One simple app can make music and video sound a lot better on your Mac

Some music apps let you enhance the way your music sounds from your phone by way of an equalizer.

But it's a different story on desktop.

This is because I use the Mac version of Spotify, which doesn't have an equalizer. With an equalizer, you can adjust the bass, mids, and treble levels to your liking, and many have preset settings designed around specific genres, like Rock, Hip-Hop, or Classical.

You may have been using the equalizer in iTunes, which also works with Apple Music, but the desktop versions of certain services like Spotify and Tidal don't have a built-in equalizers.

With an app called Boom 2 Mac, you can add equalization to all the sound coming out of your Mac, including music from Spotify, Tidal, and even video content from YouTube, as well as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. It makes anything that makes sound on your Mac come out a lot better.

Before we go on, you should know that Boom 2 costs $9.99, but there's a seven-day free trial so you can decide if you think it's worth it.

Go to Boom 2's website to download and install the free trial. Do not go through the Mac App Store, as you won't find the free trial there.

Once you've installed and opened Boom 2, it'll register which Mac computer you have and calibrate the sound according to its findings. Just let it do its thing, and you'll eventually see this screen:

From this screen, you can select preset profiles for different genres by clicking where it says "My MacBook Pro" towards the top right of the Boom 2 window.

I find myself using the Rock setting more than any other, as it offers the best balance of bass, mids, and treble for any genre of music for my personal taste. But check out the profiles for yourself to see what works best for you.

If you want, you can mess around with the Ambience and Fidelity effects by enabling "Effects" towards the bottom left of the Boom 2 window. Choose either Ambience or Fidelity, and adjust the intensity of the effect.

Ambience adds a "live performance" effect that sounds especially good with clean and subtler instrument-based music, like classical and jazz. It adds a 3D spatial effect that gives the sense that instruments are more spread out, almost like you're at a real concert.

Fidelity is meant to sharpen your music so it sounds clearer, but I just found that it generally slightly boosts your equalization settings.

Quick tip: If you also use iTunes, just be sure to turn off the equalizer so you don't double equalize your music by going to Window > Equalizer and making sure the little box on the top left of the equalizer window is unchecked.

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