Golden Ear

Category
Music

Description of App

* All in one lossless music player: FLAC+APE+WAV+WavPack+AIFF+ALAC
* Designed for audiophiles

Golden Ear is a lossless music player. It supports all common lossless
audio formats, including FLAC, APE, WAV, WavPack,AIFF, ALAC, it also recognises mp3 and m4a.
It also recognizes accompanying CUE files, and lists individual tracks so you
can pick up your favorite one very easily. You just need to make sure
CUE file shares same file name with the music file. Similarly, to
display the cover art, you just provide the image file with same
name. Golden Ear recognizes embedded cover art and CUESHEET comment tag
inside flac files.

Music files can be grouped either by artists or by albums. You can also show all files in one single playlist, or only files in a chosen folder.

Golden Ear provides a straight forward control interface. You can use three playback modes: 1) Continuing in order; 2) Shuffle; 3) Loop one track/song.

Just put your collection onto your device via iTunes file sharing, then you can start listening to high quality audio everywhere you go.

FEATURES

- Support up to 24bit/96KHz lossless audio.
- Support AirPlay.
- Support "Open In..".
- Support FTP file transfer.
- CUE file supported. Same name as audio file. Recommended: UTF8 Encoding.
- LRC file supported. Same name as audio file. Recommended: UTF8 Encoding.
- Create/Rename/Delete folders right on device
- Move/Rename/Delete files right on device
- Album cover art(*.jpg,*.png, …). Same name as audio file or use the form "Album Title.jpg".
- Sleep timer.
- Rich set of playlist themes

NOTES

- iPad/iPhone4/iPod Touch 4g or later. Earlier models may not be smooth in playing.
- Please use high quality earphone</description>

Version

3.0.5

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone
iPhone

iOS Version

8.2

Accessibility Comments

The app is fully accessible with Voiceover. In the version 3.0 update the developer has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure the app remains accessible, he has added hints to the shuffle button and the next and previous track buttons as these buttons have two functions so the hints explain this.
As well as this there are two methods of playing items in the app, there is a button called play options, or a double tap and hold on any

item in the app pops up the same menu which I find much easier than looking for the button.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

I have been working closely with the developer to improve accessibility for this app, he is very committed to accessibility and very responsive to feedback, and has improved several things at my suggestion. Any problems or suggestions, I am sure he would like to hear from anybody with thoughts. He is the same person that also ported the desteno games to iOS. You also don't just have to use ftp to transfer content to the app, or itunes file sharing, if you use other utilities than itunes to copy files to and from your device, just place any music you want to listen to into the documents folder inside the golden ear directory.

App Store Link

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/golden-ear/id407945101?mt=8

Developer's Website

http://litchie.com/blog/?page_id=283

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Options

Comments

By alex wallis on Friday, December 21, 2012 - 22:28

What's New in Version 2.8 - Support WavPack format. - Support iPhone 5. - Fix audio cut offs for some Flac files. - Speed up seekbar voice over adjustment for blind users.

By alex wallis on Friday, February 21, 2014 - 22:28

What's New in Version 2.9.2 VoiceOver: tell the percentage of progress bar

By alex wallis on Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - 22:28

What's New in Version 2.9.4

- Russian localization fixes
- iOS8 compatibility fixes

* Stay tuned for Golden Ear 3.0 major update

my own comments below this point not part of the changelog.
on the subject of the 3.0 update, the developer has emailed me privately and asked for my input on changes that he is planning to make to golden ear 3.0, he wants to ensure the app remains accessible to us VoiceOver users, if anyone has ideas on how golden ear can be improved or features to add let me know and I can pass them to him or ask me for his email address and I can pass that along.
I think its great a developer is keen to involve blind users during the design process, he has also said he will let me test betas as and when they are ready.
I think he is very interested in our feedback so if others are interested please do step forward, as I am sure it would be great to have other peoples views and not just mine especially on accessibility and features. I don't know how much of the user interface he is planning to redesign but I get the feeling its quite a big update, and I think its great we are being given the chance to shape the app during development of its update and we are not being considered as an afterthought I think it does give us an opportunity to influence design decisions.

By alex wallis on Friday, November 21, 2014 - 22:28

What's New in Version 3.0

- Big UI Redesign, iPhone6, iPhone6 Plus compatible
- Performance improvement
- Better playlist management
- Better file management
- A flexible play queue with true shuffle

I worked closely with the developer on this redesign and he has really taken the time to make sure this app has remained accessible, the new user interface that is in this app is far easier to use than the previous one, he has said he will be happy to give me promo codes to give to anyone who is interested.
A note on playing back items in this app, there are two methods for doing this, there is a button you can tap called play options or if you tap and hold on any item in the app this also brings up that menu, on the queue tab there is also an extra option called play from here, this plays items without moving them to the top of the queue.

By alex wallis on Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - 22:28

What's New in Version 3.0.5

- performance improvement
- support zip/rar import and decompression.

By Sergey on Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 22:28

I really love Golden Ear and use it primarily to play my music stored in flac format.
However there is one point I can not figure out yet. I easily can add and remove files in the default playlist, but I don't see any options to create my own playlists. So if anybody here can enlighten me on that, it would be highly appreciated.

Not quite logical approach, but to add a new playlist, you should select files options in the Library tab and activate the add button in the toolbar there. In the pop up menu just select "New playlist".