Comparisons

The best Mac equalizer apps in 2026

Last checked: August 4, 2026

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 or repository 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.

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+

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; 8,600+ AutoEQ headphone corrections, the largest library on this list; 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.

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 it's bit-perfect (output samples identical to input samples), 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.

Best at: parametric depth, measured correction, and a signal path you can verify.
Weak spot: macOS 14 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+ · open source

If you don't know which of these you want, install eqMac first. It's free, it's Apache-2.0 open source, 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 equalizer with no time limit, and Pro adds a parametric EQ with unlimited bands, a spectrum analyzer, per-app volume, Audio Unit hosting and 4,600+ headphone corrections, at prices below every paid option here.

It's also the safest recommendation for a category where the app installs an audio driver: the source is public, the project is years old, and the user base is large enough that problems surface fast.

Best at: being free, running on old Macs, and being auditable. 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; no headphone profile library.

4. Sound Control: best for per-app EQ

$25 once · macOS 11.4–26 · 14-day 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.

At $25 with support back to macOS 11.4, it's also the cheapest 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: a smaller developer without the long support history of the bigger names.

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 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

$24.99 on the Mac App Store · macOS 11+ · 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 the only option here sold on the Mac App Store, which means no driver-install password prompt for App Store buyers, and one licence covers Windows too.

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. "–" under free tier means trial-only. Equaliser additionally requires Apple silicon. All figures as published on August 4, 2026.

What we left out, and why

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

• Bongiovi DPS. Still downloadable, still recommended by old round-ups, but the developer declared 2.2.7.1 the final Mac version 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.
• 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.

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 or later, install EQBase. The free tier includes the 10-band EQ and all 8,600+ headphone corrections with no time limit, which is enough to tell you whether tone was the problem, and Pro adds the parametric, linear-phase, dynamic and convolution tools when you want them.

If budget is the hard constraint or your Mac is older than Sonoma, eqMac is free, open source 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 $25, 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.

Related: per-app volume control on a Mac and how to make your Mac louder.

Download EQBase free

Compiled August 4, 2026 from eqmac.app, equaliser.knage.net and its GitHub repository (v1.3.3, May 18, 2026), staticz.com (Sound Control 3.3.3), rogueamoeba.com (SoundSource 6.1.1) and globaldelight.com (Boom 3D v2.3.0). None of these developers are affiliated with EQBase or Bold Biscuit. Prices, features and system requirements change; check each developer's site before buying.