Improve Your Mac’s Audio Quality with Hear

On my never ending quest to discover cool OS X applications I ran across Hear which claims to greatly improve your audio from any application.

It does this with various tools and effects that are easy enough to get the hang of for a beginner.

The interface was very intriguing, so I decided to give it a try.

I’m no audiophile, so many of Hears advanced features were over my head–but some things are easy enough for anyone to use.

For example, the pre-defined list of effects is great for experimenting with different sounds.

Instantly I noticed an increase in the quality of audio coming from my computer. Playing around with different genres of music I was able to select something that dramatically increased the audio quality playing through iTunes.

The only downside to this was I listen to a lot of different genres. Some genres sound terrible with certain presets–they almost sound “tinny.” This made setting 1 preset impractical.

I found a better solution by selecting a general “In the Room” preset.

Hear has a full equalizer which you can customize to your liking.

One of the coolest features I found was a per-application setting. Basically you can turn Hear off for certain applications if you don’t want any effects, like voice chat in iChat or Skype.

If you’re serious about audio and how it sounds, Hear is a must download.

Unfortunately it requires a restart to use–so keep that in mind while testing.

Hear is $49.99 but has a demo version available for 30 days.

If you’ve never even messed with your iTunes equilizer, you can safely pass on Hear.