Customer Reviews

Hear By Joesoft

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I recently downloaded Joe Soft's software, Hear. And. I have to tell you all, that after my "day job," I sit in front of my computer for hours, writing. Sure, I know, Hear "electronically" processes the music streaming down from the hard drive, what else do people expect in this age of digital, technology? We have to face it, analog technology, as beautifully warm as it is, is a thing, of the past, and, believe me, the fastest processors slowly are approximating the clarity and high warmth of analog, without the "sizzle" trailing behind the open sound. Anyway. Hear is an amazing product which (still nascent, experimenting) is one of the first to play with the sound of compressed or uncompressed, digitally magical sound. To cut pragmatically, things short, purchase it. You won't be unsatisfied. It is the only program available today which heightens the sound of any application streaming through your (now) poor sounding Mac. Just, buy it. I Promise you, you won't be sorry...especially after you learn how to unlock the sound potential it has inside, all the available settings you can muster to play with manually and soon arriving to "perfection" inside your ears becoming highly sensitive, to bad sound!

For such an inexpensive app the results are wonderful. Even without fiddling with the many individual controls, the presets for diifferent types of sound and music so incredibly enhanced my iTunes collection played through the cheapest of external speakers that they sounded as though they had cost ten times as much. I've only just bought it and look forward to finding out what else it can do. One of the best apps I ever bought for the Mac.

After installing "HEAR" on my iMAC with JBL speakers and trying the program for a few days, I uninstalled it. I couldn't hear any difference and the effects did not affect my computer. There was no change in any music played on the iMAC but there was a distracting echo added to the audio portions of any videos that I watched. I have been using computers since the Apple II back in 1979 and don't consider this program to be particularly user-friendly either. I do like the artwork on the box, however. I suggest that Joesoft keep their graphics artist but fire their software designer.

Hear enables you to tweak the audio coming out of your Mac in more ways than you would ever think possible, unless you are an audio engineer. I think for the most part, the Presets (and there are many) aren't very good - but you can tweak to your heart's content, and apparently make as many customer presets as you want. If you like to mess around with this kind of stuff, you will be in heaven. And since there seems to be nothing else like it - it is in a class by itself.

This statement on their website is a flat-out lie: "Improve the sound from iTunes and make your music, movies, games or any other Mac OS X application sound amazing." Hear does NOT work with the current versions of Quicktime or Safari. Joesoft is aware of this, yet makes no effort to correct the false information; they just say in their email response that they are "looking into it." If all you need it for is iTunes, it works fine. Don't expect the audio from Hulu or Netflix, for example, to be improved though.

I typically use PC's so I was disappointed that there was such little audio control built in to my MacBook unibody. After some serious searching, I came upon Hear. This is the ultimate audio control application for the Mac. It provides the only way I know of controlling levels when using the optical output on my MacBook. I had a little trouble with installation (it kept asking me to register), but a quick call to Prosoft customer support resolved my problems quickly. Michael, the Prosoft engineer who helped me, quickly identified the problem and offered a solution. It's a great piece of software that I'd pay for again.