Kord
A native, bit-perfect FLAC music player for iPhone & Mac — your local library decoded bit-for-bit and sent to your DAC exactly as it was mastered.
Most music players quietly resample or transcode your files — so the lossless FLAC you ripped never reaches your ears untouched. Between the file and the DAC sits a system mixer, hidden EQ, and loudness normalization. For people who care about the recording, "lossless" on the box and bit-perfect at the output are not the same thing.
I built Kord up from the signal path, native in Swift for both the iPhone in your pocket and the rig on your desk. Decode FLAC bit-for-bit, switch the hardware sample rate to match the file, and hand the samples to the DAC with nothing in between — direct USB-C DAC output on iPhone, exclusive CoreAudio hardware access on Mac. Everything else (EQ, lyrics, library) is built to put you closer to the master, never between you and it.
Bit-perfect playback
FLAC decoded bit-for-bit with automatic sample-rate switching to match each file — no resampling, no system mixer in the path, no secret normalization. Direct DAC output on iPhone; exclusive hardware access on Mac.
Parametric EQ
Real per-band control — center frequency, gain and Q on every band — with saveable presets per device and instant bypass to A/B against the untouched signal.
Synced lyrics
Line-by-line lyrics that move in time with the music, highlighted as you listen and never a beat behind.
Self-organizing library
Point Kord at a folder and it reads tags, groups albums and artists, fetches artwork and lets you browse by artist, album or decade — so you spend your time listening, not filing.
Shipping a real audio app means owning the unglamorous edges — sample-rate switching, DAC routing, metadata weirdness, a support channel — long before any of it is visible. Keeping the source private but triage public (a feedback tracker with structured issue forms) turned out to be a clean way to involve listeners without exposing the build.