SRS Labs announced today the availability of Audio Essentials for Mac, an advanced software suite of high-performance audio processing solutions designed to give any Mac computer the ability to fill a room with powerful, HD-quality sound. Loaded with a complete assortment of fully customizable SRS audio enhancement solutions, SRS Audio Essentials for Mac works seamlessly with the entire Mac audio system, giving users full control of their entire audio experience, regardless of where they source content from.
“When we launched Audio Essentials for PC last year, we received a great deal of interest from the Mac-user community looking for the same type of product that works on Mac OS,” said Allen H. Gharapetian, Senior Vice President of Marketing for SRS Labs, in the press release. “Building upon the experience and success we have seen with the PC version of Audio Essentials, our new Audio Essentials for Mac delivers the same perfect mix of audio enhancement solutions to address the deficiencies faced by consumers dealing with poor quality compressed audio files, as well as the issues generated by the minimal frequency response range of small notebook speakers and headphones. Our audio processing know-how and Mac-specific R&D efforts have culminated in a software solution that drastically improves the audio playback capabilities of Mac computers, allowing sound to be bolder, louder and far more impressive.”
SRS Audio Essentials breathes new life into music, movies, games, podcasts and more. Working in conjunction with the entire Mac audio system, any content played on the Mac, including content streamed and downloaded, will be enhanced with SRS’ patented psychoacoustic technologies to not only deliver an incredibly lifelike, immersive audio experience, but to also compensate for the physical limitations that impact audio performance that are inherent with majority of today’s ultra slim notebook and all-in-one desktop designs. Audio Essentials takes into account multiple variables when processing audio, including the type of content being played, size and number of speakers, style of headphones being used and the content source. It then mixes in the optimal amount of psychoacoustic processing, bass enhancement, sound field expansion and vocal intelligibility solutions for that specific mix. The end result is audio quality at its absolute best, allowing music to be heard just like if it were being performed live, or movies and games feeling more immersive and realistic than ever before.
Available as a limited-feature free trial, users can unlock the software’s full feature set via a one-time paid upgrade.
Audio Essentials (free trial) features:
• Sleek, intuitive UI – Advanced AV receiver look and feel, that is fully resizable to the user’s preference
• Enhanced audio playback for 2-channel speaker systems
• Music Configuration – Tunings specialized for music
• External Speaker Configuration – Output specialized for external speakers
• Internal Speaker Configuration – Expert tunings for internal laptop speakers
• Bass Enhancement – Maximizes bass response capabilities according to speaker size
• Full-function stereo peak meter – graphically displays audio activity for 2-channels
Audio Essentials Complete ($29.99) includes all of the (free) features plus:
• Music Genre Detection – Audio Essentials automatically syncs with iTunes and Windows Media Player to detect the genre of music being played and adjusts the tuning presets accordingly
• Advanced matrix surround sound decoding for surround sound speaker systems
• Virtualized 360 degree surround sound over headphones
• Intelligent volume leveling and volume maximization
• Movie Configuration – Optimizes the playback of movie content
• Game Configuration – Optimizes the playback of video games
• Voice Configuration – Optimizes the intelligibility of the human voice, ideal for podcasts and audio books
• Presets for several popular speaker configurations
• Customizable Graphic EQ with bass, mid-range and treble settings
• Full-function 5.1 peak meter – graphically displays audio activity for 5 channels
Supporting every major Mac OS media player and streaming content service, both versions of Audio Essentials are available now at www.srslabs.com/audioessentials for download. The SRP for the complete version of Audio Essentials is $29.99.
Source: SRS Labs, Inc.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
http://www.srslabs.com/store/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=61
I prefer the system wide dpsplugin from Bongiovi Acoustics, they consider the speaker design and have profiles for almost all Macs and a bunch of third party speakers and headphones. Once activated, the sound is as close to studio quality as you can get it from built in speakers. And they know, that volume is not quality. Used SRS iWOW in the past, but was not so impressed.
“psychoacoustic processing” ??
Look it up.
WOW. I never knew.
Like my granddad use to say up north, “Cool.”
I’ve used SRS iWow for years, and on iPod Touch, all my desktops and laptops. Good reviews from the sound guys both in the studio and on location. The quality is very good and the sound from tiny speakers was amazing.
Same here. I felt it really enhanced the sound from iTunes when I used my external Bose stereo speakers. I liked the way the spatial adjustments sounded. Maybe iWOW wasn’t perfect, but the music sounded far better with it than without it.
Don’t see a Mac version of either the free or paid app on the developer’s website.
“HD-quality sound”?
Is that 720 or 1080?
I won’t listen to anything less than 1080p……
4k man, 4k.
1080p is so last decade.
😀
All reasons to avoid buying or renting compressed audio and video…
Just for the record, “studio quality” means something very different for people who work in studios. Even in a small operation, a pair of audio monitors will cost the same as a pair of Thunderbolt displays.
I keep wondering how long it will be before our devices have so much storage – or we have reliable access to enough cloud storage – that we will no longer require compression. That will be the next, maybe the last, big financial boost for the music industry as everyone upgrades their music collections BACK to CD quality.
I have to point out that the last two versions of SRS iWOW apps have been blatantly buggy and SRS didn’t care. They never offered bug fixes.
IOW: Buyer beware. Wait for the reviews. If SRS got their act together, then great. Otherwise, I’d look elsewhere. I’m currently enjoying the Boom app.
I tried this out and I am impressed. I have good desktop speakers at work (B&W MM-1’s) but usually listen at a low volume during the workday. The combination of equalization and whatever else the SRS app is doing definitely results in being able to hear more frequencies at the relatively low volume. It also does a good job of boosting bass intelligently. Would I want to process the sound this much listening at home in my living room? Probably not. But for the desktop near-field speakers and the volume label based upon office courtesy, SRS Audio Essentials is great so far.