Louder, fuller sound without fiddling with EQ. SoundSource also features “Magic Boost” which does a magical job of, well, boosting audio signals, universally or per app. It even has “Super Volume Keys” which let me have keyboard volume control over devices that normally wouldn’t, like my Scarlett Solo. You can apply all of the various controls (EQ, volume, effects) to the system-wide settings, but I love being able to have separate settings for Spotify and Music, piping them through my Scarlett Solo and connected Rokit5 monitors with 10-band EQ while the rest of my system audio goes through my display speakers. They focused less on making it beautiful and more on condensing a lot of controls into a small space while keeping them useable.
I find the layout of SoundSource superior to Boom. I use Bartender to hide the default volume icon and just use SoundSource instead. It sits in your menubar and gives you per-app control over output device, volume, and even EQ and Audio Unit effects.
SoundSource is Rogue Amoeba’s utility for absolute control over Mac audio. While Boom offers great tools for audio quality, I’ve found SoundSource to be a more ideal tool, and less intrusive to my system overall. I’ve run into some inconsistency, but overall it’s good.īoom also has its own audio player, and has an iOS companion that allows music control on your Mac from your iPhone. The effects are fairly intelligent, boosting loudness and improving EQ without causing distortion. Read on…īoom gives you 3D Surround Sound on any audio channel, improving the sound of everything from laptop speakers and headphones to high quality speaker setups.īoom offers per-app volume control and boost settings. If you have the disposable income to buy outright, it’s a little tougher choice. If you’re a Setapp subscriber it’s an easy choice. It’s $20 to purchase, and also available from Setapp. Boom 3Dīoom has some excellent features for hi-fi audio and audiophile tools. There are two good options here: Boom 3D and SoundSource. Last.fm integration and scrobbling 1 (Spotify scrobbles on its own, but Music doesn’t)īefore I get to playback controllers, I want to talk about volume control and EQ.Minimum playback controller requirements: Per-application settings for output device and volume.There are two areas of control I’m looking for: audio controls, including EQ and per-app audio settings, and improved music playback control, including Last.fm support for Apple Music (and not just to improve my Soundtrack page). So I’ve been on a quest to find new tools to enhance my music listening on macOS. Since it died I’ve gotten along without it, but I definitely miss my Sideshow jacket I’d built for it.
There are also a few open issues with websites that people already want support for.I was a big fan of the Simplify music controller for Mac (and its companion iOS app). If a website you use isn’t yet supported, consider having a go at it and submitting your plugin to the project. This is a great opportunity to make contributions to an open source project that will be noticed and appreciated. BeardedSpice is highly configurable and allows you to bind any keys to ‘previous’, ‘pause/play’, and ‘next’ actions. If you don’t use a keyboard with media keys, fear not. To maintain consistency, the utility also supports popular native media players like Spotify and VLC.
BeardedSpice works by applying scripts developed by the community to supported websites that interact with their javascript controls, so support can indeed break at any time, and adding support for websites is time consuming. It would seem that the ability to pause any media playing should be native functionality for all Macs, but implementing specific javascript hooks for controlling web applications is delicate and messy at the best of times. It will attempt to control the currently focused tab or application, but you can also select the service you want to control from its dropdown menu. Providing this intuitive functionality has been the goal of open source project BeardedSpice since late 2013, and the list of services it supports is huge! It even supports now defunct websites like GrooveShark (yikes, if a contributor is reading this, please removing this!).īeardedSpice lives in your menu bar. Have you ever tried to pause your music with your native media keys only to accidentally start up iTunes and have multiple songs playing at once? Have you ever had the absurd notion that pressing the “skip” button should play the next video in a YouTube playlist? You aren’t alone. BeardedSpice for Mac Lets You Control Any Music Website with Your Media Keys