The Good: Clean and user-friendly interface, plenty of functionality to play with and does a great job of boosting audio quality.
The Bad: $14.99 price tag may seem expensive for some, although it’s definitely worth it. Also would have been nice to have a hotkey to bring up main app window.
The Bottom Line: There’s no better way to summarise this app other than, it’s the equaliser that everybody running Mac OS X should have.
Despite the admirable design qualities you’ll find on Apple products, audio has never been one of their strong points. From my iPhone 6 and iPad Mini to my Retina MacBook Pro, the sound quality is always a bit “meh”.
That’s where Boom 2 comes in; this $14.99 Mac app by Global Delight takes your Mac’s tinny speakers and fine-tunes them for a much improved audio experience.
A Beautiful & Intuitive Interface
Boom has a clean and user-friendly interface.
As with the original version of Boom, this one is also primarily based in your menu bar. There, you can control Boom 2’s dedicated volume control slider, and clicking on a small icon at the bottom of that slider opens up the app’s primary app window where you’ll find all of Boom 2’s clever settings.
Boom 2’s main window is mostly made up of a flat icon design to keep things minimalistic, and the entire interface feels intuitive and friendly to use. The equaliser for instance has three symbols beneath it — drums to represent low-end frequencies, a microphone for mids, and cymbals for the highs — and when you click each icon the equaliser automatically highlights the appropriate frequencies on the equaliser graphic, making it easier to adjust the settings.
Audio The Way You Like It
Choose between a range of preset equaliser settings, or create one especially for your Mac’s speakers.
OS X gives you a single volume bar to play with, and even when you pump the speakers at full blast they just aren’t loud enough. One of Boom 2’s primary functions is to increase your Mac’s overall volume with a secondary volume bar that bumps the maximum volume level up a few notches.
My favourite part of using Boom 2 has to be the equaliser settings. Since speakers are likely to vary from computer to computer, the app allows you to choose between a range of standard presets like pop, jazz and so on — but it also creates a special equaliser setting tailored to your machine’s speakers, ultimately producing clearer and more accurate sound. To top that off, audiophiles can click on the ‘Advanced’ option to go beyond the standard 10-band equaliser and get more granular control over their sound quality.
Boom also offers two new audio effects: Ambience and Fidelity. Ambience is optimised for audio experiences like a live performance, allowing you to “hear notes from every single angle and corner”. Fidelity on the other hand is optimised for listening to “crisp and sharp tones”, and overall it’s the one I’ve preferred.
Boom allows you to set hotkeys for the app’s controls.
Boom 2 also gives you the option to set hotkeys for things like changing equaliser presets, and increasing or decreasing volume. I would have liked the ability to actually open the app’s main window with a shortcut (rather than having to go to my menu bar every time), but having hotkeys for the app’s functionality is still a nice feature to have.
Performance
Boom 2’s effect extended just beyond my Mac’s internal speakers. Although I haven’t really found the need for the app’s volume boosting feature, I’ve loved the way every headphone and Bluetooth speaker I’ve connected to my Mac sounds significantly better with Boom’s equaliser.
Boom 2: Verdict
Simply put, Boom 2 is the equaliser that Apple should have put into OS X themselves. It’s a fantastic app that will change the way you listen to music and watch videos on your Mac, but hey, don’t take my word for it. With a free, 7 day trial available on their website, you really have nothing to lose — go and try it now!
GET THE TRIAL HERE