eqMac vs SotF

eqMac is a system-wide audio equalizer and volume mixer for macOS. The free tier includes basic bass, mids and treble controls and a fixed 10-band equalizer. AutoEQ provides automatic headphone equalization from frequency responses, with support listed for 4,600 headphone presets. Pro adds unlimited customizable bands, a real-time spectrum analyzer, separate left and right channel EQ, AudioUnit hosting, spatial audio and per-application volume mixing. The maker says its driver captures system audio and passes it to the app through a secure memory tunnel for processing; it also says the driver runs in user space rather than the kernel. Downloads are listed for macOS 10.13 or later on Intel and Apple Silicon. The maker lists a free HTTP API for controlling eqMac, and remote control from iOS, iPadOS or Android devices on the same local network as a Pro feature. The free plan has no Pro features. Paid access is listed from $1/mo, while the Pro subscription page does not state a yearly price. Public GitHub code corresponds to version 1.3.2 without Pro features; newer releases are developed on a private fork.

SotF is a free, open-source audio player and optimizer for room and headphone sound, available for Linux, macOS and Windows. It plays FLAC, MP3, AAC, ALAC and Vorbis files, and lists more than 40 audio plugins for equalization, compression, limiting, upmixing, binaural processing, convolution and denoising. Room EQ analyzes room response and calculates correction filters for a plugin chain; using it requires a measurement microphone, its calibration file and connected speakers. Headphone EQ calculates parametric filters targeting the Harman curve for hundreds of measured headphone models. Spinorama EQ provides correction for thousands of speakers without a microphone. SotF can export settings for CamillaDSP, Equalizer APO, EasyEffects, Wavelet, PipeWire and Roon. On macOS, a CoreAudio HAL virtual device can route audio from other apps through a configured plugin chain. The app runs on the user’s machine and says it does not collect user data or listening history. Speaker EQ queries the public Spinorama API for the selected model. SotF is GPL-3.0 licensed and has no subscription.