Product Reviews

Mac OS X lacks a system-wide equalizer, like the one in iTunes, so media playing in other desktop and web-based services such as iPlayer and Adobe Air doesn't always sound as good as possible. Hear opens these opportunities to all of your apps.

The top of the stylish grey window contains a preset selector and boxes to mute sound and toggle Hear's effect. There are plenty of categorised presets, with the first minor update splitting each into versions for headphones and speakers and, naturally, you can save your own settings.

There is plenty to adjust in the 13 tabs, though each has a specific function and contains only a few controls so you aren't overwhelmed. The first three gather fairly regular settings. Beyond them, you need to read the documentation to understand the virtual subwoofer, reverb and other settings. It uses the odd technical term, but it's a big help in steering you away from directionless tinkering. Sadly the undo/redo functionality appeared to be broken; it would not reverse changes made to controls so you may need to save temporary presets along the way.

The General tab offers basic control of bass, DeWoofer, ambience, fidelity and volume, along with a collection of checkboxes to toggle the effects of the other ones. These might have been better permanently located beneath each tab's name, especially when testing complementary settings on separate tabs.

The EQ

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can be shown as a curve or more traditional sliders. It's divided into 10 frequencies by default, though ramping up the resolution only slightly higher gave us poor sound that was almost unrecognisably faint at the maximum of 256 levels.

Finally, the Mixer gives volume controls and the ability to disable digital signal processing on a per-application basis. Hear can also be switched to an iTunes-style mini mode to allow rapid switching to a new preset when you move to another app.

We were happy with iTunes' built-in presets prior to using Hear. After switching to Hear, they began to sound overly warm, even muffled. Though Hear's output was a little light in places, a few minor adjustments raised the bass, to give a more satisfying mix against clear vocals on tracks like Goldfrapp's Happiness and Just Jack's Starz In Their Eyes. The need to sometimes deviate from presets was apparent in DVD Player, where the rooftop brawl in Batman Returns sounded great musically but the punches and kicks lacked convincing impact.

Activity Monitor initially showed CPU activity of about 30%, though this had settled down to less than 10% during a long iTunes session on our PowerBook G4.

The one crucial issue lies with iTunes. Hear doesn't integrate with it on the same level as the built-in equalizer; you can't assign Hear presets to individual tracks. Normally these settings are transferred to iPods as well, and you can still use iTunes' own presets purely for this purpose, but it means contending with one equalizer for the desktop and another for roaming. Less fussy users may give up and select a generalised preset while on the move.

If that's not off-putting, check out the trial version. We found it hard returning to iTunes' equalizer - or not having one at all. Though Hear is affordable, casual users may need to convince themselves first hand. For heavy music listeners, it's a missing piece of the jigsaw and makes a big difference to music, movies and today's media-rich web.