SoundSource includes several powerful audio effects to help you improve the sound of your audio. We've worked to make these built-in effects simple to use, so anyone can get great-sounding audio.

Magic Boost

When you activate Magic Boost, you'll get richer, fuller sound from any source. Magic Boost listens for quiet passages of audio, and gives them a healthy boost, while leaving louder audio untouched. Whatever your audio source, Magic Boost will give you tremendous volume, all with a single click. It's perfect for maxing out small speakers like those found on Mac laptops.

Volume Overdrive

While Magic Boost will increase the level of quiet portions of audio, Volume Overdrive can assist in getting extra volume out of your speakers. It will amplify audio from individual applications up to 400%, making it possible to hear your audio even in loud environments.

Volume Overdrive improves the quality of overdriven audio, with limiting to prevent digital distortion. This works very well to amplify quiet audio, without blowing out sound that's already loud. This does mean that when you're listening to louder audio, you may not notice much boost when using Volume Overdrive.

Note that Volume Overdrive is not available on the system's default output. It must be applied to individual apps, within SoundSource's Applications section.

Comparing Magic Boost and Volume Overdrive

Magic Boost and Volume Overdrive can both increase the volume of audio, but they do so in different ways.

Magic Boost works to keep all audio at the same level, by raising the volume of quiet portions while leaving louder parts unaffected. This complex adjustment is often useful, but flattening the difference in levels can occasionally produce audio which sounds strange to the ear.

Volume Overdrive allows you to boost volume levels past 100%, maxing out the volume while maintaining the relative difference between quiet and loud portions. This is a simpler adjustment which attempts to get more out of your speakers for all audio.

10-Band Lagutin Equalizer

For almost two decades, Rogue Amoeba's renowned 10-band Lagutin equalizer has helped users get better sound.

From the EQ's inline view, you can select from almost two dozen presets to adjustment any time you play audio.

For more control, click to reveal the full popover. From here, you can configure the EQ manually.

At the bottom of each Audio Unit, you'll see a section called Presets. After configuring an Audio Unit, you can save your custom settings for later use. For full details, see the Effects Overview page's Presets section.

Once you've configured it, you can even save your own custom equalizer settings. Adjust the equalizer to your liking, then select Save Preset As… from the Presets menu.

For full details on Presets, see the Effects Overview page's Presets section.

Balance

With Balance, you can adjust relative levels of audio playback between the left and right stereo channels.

Balance is available exclusively on the default output device.

Headphone Equalizer

Headphone EQ provides automatic calibrated equalization for headphones, powered by the well-known AutoEq project. Use it when playing audio to headphones to make them sound their very best.

Headphone Equalizer is available exclusively on the default output device. Add the effect, then browse by name for the profile for your specific headphones.

Profiles are available for thousands of different headphone models. Select the appropriate model to apply audio adjustment tuned precisely to get the best out of your exact headphones.

Using custom-created EQ Profiles

With SoundSource 5.3 and higher, it's possible to manually load custom EQ profiles into Headphone EQ. For full details, see this article.

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