Baladeur is an audio player for iOS that is designed specifically with focus on playing audiobooks, podcasts, lessons and other spoken word tracks. Features include:
When you listen to audiobooks or podcasts, it is vital to remember where you ended up last time. Baladeur lets you organize tracks into playlist and it will store the playback position of each individual track. That way you can listen to multiple things at the same time and not worry about ever losing the context.
Sometimes the speaker of an audiobook just talks too slowly and it is convenient to speed up the tracks. Or you are listening to a lesson in a foreign language you're learning and want to slow it down. Baladeur lets you change the speed of playback both on a global level and for individual tracks on a playlist so that you can always enjoy them at the right speed.
Unlike reading a book where one can easily make notes and add bookmarks, it is somewhat trickier with an audio version. With Baladeur, you can add audio bookmarks at any point while listening to a track and later return to them, perhaps to look it up, write down or send to a friend. Making bookmarks works seemlessly if you use headphones with remote control (see next point).
If you own a pair of headphones with remote control (like those shipped by Apple or many other vendors), you certainly enjoy using this to pause and resume the audio and advance tracks. Baladeur lets you map the commands of the remote control (like double-click) to other functionalities, e.g. making bookmarks or rewinding the track by a couple of seconds so that you can conveniently control your playback without even having to open the app.
Baladeur can easily import tracks you already synchronized from your iTunes Library, regardless of the category they are marked with (e.g. Music, Audiobook, Podcast, iTunes U etc.). If you don't like using iTunes, you can also import tracks from other sources, like Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud. Baladeur can also be used to open audio files from other apps or download them from a URL.
In addition to letting you download any audio files you already have a URL for, Baladeur also helps you search the iTunes Store for new podcasts and keep track of the episodes you previously downloaded. While not being an app designed specifically for podcasts, it still provides a comfortable way to consume them.
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Currently, the development of Baladeur is in progress and it is planned to be released on the App Store in a couple of months. You can help to speed up the progress by contributing, just let me know.