Hear
By Ted Bade
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Joesoft Engineering
Hear version 1
http://joesoft.com/
$50 USD
Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later; Universal binary; 256 MB RAM.
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Strengths:
Wonderful sound enhancements, lots of presets for just about any situation,
easy to use.
Weaknesses:
Limited documentation, sometimes doesnŐt work with USB headphones.
For a demo of this product: http://joesoft.com/downloads
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Introduction
Hear is am amazing program that enhances the audio output of
your Mac. It provides a variety of audio enhancements such as adding space,
brightness, enhancing bass, and much more. You will be amazed at how your Mac
sounds after installing Hear.
Hear does its magic by routing audio output through itself
before it arrives at your MacŐs audio output connections. The user can also
control the volume output of any running application or turn HearŐs functions
off for individual applications as well as for all applications.
Think about it, your Macintosh interacts with you in two
major ways, through sight and through sound. Yet the Mac tends to be lackluster
when it comes to audio. There are many reasons for wanting to enhance audio.
You might want better sounds from Mp3s, or use small speakers or lackluster
headphones, or even use a less then wonderful amplifier. Hear can help with all
these things.
MP3s are compressed by removing parts of the music. While
most of this loss is outside of our normal hearing range, many people notice a
lack of brilliance in the higher frequency ranges. Hear can boost these areas
to make the higher frequency sounds more brilliant and therefore sound more
natural. Most smaller speakers or headphones lack the ability to reproduce
lower frequency sounds well. Hear can enhance the lower frequency sounds to
make your smaller speakers sound better. It even has a function to add a sub-woofer
like effect to a two-speaker system.
What I learned
One of the major problems with all stereo reproduction is
that, while we have two ears (like the two microphones that record in stereo),
but our brains process the sound we hear in a variety of ways. It sums up the
input to our ears directly into the ear channel as well as through our head and
other parts of our body, it also takes into account the timing differences of a
particular sound as heard by each ear. Thus we ŇhearÓ spacial differences and
can locate a sound sources. Stereo recorders cannot take into account all these
variations, so the sound they produce sounds less real. A lot of work has been
done over the past several years on how to make a stereo recording sound more
real, making the audio sound more three dimensional. Hear makes use of some of
these electronic tricks to make the sound more natural. It has functions that
can add audio 3D effects, ambience, space to the sounds stage and more.
Another issue with audio in general is our ears. Some of us
hear higher or lower frequencies better. Some of us have hearing loss in
certain ranges of frequencies. Using Hear, you can enhance those areas where
your ears donŐt function the best, adding or removing power to those areas, to
balance the audio making it sound the best it can for you.
Hear controls affect music in the following areas: It has an
audio equalizer which can be changed from 10 to 96 ranges of sound, the 3D area
makes the sound move out of the speakers using several different controls,
Ambience adds reverb effects, making your listening room sound bigger, an ŇFXÓ
effect that controls the sounds in a variety of ways, a maximizer areas that
gives you controls of the low and high contours, a ŇBrainwave SynthesizerÓ that
effects the sound in yet another way, specific to the listener and their
equipment, a Space effect that creates a virtual sounding space around the
listener, a Fidelity control that restores sound often damaged in the recording
process, A speaker section that lets the user adjust for a variety of speaker
situations, and a subwoofer section that allows the user to control or even
simulate a sub woofer. This program gives you a lot of control of the audio you
listen to.
HearŐs interface is simple. But you might need to find an
audiophile (or audio engineerŐs) manual to understand what some of the
functions do. Information provided by the program and the PDF manual is basic.
The good news is you donŐt necessarily need to understand any of this to enjoy
the features of the program. You could simply change each control and listen to
the effect to understand what it does. Better yet, try a bunch of the included
preset configurations.
Hear comes with a lot of preset configurations. Some are
generic that work well in many situations and some are specific to a particular
function. The standard presets are organized into sets such as basic (for
general use). Effects (creates an effect space like a closet, large room, or subway
tunnel), Games (for a variety of games types), Movie and TV (for various
entertainment types like sports, comedy, action, etc), Music (for a large
variety of music genres), and finally speech (voice recordings). I found that I
could only sample a few of the plethora of presets provided with the CD and
there is a folder with Ňadditional presetsÓ as well!
Experiment with the presets, listen to what happens, and
settle on a preset that handles your particular needs. All of what Hear
actually does can be heard (☺). When I first ran Hear I tried a number of
the presets and used the programŐs ability to turn itŐs effects on and off to
hear the difference. I was really amazed. For most music, adding 3D and space
effects makes the music fill the room, giving it more depth and making it sound
more realistic. Ambience and base effects add depth and detail to the music.
The overall effect is that the audio seems a lot richer and much much more
pleasant to hear!
I should admit that I do have a nicer audio system connected
to my Mac via the fiber optic audio channel. My receiver can do surround sound
and has a powered sub-woofer along with five good quality speakers attached to
it. Which means I get pretty good audio normally. When I installed Hear I first
noticed the wonderful effects of adding space and high end brilliance back to
the audio. My Ňstereo onlyÓ iTunes music now seems to float in the air around
my Mac rather then distinctly from only the front speakers.
The 3D and other space effects are even more noticeable when
playing a game (such as World of Warcraft) which provides many different
environmental sounds, along with ambient sounds, and music. With Hear turned on
this audio is nicer, clearer or at least less muddy, and seem to fill the space
a lot more. Obviously, adding space to environmental audio makes it sound a
whole lot more realistic. Truthfully, while playing with Hear turned on, I
heard a few effects that I donŐt believe I had heard before! For instance, the
clinking of armor as I ran and the sound of raindrops were noticeable even with
the other sounds of the game filling the space, not to mention the music coming
from iTunes playlists I listen to while playing.
I also tried Hear with a Mac Mini that has only a two
speaker system. There is no way these two speakers could sound as nice as a
better audio system. However, using Hear significantly improved the audio
quality. With a little playing around I was able to make an audio file that is
heavy on the bass end change from the normal flat and powerless sound to a more
powerful and rich sound. with clear bass frequencies. As a matter of fact, it
was so nice that I donŐt think I would consider listening to audio on that
machine any more without Hear!
Although using hear is very easy there were a few issues I
had with it. The first is not really an issue with the program per se but with using the program. The setup that
might sound good with one type of audio file might not be the best for another.
Say you have an older recording and tweak Hear to make it sound pretty good.
Later, when you play a different and better recorded file, these effects might
add distortion or make the audio sound worse then it should.
Another situation involves moving from one type of music or
audio activity to another. LetŐs say you turn on the preset that sounds great
with Jazz, but then switch from Jazz to Electronica (I am a fan of both and
tend to switch back and forth from day to day), The Jazz preset doesnŐt sound
that great with the Electronic music, (Nor does the Electronic Preset sound
that good with the Jazz). Not to mention, what should I do when listening to
either type of music while playing a game? (My wish list for this program
includes being able to set Hear presets within iTunes! So if a particular audio
piece needs a specific preset, it would automatically play with it.)
My solution was to find a generic preset that enhances the
general audio, without over doing any particular area. There is one section of
presets that are designed for the audio system rather then what type of audio
is being listened to. This is a great place to start with a generic preset. In
the Defaults set of presets you will find settings like ŇBasic surround, reduce
midrange, and clean touch. Try them out and see which sounds the best with your
particular equipment and activities. Of course, you can tweak the individual
controls and create a preset of your own. It might take a bit of time and
experimenting, but it will work the best for your situation.
Hear also includes a feature that allows one to turn itŐs
effects off for one or more applications. I found this function very useful for
a couple of reasons. First of all, to resolve the game and music dilemma, I
could choose to turn the effects off for one or the other. Since the quality of
the music I listen to is pretty nice, and adding space to the game is a cooler
effect, I could turn off the effects for iTunes (which I use to listen to music
when playing). So I enjoy the 3D and space effects in the game and donŐt do
anything to the music. The other solution was to stick with a general enhancer
that makes the music sound better in general. All music could use a little
space, a but more bass response, and a little brilliance on the high end. This
works well for games as well as other audio activities.
I did run into one issue when using Hear. I had started an
Electronic Arts game just before installing Hear. Suddenly, the game crashed on
start up. I discovered that the Hear features were causing the game to crash.
Rather then uninstalling Hear, I used the Hear interface to turn itŐs features
off for that game. This allows it to run okay.
I also had some issues with my surround sound headset
(surround headphones and microphone) Hear didnŐt seem to be able to effect the
audio going to these headphones. As we come to the deadline, I was in contact
with the company on this and they are looking into it.
You can also get carried away when trying HearŐs features.
Turning this and that on or off, before you know it you have completely messed
up the sound! Luckily, it is easy to simply restore to a standard preset and go
back to experimenting!
Conclusion
Hear is a great application. It enhances audio in several
different ways which put life and brilliance back into audio. It can also do a
lot to make poor speakers or a lousy amplifier sound better. Most importantly,
it expands the music, making it sound more natural by filling your listening
space, which is light-years ahead of standard stereo. I am truly convinced that
Hear is well worth the money. Turn it on and see just how wonderful your audio
can be!
