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Review: Joesoft Hear for Mac OS X
When Apple Computer first incorporated, Apple Corps, the Beatles' record company, complained, but Apple assured them that they would never get into music. Apple, Inc. is now the largest music retailer in the world, soon to include the Beatles' music in their iTunes store. But how can you get the most out of your music collection? Enter Hear from Joesoft for Apple's Macintosh. Hear offers a complete sound management system to maximize the quality of not only your music, but all of the sound on your Mac. In essence, Hear is a graphic equalizer in the sense that Godzilla is a lizard. Hear adds quality to your Mac's audio beyond the file's quality, adding fidelity, surround sound, and offering adjustments for the locations of the speakers in your home and the distance between them.Even cheap computer speakers can benefit from these enhancements, giving them a much fuller sound that they're normally capable of. Dozens of presents offer a wide variety of settings to start from, after which you can tweak them to your liking and save as a new preset.
While this sounds great for iTunes, Hear works with every application on your Mac. If you're watching video in your browser or QuickTime Player, doing voice chat in iChat, or watching a DVD with DVD Player, Hear will enhance the sound of any of those applications as well. While Hear does exactly what it advertises, it's not a perfect package. An application like this should be able to run transparently as a background application and just offer a menu item to switch presets instead of having to keep switching away from whatever application you're listening to. Even an option to control-click the dock item and choose a preset from there would allow users to remain in the application of choice. Also, while it offers individual volume control for each running application it doesn't allow a separate preset to automatically enhance that application. For example, if I have a music preset for iTunes and want to play a video game while listening to music, I'll want to use one of the video game presets for that game at the same time, but Hear can't use more than one preset at a time. Also, if I'm listening to a podcast in iTunes using one of the podcast presets and then decide to go watch an episode of Speed Racer on Hulu.com, I have to first switch to Hear and change my preset before watching the show. This constant switching to the application just shouldn't be necessary.
I'd also like to see better integration with iTunes to allow for different presets to be set for different songs or podcasts. If you'd like to squeeze some better audio out of your Mac, Hear will definitely enhance your experience. The Virtual Subwoofer may even save you money on new speakers. That said, you have to be something of an audiophile to really justify spending money on this application, given the $50 price tag. If you're not sure, try out the demo, and decide whether it's worth the price.
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Hear greatly improves the
Hear greatly improves the poor Mac (Mini) Sound. I have tested the new stable 1.0.3 version and I love the Superbass and the Maximizer functions.
I listen Music (Mp3) with Headphones (Sennheiser HD 555) and believe me, the difference between Hear and the normal Mac sound is like Day and Night.
The only error I have found: Hear is not recognized by Front Row :-(
hear does not work on leopard with itunes 7.1....
i can see the activity in hear but can't mute or change eq settings....
if i change something theres no effect so can anybody help me ?
I'm having the same problem
Around the same time, I upgraded from an iBook G4 to a MacBook, updated Hear to the latest version, and upgraded iTunes. It seems to be ignoring all apps, not just iTunes. We'll let you know if we find a solution.
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Dale
Tech Talk for Families Cohost
No problem here with iTunes
I also updated iTunes and have no problem with Hear. Maybe it will help to uninstall Hear and not just delete it. If you have uninstalled Hear and reinstalled again and the problem still exist you should send an email to the joesoft support, so they can help you.
Some suggestions
Hello,
David from Joesoft here.
Because of the way that Hear works you should restart your computer after installation as this is a needed step as part of the installation process. When your machine boots back up you should be all set. If you have any problems after a restart, please give our support team a call at 925-426-6306 from 7AM to 5PM Monday to Friday PST. We're aware of the incompatibility with Front Row and we're currently looking into it.
David Holt
Product Quality Lead
Joesoft / Prosoft Engineering
Thanks for Overview
Hear greatly improves audio quality of movies and music throughout all Mac OS X applications. Hear offers a wide array of settings that are quick and easy to find, which will greatly improve the sound quality of music, movies and games.
Hear doing nothing :(
Hi,
I have a weird issue with Hear...
When I open it, it does nothing (literally).
Tried to open it on an intel Mac, and it opens but doesn't shows the Hear Screen (still can access the menu from Hear, showing the registration option, etc, but for example, if I enter anything on that field, it does nothing... cancel buttons, register buttons... nothing works).
And the Hear window never appears.
On other hand, tried to install it on a PPC Powerbook and works flawlessy...
Is there any known error on Intel macs, or what's happening?
Thanks!
Front row
Hi, I'm considering buying Hear to my HTPC setup but I'd like to know if the incompatibility with Front Row is solved
Thanks,
Simon Raveh
Please contact our Technical Support department
Hi there,
We would like to ask you to contact our Technical Support department so that we may find out why Hear is not running on your system.
Our support phone number is 925-426-6306, and the email address is: support@prosofteng.com
We can be contacted between 7AM and 5PM Monday through Friday, and we will be glad to help you out.
Best Regards,
David Holt
Product Quality Lead
Prosoft Engineering
Post uninstall issues?
Hear looks almost like a perfect application for me. I would like to try it and perhaps purchase it shortly after. However, i have read few comments on other sites that when Hear was uninstalled the computer sounded very poorly even worse than with the default factory setting. Has anyone found this to be a problem?
Thank you,
Greg