iPhone Appidemic: Equalizer

Sections: Appidemic, Features, iDevice Apps, iPad, iPhone, iPhone/iPod touch/iPad, iPod touch

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What is it?

Equalizer is a graphic equalizer through which you can play your music on your iPod, iPhone or iPad. The interesting part with this version is that you have control over the shape of the equalization curve and the ability to select the exact frequency you want to modify.

How does it work?

EqualizerFor the casual user, there are seventeen presets that represent the usual offerings: treble booster, bass booster, jazz, rock, etc. So, if you just want to make your music sound generally better, you’re only a couple of screen taps away.

There are also the usual media player controls for adding playlists, editing playlists, and going into shuffle mode. If you really like to customize your sound, there are some handy features that are easy to use but will give you tons of tone control.

Now that I have the attention of my fellow audiophiles, let’s get to the functionality. The app is not like a rack mount EQ that works in the background, it actually functions as the media player front end. This means you will need to open Equalizer to listen to your music through the graphic EQ. Don’t worry, it’s very easy to use. The program gives you control of seven frequencies—from 25 Hz to 19,145 Hz. Each of the seven dots on the EQ screen is a point you can touch and drag to either accentuate or attenuate the frequency to which it is assigned. The clever parts are the ability to expand the range of influence and to shift the control frequency.


The explanation may be a bit on the audio geek end, but if you’re still reading I’ll assume it’s because you are interested in an EQ, so this should make sense. Each control frequency has an influence factor (labeled Q). The larger the Q value gets (0.1 is the smallest value and 6.0 is the largest value), the more narrow the influence around the control frequency becomes; your equalization curve will look spiky. As the Q factor gets smaller the frequency influence gets broader; your curve gets smoother.

All seven of the frequency control lines will stack to provide an overall equalization effect which is represented by the green line at the top. The next really clever bit is this; you can change the frequency each dot controls. If you don’t happen to like the fourth dot from the left being centered on 1,000 Hz, you can touch and drag it to 900 Hz or 1,300 Hz or anywhere else you want it.

If the touch and drag method isn’t fine enough control for you, simply tap the frequency indicator at the top left of the screen and you can type in the exact frequency you want to assign to the selected dot. You can also tap and type in a value for the dB gain and the Q value to customize your sound.

EqualizerOnce you assign just the right frequencies, you can tap on the toggle to change the dots to up and down control only. Another fun feature is that you can toggle a setting in the tools screen to set the equalizer for both sides or independent left and right side equalization. Once the left side has been set, simply swipe the field to get to the right side controls. When you have dialed in the perfect sound, you can save the preset and e-mail it to your other mobile devices so you don’t have to do all the tinkering again and can get on with listening to your music.

Is it contagious?

Oh, yes. If you consider yourself even a marginal audiophile, then you know the usefulness of a graphic equalizer. With the parameters over which you have control, and the level to which you can control each parameter, audio geeks will be busy for hours customizing their sound and basking in the glory of their inner sound engineer.

As one of the aforementioned audio geeks, here’s a hearty “thanks” to Tibor Horvath and the folks at Audioforge Labs.

Category: Entertainment
Developer: Audioforge
Cost: $2.99
Download: Equalizer

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