The 7 Best Windows 10 Sound Equalizers for Better Audio - MUO - MakeUseOf
If you're an audiophile, a heavy gamer, or simply enjoy customizing the sound on Windows 10, you might be looking for a sound equalizer app. An equalizer can adjust the loudness of specific audio frequencies—called bands—to suit both the listener's preferences and the acoustics of the environment.
For example, an equalizer will let you boost the bass when listening to dance music or increase the treble in a room that responds to low-frequency sounds. But which is the best Windows 10 equalizer? Are there any free equalizers for Windows 10? Keep reading to learn more.
1. Equalizer APO
Our first recommendation is Equalizer APO. It's the most powerful, customizable, and full-featured free sound equalizer that you'll find. The app operates as an Audio Processing Object (APO), so if your audio uses APIs like ASIO or WASAPI, it will not work.
Equalizer APO's best features include an unlimited number of filters, multi-channel use, support for 3D surround sound, and very low CPU usage. You can also create multiple profiles (perhaps for your external speakers and your headphones) and hop between them in a flash.
The big drawback is the lack of a graphical user interface (GUI). You need to edit the filters in a TXT file. Thankfully, several third-party GUIs are available to download, and we recommend Peace Equalizer.
Download: Equalizer APO (Free)
2. Equalizer Pro
Equalizer Pro is another popular choice. It's more user-friendly than Equalizer APO thanks to its clean and clutter-free interface.
The app offers a 10-band equalizer. That's not as many as some of the other sound equalizers in this list and way behind professional music equipment which might provide 30 or more. However, it's more than adequate for all but the most dedicated audiophiles.
Equalizer Pro comes with 20 presets, a system-wide bass boost feature, and the ability to save your own equalizer profiles. The app also offers a preamp volume control. It means you can adjust a single band to boost low tones without needing to tweak each band individually.
Unfortunately, Equalizer Pro is not free. You can enjoy a seven-day trial, but thereafter you will need to pay $29.95 for the license.
Download: Equalizer Pro ($29.95, free trial available)
3. Bongiovi DPS
Bongiovi uses Digital Power Station (DPS) technology to improve to sound of your music, games, apps, and videos. It works in real-time to correct and optimize sound and is available for both Windows and Mac.
A subscription to the app costs $4.99/month. For the price, you will get system-wide DPS audio processing, immersive headphone audio, access to the virtual sub-woofer for deep bass, and the ability to create 100s of custom sound profiles with band settings to match your preferences. The app also offers bass, treble, and sound visualization.
Download: Bongiovi DPS ($4.99/month, free trial available)
4. FXSound
The FXSound app is two tools in one. There's the equalizer (and its associated effects) and the real-time audio processing feature.
Firstly, let's look at the equalizer. It comes with 10 bands that go from 110Hz to 15KHz. There are also customizable sliders for fidelity (to reduce the muffled sound in compressed audio), ambiance (to add extra stereo depth), surround sound, dynamic boost (to increase the loudness with increasing the dynamic range), and bass boost. The preset profiles include Rap, Alternative Rock, Dialog Boost, Country, Techno, and countless more.
The real-time processing excels when you're listening to audio on the web. Internet audio is only 16-bit, but FXSound uses a 32-bit processor. The processor automatically adjusts the fidelity, ambiance, and surround sound of the audio, then re-dithers it into 16-bit. This allows the app to improve significantly on the theoretical limits of the web's 16-bit output.
FXSound offers a free version with severely reduced features. For the full experience, you need to pay $1.25/month.
Download: FX Sound (Free, premium version available)
5. Voicemeeter Banana
If you do a lot of work with a microphone—perhaps because you've started your own podcast or upload a lot of videos to YouTube—you should try Voicemeeter Banana.
The app's main feature is the advanced audio mixer. It lets you control your computer's audio for an easier time streaming or recording.
From an equalizer perspective, the mixer lets you adjust audio input as well as output. Therefore, if you're casting your screen via Twitch, speaking to the family on Zoom, or recording a podcast with your friends, you can make up for any microphone deficiencies by making the sound crisper and less distorted. You can play with the equalizer settings in the app's Master Section.
Voicemeeter Banana is donationware. You can pay what you like for the software, and you don't have to pay anything at all.
Download: Voicemeeter Banana (Free)
6. Boom3D
Boom3D is an equalizer app for both Windows 10 and macOS.
The software is primarily designed for people who listen to their computer audio through headphones. It can convert all your audio output into 3D surround sound without any additional hardware or boosters.
It also boasts one of the most advanced equalizers out of all the apps on our list. The equalizer has 31 bands and dozens of presets, both of which combine to provide an immersive listening experience, regardless of the genre of audio you are playing.
Download: Boom3D ($39.99)
7. Equalizer for Chrome Browser
Equalizer for Chrome Browser is slightly different from the other Windows 10 sound equalizers we have covered. Rather than being an EXE file that you download and run on the Windows operating system, this is a Chrome app.
Being a Chrome app has both advantages and disadvantages. On the downside, it will only work with the audio that's being produced from within the Chrome web browser; it cannot change the bands across your entire machine.
However, most people do the majority of their audio listening through Chrome on the desktop—whether that's YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, or something else entirely. The extension will also work across all your devices that run Chrome and won't eat through your system resources.
Download: Equalizer for Chrome Browser (Free)
Customize More Sounds on Windows 10
Using a sound equalizer in Windows 10 is just one part of the battle. There are lots of ways to tweak the operating system's audio output to your liking.
For example, did you know there are places to download custom sound effects for your operating system? They can add a touch of personality to your machine for free, and are really easy to install.
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