PC Equalizer vs SotF

PC Equalizer Pro is Windows software for customizing computer audio output and accessing Equalizer APO features. It offers a 10- or 20-band equalizer across all channels, with controls for Stereo, Mono, Swap, Invert, and Balance. Pan/Expand can widen or narrow the stereo image, while Multi-Delays creates echoes, delay, and reverb with up to 16 taps. Users can select built-in presets or save and delete their own, then assign presets to applications such as Winamp, Windows Media Player, and PotPlayer. The program can detect active audio players and load their assigned presets. It can also launch at startup, minimize to the System Tray, and notify users when an assigned preset changes. Equalizer APO setup is included in the PC Equalizer 2.1 installer; manual installation is suggested if PC Equalizer does not run properly. A free demo requires no license key, and the site lists a lifetime license for 3 PCs at 201700.00 USD once. Pricing is also shown as from $20, and a free trial is offered.

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.