I also like that some podcasts that I don’t want to hear too regularly or right away can sit in my Inbox when I am ready, not interfering with the podcasts I am more eager to catch up on.Ĭastros Now Playing screen and Wdiget on my Home Screen. The simplicity of having only an Inbox and Queue feels right when it comes to podcasts and when you wish to listen to something. With Castro, you have no choice but to play what is next in the Queue, so unless you run out, which would never happen for me, podcast episodes will just keep playing. When a podcast would end and I didn’t start the eposide in a specific playlist the podcast would end, and I would have to fetch my phone to pick another podcast to play. This is also really nice and something that I found frustrating with other apps. Once you start playing a podcast in the Queue, they will continue to the next episode in the Queue until you tell it to stop. Instead of dealing with playlists, I can have all my podcasts drop into an Inbox to decide what to do from there. That alone makes me feel like I have more control over my podcasts.
From there, you can drop it into the Queue or select whether you want it to go at the beginning or last of the Queue. When you subscribe to a podcast in Castro, it defaults to adding the new podcast episodes to your Inbox.
Not only because it has similar features that I like in Overcasts, but because the way you view and listen to podcasts is very intuitive and makes sense. Out of Pocket Casts, Castro, and all the other podcasts available in the App Store, Castro is the one that I always gravitate back to. I have mentioned this before and will repeat that I like Marco Arment and will probably still support him even if I stop using Overcast because I want to support indie developers, but Overcast feels outdated and rusty. Castro even has an Enhance Voices feature that is very similar if not the same as Voice Boost in Overcast.Ĭasto also offers something that Overcast does not: widgets and a better and more full-featured Apple Watch app. Pocket Casts and Castro both have a Smart Speed or Trim Silence feature that works the same as in Overcast. Smart Speed and Voice Boost are also some features that are not unique to Overcast anymore. This isn’t to say that a podcast app needs to have some significant redesign or monumental feature every year, but I feel the app is getting stale. The problem is, Overcast has not changed much in the last couple years. It has been a podcast app that not only provided a new and exciting design compared to Apple’s very boring one, but these features made it so I could enjoy listening to podcasts more.
These two reasons alone are the reason I have used Overcast for so many years. Voice Boost corrects all that and makes some very raw indie sounding podcasts listenable. Many podcasters, especially those starting, might not have the best microphones or just have different voice volumes that can be hard to balance in editing. Ultimately what Voice Boost does is make it so all the podcasts you listen to sound balanced. Listen in more places, such as noisy cars, and still hear what everyone says without cranking the volume so high for quiet people that the loud ones blow your ears out. Here is another description from Marco on Voice Boost:īoost and normalize volume so every show is loud, clear, and at the same volume. The Voice Boost feature was and has been a fantastic feature for listneing to podcast to this day. Pick up extra Speed without distortion with Smart Speed, which dynamically shortens silences in talk shows.Ĭonversations still sound so natural that you’ll forget it’s on - until you see how much extra time you’ve saved. Removing all the awkward pauses and delayed responses is great but Overcast also keeps track of all those removed silences and says I have saved an extra 628 hours by using the Smart Speed feature, which is pretty impressive. Smart Speed is excellent because it takes all the silent parts of podcasts and removes them, making the podcasts you listen to a bit shorter.
0 kommentar(er)
