iOS’ built-in Music app is used by many each day to play our favorite tracks from our iTunes libraries: it serves its purpose, but some users might want to take their music listening a slight step up and play several of their tracks at once. For this, there’s a new jailbreak app, known as Music Collocator, which makes this possible.
This app works like a virtual surround system, although it requires nothing but your everyday stereo headphones or speakers. You can place a song, or a playlist, on virtual “speakers” within the app, then Music Collocator will individually adjust the levels on all of these songs to make it sound like your $12 pair of headphones is actually comprised by sets of small surround speakers. There is the option to set how many tracks you wish to have playing at once, and each track has independent volume as well as pause, stop, rewind and forward controls. Of course, songs can be played straight off your iTunes library.
The concept is without a doubt really compelling, although the app is still filled with user interface issues. It is not possible to change the position of songs once they have been set, and even worse, it is not possible to change the music being played on the fly: you’ll have to stop the track and redo the playlist. In addition, we’ve found that much of the app’s user interface is unusable, such as the settings screen, although basic settings can still be edited by accessing the .plist file within MusicCollocator.app.
According to Music Collocator’s developer, the app should work with iOS 5.1.1 or above. It is available from the BigBoss repository on Cydia. As with any other jailbreak app, you must jailbreak your device in order to install it. The app is available free of charge in an ad-supported form, although a donation is suggested for ad-free playback. It is up to you whether a virtual surround system inside your headphones is worth the money, especially given the user interface glitches present in this release, although we must admit that the technology looks solid and the concept is fairly interesting.
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