Is there an Equalizer for my sound card on my Mac?

Factual Questions
1

I’m using a 2011 era Mac Mini, running OSX Sierra 10.12.6 .

I’ve always wanted a simple sound tweaking panel for my headsets/ speakers. I can’t find one. System Preferences allows for L/R balance only.

Am I missing something under the hood, or is there a free app I can find that will let me tweak the basics? Either an Equalizer control panel type of thing, or even what my car stereo offers me, which is High / Midrange/ Bass separate level adjusts?

Seems silly that I cannot mess with the outgoing audio within my Mac.

Thoughts?

2

iTunes has one. But if you are not sourcing your audio from there you can’t use it.

The internal audio system - Core Audio - however has the intrinsic capability to provide all you want and more. But Apple don’t provide a simple tool to use it directly. It isn’t hard by all accounts.
Here is one that turned up at the top of a search. eqMac - System Audio Equalizer and App Volume Mixer for macOS

3

I downloaded it. Then went to launch it. It requires a driver, and in order to download the driver it required my Admin password.

Asaaaaand, that’s where I stopped. I’m unwilling to trust unknown software that demands my Admin password. :dubious:

Or any password.

Oh well.

4

On Linux I use PulseAudio, slightly more basic than my favourite equalizer of all which came with a Creative card ( haven’t heard of them for a while, and I was surprised to see they are Singaporese ), but it does the same job and obviously should be compatible with Mac.
Here it is on the MacAppleStore. Looks to be as free as on Linux.

5

I tried running it in the Terminal. It asked for a Password… ?

6

Many installations ask for your password so it has the proper permissions to install. Just type your password, unless you don’t trust the source.

7

Hm, if I tried installing it on Linux as Root user, it would ask for my [ Root ] password.

If I install it on Linux as my normal user, it would not ask for a password. Maybe the same thing is happening here ?

Putting in your Root/Admin password on a terminal does not send that password to the maker or anyone, just to the little elves inside the OS who check what should be installed where.

8

The app I linked to is open source. This means that the entire workings of it is freely available for perusal. Indeed, if you don’t trust the built version you can download the source code, build it yourself, and then install it. (You would need to install the development environment X-Code from Apple, and be familiar with how to build from source however.)

Your caution is commendable, and I would agree that installing something like this with no assurance as to its provenance would be a bad thing. In general, open source, supported projects that have a sizeable user base are going to be trustworthy. I’m sure this one is OK.