Official Overcast Reddit

The redesign was very painful. I listen to every episode of ATP, I understand his publicly stated reasoning. But man, it was so rough I actually tried Apple Podcasts.

But with the very most recent update, it is much better. Ironically the Liquid Glass design was a big improvement. Podcast management still seems harder than it was, buttons are smaller, it’s still not as good as it used to be interface-wise but it’s not bad now.

And yes, absolutely best audio engine. Most others don’t even try and no one else comes close.

And I think it’s a very strange time for him to choose to start a new thing on Reddit of all places. Maybe this is just me being old again, I like the format you have right here. A website with comments.

@bart.... what makes Overcast have the best audio engine?

I tried it back with version 1.0 an, honestly, hated how it handled downloads (or not). Not wanting iCloud (still) I went with something else. Yesterday I ran into storage issues with my 64m iPhone and needed to delete some. As a fellow ATP listener (along with Under The Radar) I may have some differences with how Marco thinks Overcast should look and work, but would be willing to give it a second try....

Same I don't see how overcast has a better audio engine. I miss nothing having switched to castro. In fact, Castro's triage system is what I missed the most when I went back temporarily on overcast when castro's future was doubtful. Now I can happily stay on castro.

Ok so good point and to be fair I have not done a comparison recently. I have used Overcast for so long and never looked back until recently. I think it started with the Pocket Casts redesign, or maybe coming back from Android and wanting the equivalent of the app I used there, Podcast Addict possibly. It had audio boost, proper speed control in small increments, skip silence, etc.

So I tried the ones on iOS that had that, none of them did it well or had it at all. At the time Overcast seemed to be way better in terms of the things I listed above as well as other customization options. At the time my car audio was poor and nothing else could be made to sound just right.

Recently in a car with wireless CarPlay I find that it has huge latency that Podcasts doesn’t suffer from. Apparently they have a private audio API. But still, speed boost last I checked was only in increments of like 1 or some crazy thing, I don’t need it double fast just a little faster. No skip silence, no audio normalizing.

So maybe I’ll test again but after trying Podcasts and its utter lack of customization, and now with Marco taking another crack at it, I think it’s good enough now that I’m not inclined to look elsewhere.

Ah, he has made a subreddit for user feedback.

At first I thought he is making a Reddit app.

For my personal case - Overcast has "the best audio engine" because (again to my ears) I listen at 1.1x speed and with "smart speed" & "voice boost" enabled this is the fastest cleanest nicest sounding "faster than 1x" speed from any player I've used.

@Damien Yes, triage is probably the weakest area of Overcast.

@Bart Interesting. I found that Overcast’s CarPlay support was more reliable than either Apple Podcasts or Pocket Casts. I found Apple Podcasts to have lots of wireless latency, too.

@MCE Yes, that’s what I meant.

@MCE yes thank you that’s exactly what I meant but far more succinct. I don’t think any other app does that.

@Michael it might actually be the audio processing causing it. I’d test it more but it doesn’t bother me enough. Might just be my phone.

All, thanks for the feedback. Nobody mentioned the podcast player I use - iCatcher. Large market with many competitors!

I think it gets down to something @bart alluded to in his reply.... how one uses their podcast player. CarPlay, AirPods... wireless, speed of playback, (not sure what is meant by triage).... nobody directly mentioned listening while biking or jogging, but that's something posted elsewhere with regard to AirPods.

Me? Back in the 90s, I used to fall asleep to AM Radio talk shows (Larry King, Art Bell, Jim Bohannon, and a multitude of sports). Things "dried up" around 2010 and a few years later I discovered podcasting. My needs are simple - no reason to speed things up (though my player can do 2 slower and 10 higher), connect my iPhone by bluetooth to a small speaker, no video (though it looks like it can do that), and continuous playback if I wish.

I purchased Overcast years ago (maybe version 1.0?) and din't like it because I couldn't edit/delete casts the way I liked. Emailed Marco asking about this and never heard back. (Not complaining, water under the bridge.) Hav stuck with my podcast player ever since. But @MCE makes some good points like @bart has. Even though I have no need for "voice boost" (and I'm not sure, but I think that's different than something else that eliminated dead space) I can see where these things matter to others. Again, thanks all for clarifying!

@Dave Some people subscribe to a small number of podcasts and listen to all the episodes, perhaps always in release order. Triage refers to when you are following a large number of podcasts and picking only certain episodes to listen to, possibly in a different order.

Kind of old thread now but I did actually try Podcasts again since iOS 26 promises better speed increments and "voice boost" which were two things I specifically mentioned.

Yeah neither one is as good as Overcast, and in testing it has the same delay Overcast does now anyway. The voice boost doesn't sound good, makes the highs too harsh. Overcast works better for this.

And it turns out I don't even use speed up anymore, I use "skip silence" which has the same time saving effect, and I only ever used 10% anyway only for the slowest speakers.

So just wanted to come back to say that I did look around again, and Overcast still wins in the audio department.