How to EQ your headphones on Mac, system-wide

Spotify has an equalizer. Apple Music has one. Neither of them touches YouTube or the game you are playing. If you want your headphones to sound right everywhere on the Mac, the EQ has to run underneath every app instead of inside one.

There are two ways to do that on macOS. Here is what each one costs you, and what to change first once it is running.

Why the EQ inside one app is not enough

Every app that plays audio has its own path to the speakers. An equalizer inside one app only changes that app. Switch tabs or open a game and you are back to the stock sound. Headphone correction works the same way: a curve you set in your music player does nothing for the browser.

System-wide means the processing sits between the system and your output device, so everything that plays inherits it. There is one exception, on purpose: a live call. While an app is running your microphone and your speakers together, Earwave leaves it out of the EQ, because macOS turns down the voices of audio it sees as coming from someone else. The app rejoins the EQ when the call ends.

The two ways to get system-wide EQ on macOS

A virtual audio driver. Tools like eqMac and Boom 3D install a virtual output device and route your audio through it. This has worked for years. The trade-offs are an installer, a background helper, and a device that has to stay the system output. When a macOS update changes the audio stack, driver-based tools usually need a fix.

The audio taps built into macOS. Since macOS 14.2, an app can capture system audio with a process tap, the same plumbing behind screen recording. No driver, no helper, and the default output device never changes. Earwave uses this route. You grant one audio permission and it processes the sound on the way to the output you chose.

Set it up in Earwave

1. Install and open Earwave. macOS asks once for System Audio Recording. That prompt is the tap Earwave uses to reach the sound your Mac plays. It is not your microphone, and nothing is captured to disk or uploaded.
2. Choose your output. Pick the device you actually listen on. Earwave stores a separate setup per output, so laptop speakers and headphones do not overwrite each other.
3. Choose your headphones if they are measured. Earwave applies a correction built from lab data for that exact model. If your model is not listed, skip this and use the EQ.
4. Switch it on from the window or the menu bar. Everything you play now goes through your settings.

What to change first

Two useful starting points:

• Pick a preset. Each of Earwave's 15 presets is level-matched to Flat, so switching between them changes the tone and not the volume. Start there if you do not want to think about frequencies.
• Or move the shelves by hand. The bass and treble shelves fix the two things most people notice first. Keep the moves small, around 2 to 4 dB, then use the 31-band EQ only for a specific problem.

Watch the level meters while you boost. The limiter stops peaks from clipping, but a curve that lifts everything will still sound flattened.

If your headphones are measured

Correction is the bigger win than a hand-drawn curve. Instead of guessing, you start from a curve that neutralizes the model's known deviations. There are 812 measured models in the catalog, from the Sennheiser HD 650 to the AirPods Max.

That is the whole loop: one permission, one output, one switch. Everything on the Mac inherits it from then on.