If there are someone on here that makes iPhone apps, I think it would be cool if someone made an Empeg emulator iPhone app....it could have all of the functionally of the empeg, but maybe add the ability to have some of the visualizations In color too.

I've thought about it. But I think it would only really be useful if there were hardware buttons and a rotary encoder to drive it.

I suspect however the visuals would be hard, maybe impossible to achieve. I doubt that an iPhone app has access to the audio stream that the iPod backend code is playing. That is assuming the app was just a front end to the iPod service, which it would probably have to be to make it onto the app store.

Is there a way to insert a song into whatever playlist you are listening to and then continuing the playlist on the iPhone? I think that would be more useful than the visuals (which I also miss).

Ah, yes, the best feature of the Empeg. One of the many features I always think about when I compare the Empeg to other music players. Can it be done on an iPhone or iPod yet?

The iPod music player application stinks (absolutely the most mild thing I can say about this horrendous POS). I can't really think of anything that's good about it actually. Navigation is a simple list. Graphics, when they appear, are small, you can't use all the features in Portrait mode, there are no features except browsing Coverflow in Landscape, there is no way to manipulate the "now playing" playlist - it can only be completely replaced.

Forget about the empeg when thinking about an iPhone or iPod Touch. It just wouldn't make any sense to make an "emulator." What would make sense is a brand new music player for iOS that borrows the best features from a variety of sources. The places to look, IMO:

empeg
Squeezebox (the player AND the default web UI)
SONOS

I'd pay $10 for such an app. Most other people probably wouldn't, but I think at $2-3 it would make some waves. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be approved either, since it can now use published APIs.

I wonder if there's a way to insert/enqueue via the API on an iTouch/iPhone. And if there's a way to read and index the data of the music library on the device. If there is, then the chances of being able to write such an app are high. But if Apple locks that stuff out, then maybe not.

There were some apps in the app store that gave some alternative UIs, but I can't see any now. Wonder whether they got pulled ?

http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpre...ayer-for-iphone

Don't have time to go see if this is really there right now or not, but it vaguely looks like it might have enqueue features.

I agree and after getting use to (abusing the hell out of) that feature for years, it feels lame to have to interupt a playlist just to listen to one song.

The full iPod music library on the phone should be exposed via official APIs now. But I don't know if that includes indexed DB or not. It might be that an app would have to implement its own DB after a scan of the music on the iPod. But maybe not.

Surely all playlist management and other tasks would have to be handled specifically by the new app. The API would really only be to access the music and run playback - why bother implementing your own MP3 decoder when there's already one there.


Incidentally, the AMP player is the *only* alternative player I've ever found in the app store. Anything else player related has been some proprietary streaming or internet radio stuff. I'm not that crazy about the AMP UI (from the screen shots) but I have been meaning to try it out.

I gather that Iphones do gapless these days. But do they do crossfade?

Peter

Another alternative player is Gramophone.

I had a quick play with Amp, very fussy ui but at least to can add to the running playlist.

All iPods in the past few years support gapless, but only the last (or couple of last) Nano models support cross-fade. People have been asking about it for iOS devices since at least 2008, so I don't think it ranks highly on Apple's priority list. Then again, what does?

I have no idea if the API allows for playback of multiple tracks so that a third party player can implement their own cross-fade. There s at least one app that does it, but I don't know if they're using the API for playback.