Comparisons

The best Mac equalizer apps

All six apps re-checked October 1, 2026 · Page updated October 2, 2026

Short answer: of the Mac EQ software that works system-wide, the best for EQ depth is EQBase (ours; see the disclosure below), the best free one is eqMac, and the one for a different curve in each app is Sound Control. On macOS 14.4 (Sonoma) or later, EQBase, eqMac and Boom 3D all run; the current Sound Control needs 14.6, and the current SoundSource and Equaliser need macOS 15. Five of the six run on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs; Equaliser is Apple silicon only.

Disclosure: we make EQBase, and it's first on this list. Judge that accordingly, but judge it against the criterion below, which is EQ capability, and against the table, where every figure comes from the developer's own site, repository or App Store listing on the date above. Where another app beats us we say so, and if you want to spend nothing, the free pick is number two and we recommend it plainly. If we've got a detail wrong about any of these apps, tell us and we'll fix it.

One thing the table makes plain and the rankings do not: three of these six have no free tier at all. Sound Control, SoundSource and Boom 3D are paid up front. EQBase's free tier is not a trial either, and it is not only the equalizer: the 10-band EQ, all 8,600+ headphone corrections, system-audio recording in six formats, loudness compensation, Auto Switch, global hotkeys and working volume keys on fixed-volume outputs carry no time limit. Several of those are features the paid-only apps here charge for outright. The full split is on the pricing page.

macOS still has no system-wide equalizer of its own. The Music app has one that works only inside the Music app, and that's the extent of it. The longer version of why is in does macOS have a built-in equalizer? So if you want tone control over YouTube, Spotify, a browser and a video call, you need one of these.

How we picked

Four rules, applied before anything else:

• System-wide only. It has to process every app's audio. Equalizers built into Music, VLC or Spotify are useful and free, but they aren't in this category.
• Still maintained. Every app here shipped a release within the last twelve months. Abandoned software that installs an audio driver is a liability, and there is at least one popular listicle favourite that fails this test; see the end of the page.
• Published, checkable specs. Prices and system requirements come from the developer's own site or repository, not from aggregators.
• Ordered by equalizer depth. This is a list of equalizers, so it's ranked on what each one's EQ can actually do: filter types, band control, phase behaviour, measured correction. Price, macOS support and ease of use are called out per entry instead, because they run in a different direction and the cheapest app here is also the oldest-compatible one.

1. EQBase: the deepest equalizer here

Free tier, no time limit · Pro $4.99/mo, $39.99/yr or $79.99 once · macOS 14.4+

Ours. On the criterion this page is ranked by, it's the most capable: 24 parametric bands where you set frequency, gain, Q and filter type from seven kinds, plus separate left and right curves, dynamic bands that only act above a threshold, and a linear-phase mode that corrects without shifting phase. Nothing else here offers dynamic or linear-phase EQ at all.

Beyond the bands: convolution, so a measured impulse response for your room or headphones is applied exactly rather than approximated with filters; AutoEQ headphone corrections for 6,033 models, the largest count any app on this list publishes; bs2b crossfeed; a spectrum analyzer; and Audio Unit hosting. Pro adds a routing patchbay that sends chosen apps to chosen outputs: up to four virtual devices, eight physical outputs each, and each output carrying its own correction curve.

It also measures. Play a sweep, capture it with a microphone, average several listening positions, and EQBase fits the parametric correction for you, so a room profile does not need a round trip through separate measurement software. That correction lives in its own layer underneath your own EQ, each with its own switch, so loading a profile never wipes the curve you built. Alongside it: equal-loudness compensation on the ISO 226 contours for quiet listening, speaker crosstalk cancellation derived from where your speakers actually are, an analysis suite (spectrogram, goniometer with correlation, VU needles and a floating always-on-top meter), and one-click recording of the processed output to MP3, AAC, ALAC, FLAC, WAV or AIFF. Nothing else here publishes a room-measurement or equal-loudness feature.

The engineering claim underneath is that it adds nothing you didn't ask for: zero samples of latency on the direct signal, and when every control is flat its processing is bit-perfect (output samples identical to the samples it received), verified continuously against the live signal and shown in the app rather than asserted on a web page. No other app here makes that claim.

Setup also asks less of you than most of this list: nothing to install beyond the app itself, no administrator password and no restart, just one permission to use your Mac's audio. Removing it is dragging the app to the Trash.

Best at: parametric depth, measured correction, and a signal path you can verify.
Weak spot: macOS 14.4 minimum, the highest one-time price here, and routing that takes real setup next to a per-app menu.

2. eqMac: best free equalizer

Free · Pro $3/mo, $30/yr or $40 once · macOS 10.13+ · Apple silicon and Intel

If you don't know which of these you want, install eqMac first. It's free and it runs back to macOS 10.13, further than anything else here, which matters because two of the six on this list require macOS 15. The free tier gives you a working system-wide 10-band equalizer and 4,600+ headphone presets with no time limit, and Pro adds a parametric EQ with unlimited bands, a spectrum analyzer, per-app volume and Audio Unit hosting.

It ships its own audio driver; version 1.9 (September 2026) adds a per-device choice of capture method on macOS 14.2 and later. Its Apache-2.0 GitHub repository holds version 1.3.2 without the Pro features; newer releases come from a private fork, the developer notes. The project dates from 2017 and has a large user base.

Best at: being free and running on old Macs. If budget is the constraint, start here rather than with us.
Weak spot: no per-app output routing, no convolution, no measured room correction, and no linear-phase or dynamic filters. Our longer EQBase vs eqMac comparison covers where it beats us.

3. Equaliser: best free parametric EQ

Free · GPL-3.0 · macOS 15+, Apple silicon only

Equaliser is the newest thing here and the most generous on paper: a free, open-source system-wide equalizer with 1 to 64 parametric bands, per-band frequency, gain, Q and filter type, and real-time meters. Nothing else on this list gives you that many parametric bands for nothing.

The caveats are real and you should weigh them before switching to it. It requires macOS 15 and Apple silicon: no Intel Macs at all, the narrowest compatibility of the six. The project first appeared in February 2026, the current release is v1.3.3 from May 2026, and it has a small user base so far. That isn't a criticism of the code, which is public and can be read; it's a note that it hasn't had the years of field exposure the older options have. For a free download, trying it costs you nothing but the install.

Best at: deep parametric control at zero cost.
Weak spot: Apple silicon and macOS 15 only; young project; not notarized by Apple; no headphone profile library.

4. Sound Control: best for per-app EQ

$30 once · macOS 14.6+ · free trial

Everything above equalizes your Mac's whole output. Sound Control equalizes each app separately (a different curve for Spotify than for your browser) and can send each app to a different output device while it's at it. It offers a 10- or 31-band graphic EQ, Apple's AUNBandEQ for parametric calibration, thousands of AutoEQ headphone profiles, Audio Unit plugins, hotkeys and MIDI control.

Static Z lists macOS 11.4 or later, but the current download, version 3.4.0, requires macOS 14.6. At $30 once, it's also the cheapest one-time way to get straightforward per-app routing on a Mac that can't run macOS 15.

Best at: per-app equalization and per-app output routing, cheaply.
Weak spot: no free tier, and on macOS 14 a one-time trip to Recovery mode to allow its system extension.

5. SoundSource: best overall audio control panel

$49 once · macOS 15+ · trial adds noise after 20 minutes

SoundSource from Rogue Amoeba is the most polished app on this list, from a developer with more than twenty years of Mac audio behind it. Strictly as an equalizer it's the plainest of the six, a 10-band graphic EQ, but that undersells it, because equalization isn't really what it's for. It's for controlling everything at once: per-app volume, per-app effects, per-app output, output groups that feed several devices simultaneously, AirPlay, per-device settings and Quick Configs.

If you want one app that handles all your Mac's audio and the EQ is a bonus, it's the best buy here. If you specifically want a deep equalizer, four of the others give you more.

Best at: total audio control in one polished panel.
Weak spot: macOS 15 minimum, no free tier, and the shallowest EQ of the six. See EQBase vs SoundSource or our SoundSource alternatives round-up.

6. Boom 3D: best sound enhancer

About $17 (list $49.99, usually discounted) · macOS 11+ · 15-day trial

Boom 3D is doing something different on purpose. It has a 31-band graphic EQ, but the point of the app is its 3D surround effect, volume boosting, internet radio and built-in player. It's also on the Mac App Store, as a free download that unlocks through in-app purchases, and a licence from Global Delight's own store covers up to four Macs or PCs.

Judge it by what it's for. If you play a track and think "this sounds bigger, I like it", that's a successful enhancer and it's cheap. If you think "what did it do to the recording?", you want one of the correction tools above.

Best at: making audio louder and more spacious, cheaply.
Weak spot: colouring rather than accuracy; no parametric EQ. See EQBase vs Boom 3D.

Compared

One-time prices shown where both a subscription and a one-time option exist; Boom 3D's is Global Delight's own store price, discounted from a $49.99 list most of the time. "–" under free tier means trial-only. All figures as of October 1, 2026.

What we left out, and why

A few names appear on other lists and shouldn't be on this one.

• Bongiovi DPS. Still recommended by old round-ups, but its developer's site no longer offers the Mac app, and reports of unstable audio on modern macOS go back years. Don't install an unmaintained audio driver in 2026.
• Background Music. Free, open source and good at what it does, but it's per-app volume and auto-pause, with no equalizer at all.
• BlackHole, Loopback and Audio Hijack. Routing and recording tools. You can build a system-wide EQ out of a virtual driver plus an Audio Unit host, and it's a real option if you enjoy that sort of thing, but none of them is an equalizer by itself.
• Newer open-source equalizers. MacEQ (MIT), OnlyEQ (public domain), ParaEQ (MIT) and SystemEQ (GPL-3.0) are free and capture through Apple's process taps on macOS 14.4 or later; SystemEQ also runs on macOS 13 through BlackHole. Each appeared in 2026 and has a small following, so we name rather than rank them. Only ParaEQ is notarized by Apple, and it is Apple silicon only. SoundMaxx needs BlackHole; its developer now points to a successor project.
• The Music app's equalizer. Free and already installed, but it only affects audio playing in Music. Same for VLC and Spotify's own EQs. Worth trying first if everything you listen to lives in one app.

Common questions

Are there free alternatives to paid Mac equalizers?

Yes, three apps on this list cost nothing to use. eqMac's free tier is a system-wide 10-band EQ with 4,600+ headphone presets, on macOS 10.13 or later. Equaliser gives up to 64 parametric bands free, on macOS 15 and Apple silicon only. EQBase's free tier includes the 10-band EQ, corrections for 6,033 headphone models and system-audio recording, with no time limit. Newer free projects and a do-it-yourself route are listed under What we left out.

What if my Mac can't run macOS 14.4?

EQBase needs macOS 14.4: it captures audio through Core Audio process taps, which arrived in macOS 14.2 and weren't reliable before 14.4. eqMac runs on macOS 10.13 or later and Boom 3D on macOS 11. SoundSource 6 needs macOS 15, but its licence also entitles you to legacy SoundSource 5 builds back to 10.13, which Rogue Amoeba doesn't fully support. Our download page shows how to check whether your Mac can take Sonoma.

How can I find measurement-based headphone correction software for Mac?

Look for an app whose headphone corrections come from published measurements and that applies them to all system audio, not one player. Of the six here, EQBase (AutoEQ, 6,033 models), eqMac (AutoEQ, 4,600+ models), Sound Control and SoundSource (AutoEQ-based lists of thousands of models) qualify; Boom 3D's 5,000+ headphone profiles don't say where they come from, and Equaliser has no headphone library. Our guide to headphone correction software for Mac adds Sonarworks SoundID Reference and Realphones and says which apps import AutoEQ files.

Which Mac audio utilities support both Apple silicon and Intel hardware?

Five of the six equalizers here run on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs: EQBase, eqMac, Sound Control, SoundSource and Boom 3D. Equaliser is the exception, Apple silicon only and macOS 15 or later, and among the newer free projects ParaEQ is Apple silicon only too. EQBase ships as one universal app for both kinds of Mac, on macOS 14.4 or later.

Which one should you install?

Every recommendation here has a free way in, so this costs you nothing to settle.

If you want the most capable equalizer and you're on macOS 14.4 or later, install EQBase. The free tier includes the 10-band EQ, all 8,600+ headphone corrections, equal-loudness compensation and one-click recording, with no time limit, which is enough to tell you whether tone was the problem, and Pro adds the parametric, linear-phase, dynamic, convolution and room-measurement tools when you want them. What each tier costs is on the pricing page.

If budget is the hard constraint or your Mac is older than Sonoma, eqMac is free and runs back to macOS 10.13. It's genuinely the right answer for a lot of people, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. If you want per-app curves and per-app routing from a menu, that's Sound Control at $30, or SoundSource at $49 for the fuller control panel. If you want it louder and bigger rather than more accurate, Boom 3D. And on an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 15, Equaliser gives you 64 free parametric bands; our guide to parametric EQ on a Mac compares it with the other parametric options.

EQBase's own numbers in that table are set out in full on the pricing page.

Related: per-app volume control on a Mac, how to make your Mac louder, and room correction on a Mac if the problem is the room rather than the headphones.

Download EQBase free

Compiled August 4, 2026 and re-checked October 1, 2026 from eqmac.app and eqMac's GitHub releases (v1.9.2, September 19, 2026), equaliser.knage.net and its GitHub repository (v1.3.3, May 18, 2026), staticz.com (Sound Control 3.4.0), rogueamoeba.com (SoundSource 6.1.4), and globaldelight.com and the Mac App Store (Boom 3D 2.3.2). None of these developers are affiliated with EQBase or Bold Biscuit. Prices, features and system requirements change; check each developer's site before buying.