone to contact me with feedback, bug reports, and feature requests via email: support@audiophoneapp.com

[joost]

Wauw, looks amazing!!!

Question; artist browse tab, is this done by id3 tags or does it uses subsonics folder layout?

[DarthNerdus]

As of right now the retrieval is done by folder structure but mostly expects a flat or Artist > Album folder structure, largely due to my oversight for deeper configurations.

If your music is in either a:
-- Artist Name
---- Album Name
------ Song Files

...or:
-- Album Name
---- Song Files

...structure then everything will work great. If you have a deeper structure, I will probably transition to tag based navigation as this was the intended functionality of the application (we did not ship with this due to a couple of minor, but problematic, bugs that we were working on with tag-based API calls - I obviously underestimate the variability of file structures out there). That being said, I welcome input into which solution would be best. To open a more detailed dialog about your usage and whether you'd prefer folders, tags, or a preference that you can set, please get in touch at support@audiophoneapp.com and I'll make sure to keep you up to date when this issue is resolved. I'm pushing to have it included in 1.0.1.

[joost]

Folder based is perfect, the reason why this works so Well is not all my music is perfectly tagged... I think i an going to buy it soon... Keep up the good work!

[whimpyjones]

Looks like a great start! I would love the ability to make playlists on the fly, access server based playlists, and download/cache songs/albums when I don't have access to data.
Thanks for putting this together!

[DarthNerdus]

Looks like a great start! I would love the ability to make playlists on the fly, access server based playlists, and download/cache songs/albums when I don't have access to data.
Thanks for putting this together!

Thanks for the compliments.

All of these things are on the roadmap. Better server support for folders and playlists are probably first up (along with the tagging functionality mentioned above), local caching of songs is a must, and I have some really cool ideas for "on the fly" playlists that I can't wait to make happen. So much to do!

[geofstro]

Just brought it!

Looks great. The already mentioned server playlist support are important for me. Please also add the ability to shuffle those playlists.

Another big issue for me with the other players is that I like to play music in my car. I want to choose the music often when I'm in garage parking where there is no or weak signal. Then have that play as soon as the app can connect.

Is there any way for the app to support this, by remembering the selection made offline then keep trying to connect and once the connection is successful, start playing the chosen selection?

Looking forward to the updates.

[DarthNerdus]

Just brought it!

Looks great. The already mentioned server playlist support are important for me. Please also add the ability to shuffle those playlists.

Thanks for the compliments. As I work towards the playlist feature, shuffling will definitely be a part of it.

Another big issue for me with the other players is that I like to play music in my car. I want to choose the music often when I'm in garage parking where there is no or weak signal. Then have that play as soon as the app can connect.

Is there any way for the app to support this, by remembering the selection made offline then keep trying to connect and once the connection is successful, start playing the chosen selection?

Better offline support is definitely in order, and I will add your request for offline "queuing" to the list.

[Boutros]

Hey, this looks intriguing, and I'd love to check it out. I've been a devoted iSub user for a few years, but now that he's ceased development on the app, I've been keeping an eye open for an alternative.

One question I had, however - I noticed it requires Subsonic 4.8 or higher. I'm running MusicCabinet v 0.7.24c, which (I believe) is based on an underlying Subsonic 4.7 build (someone can correct me if I'm wrong). Do you know if this would work? I'm a bit hesitant to shell out the $5 just to check compatibility.

Thanks!

[DarthNerdus]

Unfortunately, MusicCabinet is not supported and you won't be able to login.

I have very mixed feelings about MusicCabinet. Unknown to most, Audiophone started out as a MusicCabinet exclusive client. I had used MusicCabinet for quite a while and absolutely loved the capabilities it added via the Last.FM integration. Artist Radio was above and beyond my favorite feature it was included within Audiophone from about day 2.

That all being said, development has gone silent and I had to make a decision to embrace the main stream branch and more up-to-date forks. There were issues preventing me from integrating both MusicCabinet and Subsonic 4.8+ forks. Maybe I'll revisit this in the future, but some features Audiophone relies on are not supported by MusicCabinet. I know myself I would love to use MusicCabinet, but MadSonic is working a pandora feature that replaces the core need I had for MusicCabinet and is much better maintained.

As of today, MusicCabinet is a no-go. In the future that may change and if hakko returned to pick up where he left off, or someone stepped up to that task (Sorry, but that lays way outside my skillset), then I would definitely reconsider this.

[jay2811]

Please let me know when you have added the ability to cache music and I will immediately purchase your app. This is a must for be before I buy an iSub replacement.

Cheers!

[jimmy2times]

It works for me only if I put the local IP address from my home network. With my *.subsonic.org address (which I checked is reachable from other apps like iSub) I get "Login failed".

[DarthNerdus]

It works for me only if I put the local IP address from my home network. With my *.subsonic.org address (which I checked is reachable from other apps like iSub) I get "Login failed".

There's a known issue currently with the *.subsonic.org addresses that I'm hoping to get worked out. I myself can't connect to my *.subsonic.org domain from a web browser, Audiophone, or iSub... as well as a couple of users who I've worked with trying to help sort it out. But when I have more information about the issue, I'll definitely post it here.

[jimmy2times]

It works for me only if I put the local IP address from my home network. With my *.subsonic.org address (which I checked is reachable from other apps like iSub) I get "Login failed".

There's a known issue currently with the *.subsonic.org addresses that I'm hoping to get worked out. I myself can't connect to my *.subsonic.org domain from a web browser, Audiophone, or iSub... as well as a couple of users who I've worked with trying to help sort it out. But when I have more information about the issue, I'll definitely post it here.

Ok, thanks.
Next time it would be better to post about it here, since this is a paid app. One might decide to hold off from buying it until the issues are resolved (I would've).

Some quick feedback: the UI is really nice, the only thing I find weird is the sliding panel that remains on the left edge in the now playing view. It makes it look sort of squeezed in. I'd rather have a button to recall the browse view like most other music apps.

[DarthNerdus]

Thanks for the feedback jimmy2times and I'm sorry that you ran into issues. If you reach out to support@audiophoneapp.com, I'll get you a refund for your troubles.

Shortly after typing up that post I had a "EUREKA" moment and figured out why the application doesn't connect through the Subsonic URLs. I won't go into the technicalities of it, but this should be fixed in the next version. I'll also note your thoughts on the side-view player, though I'm not sure if that will be changed in the future.