Apple Music EQ
for macOS

Does Apple Music have an EQ on macOS?

Technically yes, practically no. The Apple Music app on macOS exposes the same EQ presets the iOS Music app uses — Bass Booster, Vocal Booster, Rock, Classical, and a dozen others. They are shelf-and-peak presets with fixed curves. You cannot change a frequency, you cannot change a gain, you cannot change a Q. You cannot save a profile per headphone. You cannot import anything from AutoEQ or oratory1990.

For anyone using headphones with a measured frequency response — which is most enthusiasts — the built-in Apple Music EQ on macOS is not usable. You need a real parametric EQ.

Why generic system EQ apps fall short

eqMac, SoundSource, and similar tools EQ all system audio — Apple Music, Safari, Final Cut, system sounds, the lot. That's the wrong abstraction for headphone listening. You want EQ on your music, not on the sound of a notification.

More importantly, generic system EQ apps are not Apple Music-aware. They don't know what sample rate the current track is. They can't match the device rate to the track. They don't deliver bit-perfect playback even when EQ is bypassed. Some require a virtual audio driver or kernel extension that other apps then have to route through.

An EQ app for Apple Music should understand Apple Music.

MusEQ: an Apple Music-aware EQ

• → Full parametric EQ. Peak, low shelf and high shelf. Frequency from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Gain ±20 dB. Q from 0.1 to 12. Live, easy to read frequency response graph.
• → 32-bit float processing. Biquad filter coefficients computed in 64-bit, applied sample-by-sample in 32-bit float. Maximum precision, no audible artifacts.
• → Headphone-organized profiles. Multiple named profiles per headphone, grouped by model. Switch in one click from the menu bar. Different EQ for different pairs without re-loading anything.
• → A/B comparison with level matching. Listen to profile A versus profile B with automatic loudness compensation so volume differences don't bias your judgment. Switch between them gaplessly.
• → Bit-perfect when EQ is off. Disable EQ on a profile and MusEQ passes Apple Music through untouched — at the matched sample rate, in exclusive mode.

One-click profile import

MusEQ reads every widely used headphone EQ format directly:

• • ParametricEQ .txt from AutoEQ and Squig.link
• • oratory1990 PDF — drag the original PDF in, MusEQ extracts the preset
• • OPRA — the open community directory of headphone EQ profiles, browsable from inside the app
• • Plain-text storage in ~/Documents/MusEQ/ — version, sync, or share the way you like

Tuning by ear

For headphones without published measurements — or for personal preference adjustments — MusEQ supports tuning by ear with the web tools you already use. Switch the audio source to System Audio, run a frequency-sweep generator or trainer like Owliophile in the browser, and MusEQ applies your EQ to the test audio in real time. Switch back to Apple Music when you're done.