Boom

Boom is a system-wide audio enhancer for macOS that applies equalisation, virtual surround sound, and volume amplification to every app on your Mac through a single global engine.

What is Boom?

Boom is a Mac audio enhancement utility from Global Delight that intercepts your system's audio output and passes it through a professional-grade equaliser, a 3D surround widener, and a smart volume booster before it reaches your speakers or headphones. Unlike per-app solutions, it works universally — whether you're watching a Netflix stream in Safari, listening to Apple Music, joining a Zoom call, or scrubbing through a Final Cut timeline.

I've had it running on my MacBook Pro for weeks now, and the honest summary is this: MacBooks have competent speakers but a compressed, mid-heavy sound signature that gets fatiguing on long sessions. Boom fixes that without touching a single cable.

What does Boom do best?

Boom earns its keep with three features that genuinely pull their weight: the presets-driven EQ, the 3D surround engine, and the per-app volume mixer.

• Equaliser with genre presets. Out of the box you get presets tuned for genres — bass-heavy, vocal-forward, flat reference — and a fully adjustable parametric band beneath them. I leave mine on a slightly brightened custom curve and forget it exists.
• 3D Surround. This is the feature that surprises people. On headphones especially, the spatial widening is subtle enough to sound natural rather than like a concert-hall gimmick. It makes dialogue in TV shows dramatically clearer.
• Per-app volume mixer. Think of it as a proper system mixer that macOS has never shipped. You can push Spotify to 80 % while pinning Slack notifications at 30 % — all from Boom's menu-bar popover.
• Volume amplification beyond the system ceiling. On content that was mastered quiet — old podcast recordings, indie YouTube channels, foreign-language films — Boom's amplification headroom is the fastest fix.

Where Boom stumbles is in environments that already deliver great audio. If you're working in Logic Pro through studio monitors, Boom's processing layer is noise you don't need — bypass it or just quit it.

How much does Boom cost?

Boom is a paid app available directly from the Global Delight website and through the Mac App Store. There is no ongoing subscription — you pay once and own it, which in a landscape full of audio SaaS tools is increasingly rare and worth mentioning. A free trial is available so you can evaluate it against your own speakers before committing. Pricing has historically been modest for a utility of this depth; check the official site for the current figure since it does go on sale periodically.

Who should use Boom?

The clearest audience is anyone whose primary listening happens through built-in MacBook or iMac speakers, or through generic consumer headphones without their own companion app. If you already own a pair of Sony WH-1000XM-series headphones and use Sony's Headphones Connect app, you have overlapping EQ features there — though Boom still wins on the per-app mixer and the system-wide scope.

Content creators who switch between reference monitoring and casual laptop listening also benefit: Boom lets you save profiles so you can recall a flat setting for mixing and a warm listening preset for playback review, toggling between them from the menu bar.

Remote workers on long video call days will appreciate it most immediately — the voice clarity boost alone justifies the price when you're four hours into back-to-back Zoom sessions.

What are the best Boom alternatives?

The main competitors to keep in mind are Silenz (menu-bar volume control only — much lighter, no EQ), Hear from JoeSoft (a deeper, slightly more technical EQ toolbox aimed at audiophiles), and eqMac (an open-source system equaliser that offers many of the same EQ capabilities for free). For pure volume management, macOS's built-in Option-drag on the volume slider gives finer increments than people realise. None of the free alternatives match Boom's 3D surround engine or the per-app mixer in a single polished package. Boom wins on breadth; eqMac wins on cost.

How does Boom compare to eqMac?

eqMac is free, open-source, and capable — it covers parametric EQ and basic volume adjustments respectably. Boom goes further with the spatial surround processing, the genre preset library, the per-app mixer, and a noticeably more refined UI that sits cleanly in the macOS menu bar. If your sole need is a system EQ and budget is the constraint, eqMac is a legitimate choice. If you want the whole audio control surface in one app, Boom is the better-crafted option.