For macOS 15 and later · Apple silicon and Intel · 14-day trial, no account
A 31-band EQ, correction for 812 headphones, stereo width and room ambience. No driver, no account, one permission.
14-day trial · One purchase when 1.0 ships, price on this page before you pay · No subscription
No driver, no kernel extension: Earwave borrows the audio taps macOS already has. CPU measured window-closed, loud music, MacBook Air (M3), macOS 26: chip, rate and buffer move the number. The zero holds until a peak hits the limiter’s −1 dBFS ceiling; tested on sine + stacked tones and drum-like thumps.
Sound
Fifteen scenes, each level-matched to Flat within half a dB, so louder never fools you into better. Five dots shape the curve, and Tune opens all 31 bands when you want them.
Headphones
Pick your model once. Earwave flattens what the maker added, so every scene sounds as it was tuned. Spotify’s EQ never reached your games; this does.
Not in the list? The EQ, scenes and effects work on anything with a speaker. Browse the 812 models.
Space widens the stereo image while bass stays centred. Ambience adds a little room. Loudness keeps quiet listening full, following your Mac’s volume (ISO 226). Space and Ambience start off, so nothing changes until you reach for them.
Power, scenes and every effect, one click away. The window stays closed until you want it.
No driver and no kernel extension. Earwave uses the audio tap macOS already has.
macOS asks once for System Audio Recording, which is how Earwave reaches the sound your Mac plays so it can tune it. Earwave never uses your microphone, and nothing is saved or sent.
Choose your model if you have one. Each output keeps its own setup and switches by itself.
Music, browser, video and games play through Earwave. Live calls are left alone on purpose, so macOS doesn’t turn the voices down.
Ask for a Mac equalizer and the same three complaints come back: it eats CPU, it crashes, it won’t install on a managed Mac. Earwave was built to stop making you choose.
| What matters | Boom 3D | eqMac | SoundSource | Earwave |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Install | Audio driver + helper | Audio driver + helper | Audio plugin | No driver, one permission |
| Load while playing | We haven’t benchmarked them. eqMac users report ~30% in r/macapps threads. | 5% on our M3 Air, under 1% idle | ||
| EQ depth | 31-band | 10-band, parametric is Pro | 10-band | 31-band |
| Headphone calibration | Yes | Yes, 4,600+ database | Yes | 812 built in, offline |
| Spatial + room | Yes | Pro only | No | Width + ambience included |
| Price | $49.99 one-time (list price, often on sale) | $30/yr, or $40 once for one Mac | $49 one-time | One purchase, price below |
Competitor facts from their pricing pages and docs, checked September 2026. Tell us if anything changed.
Every scene, every effect, all 812 headphone profiles. When the trial ends, Earwave stops processing, settings untouched, no account to cancel.
1.0 pricing isn’t set; it will be on this page before you pay anything. One purchase, no subscription. English, German, Spanish and French.
Something else on your mind? Write to us and a person will answer.
hello@earwave.appBoom 3D is powerful but heavy and tends to break on macOS updates. eqMac has a generous free tier and a long public trail of crashes and CPU spikes; its best features need Pro, at $30 a year or $40 once for one Mac. Earwave does 31-band EQ, headphone calibration, spatial and ambience in one lightweight native app, for one purchase.
Yes. You should know that before you install, not after. Anything that changes the sound of other apps has to capture it first; that is how macOS works, and it is true of every app in this category. What Earwave does not do is keep it. Audio is processed in memory and played straight back: nothing is written to disk, and nothing leaves your Mac. There is no account and no analytics. Headphone search runs offline, and the only network requests Earwave makes are the update check, which asks earwave.app for a small file listing the newest version, and the download itself if you accept an update. Nothing you play or change is sent.
No. Earwave uses the audio taps built into modern macOS, the same plumbing behind screen recording. Nothing is added to the system and no kernel extension is loaded. The uninstaller is a single file, and it also removes the old driver if you were part of the driver beta.
It depends on your Mac, so here is ours rather than a blanket claim: on a MacBook Air (M3) Earwave idles under 1% CPU and reads about 5% while loud music plays. Large ambience, a wide stage and Match my volume all on add well under a point, and quiet passages drop back toward idle on their own. Intel Macs and higher sample rates will read differently. Sliders move click-free: changes glide in instead of jumping, and the audio thread never allocates or frees memory while they do.
The app ships 812 measured profiles and searches them offline, so it is worth looking first. If yours is not among them, everything else still works: the 31-band EQ, spatial and ambience apply to anything with a speaker. Calibration is a bonus round, not the entry fee.
Like every system-wide EQ, Earwave processes the stereo mix the OS hands it. If a track plays in Atmos, use the player’s own output setting for correction. The EQ section still applies to everything stereo.
No, and that is on purpose. While an app is running your microphone and your speakers at once, as a call does, Earwave leaves that app out of the EQ. Otherwise macOS treats the call’s voices as other audio and turns them down. The app rejoins the EQ when the call ends, and music playing alongside it keeps its sound.
Two minutes to set up. One file to remove, and nothing lingers.
Get a license keymacOS 15+ · Apple silicon and Intel · One purchase, no subscription