![]() It features a full-player with four different theme options, but each of them manage to look unappealing. If Dot Music’s issue was a lack of anything novel, Sathorn’s issue is its numerous attempts and failures at doing so. Sathorn received no attention of any kind this year, remaining the same poorly designed general-purpose player it was in 2021 and is thus not included in the showcase. That paired with a lack of updates through 2021 excluded New Monaural from more thorough attention in the showcase. ![]() While New Monaural is a fantastic option for those listeners, it remains difficult to broadly recommend as its custom playback engine yields non-flat playback of tracks even if the classic “Stereo” playback option is selected. While the audience who would want such capabilities is undoubtedly slim, it’s sure to be a treasured by listeners who are hard of hearing in one ear or for one reason or another only have a single functional speaker. As the name suggests, its crowning jewel is its special “monaural playback” capability, which aims to make playback of stereo music files on mono speakers and headphones sound more natural than they otherwise would with iOS’s build-in playback APIs. Jams On Toastĭespite first impressions, New Monaural is not a general-purpose player, but rather a niche player tailed towards providing rich playback accessibility options. However, if Julien’s rate of tweet teasers are any indication, 2022 is looking likely to be the year we’ll once again see Ecoute (or perhaps a spiritual successor) return to restore its former glory. While the app is still functional, what once made it visually and functionally stand out from among its peers is now commonplace, leaving it difficult to recommend the aging current Ecoute release. While the anticipation for Julien’s new player is growing, the Ecoute that remains publicly available today hasn’t seen an update in over two years, leaving Ecoute to again be omitted from the showcase. ![]() However, these updates throughout 2021 at the very least disuade our previous fears Julien is working on a new player, and it’s close to completion. ![]() This year we got far more than just that tongue-in-cheek teaser there’s been dozens of tweets from Julien over the months offering sneak peaks at various areas of the UI for this still formally unannounced player. In 2020, however, Julien tweeted a single teaser of what was clearly a new player actively in development, presumably the long anticipated Ecoute 3. For many years, Ecoute’s lack of updates (save for an occasional bug patch or two) and radio silence from Julien Sagot (Ecoute’s developer) on Ecoute’s future, forced listeners to accept that the once beloved player was indeed officially dead and bleeding out the remainder of its life in light maintenance mode. ![]()
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