SOUND: Set Individual Volume and EQ for Every Mac App

A Pain Point macOS Has Ignored for Years

macOS audio control has always been stuck at the most basic level — a single global volume slider, no system-level equalizer, and certainly no per-app audio adjustments. This means when you're listening to Spotify, running a video call, and streaming a browser video in the background, all sounds share the same output settings. Want to turn up your meeting app, lower the background music, or route one app to a Bluetooth speaker? The system simply can't do it natively.

The recently launched SOUND on Product Hunt is aimed squarely at this long-standing gap. It ranked #11 on its debut day, earning 94 upvotes and 13 comments. Built by developer Fekry Aiad, it's positioned in the Mac productivity and music tools category.

What SOUND Actually Solves

SOUND's core capabilities come down to three things, all accessible directly from the menu bar:

Per-App 8-Band Equalizer

Different apps have very different audio needs. Podcasts and audiobooks benefit from vocal clarity, music players need a balance of lows and highs, and video conferencing apps benefit from boosted midrange speech. SOUND gives each actively playing app its own 8-band EQ, letting you tailor the sound for each app individually — no need to constantly tweak a single global setting.

An 8-band EQ divides the audible frequency range (roughly 20Hz–20kHz) into 8 bands, each of which can be independently boosted or cut. Compared to a simple bass/mid/treble control, 8 bands offer much finer frequency shaping. For example, you can cut the "muddy" 200–400Hz range while boosting the 3–5kHz presence for vocal clarity, without affecting other frequencies. Professional audio software often offers 31-band or parametric EQs — 8 bands strikes a reasonable balance between precision and usability for everyday use.

Independent Volume Control

This is the most straightforward feature. You can make one app louder or quieter than others — for instance, pushing music down to background level while keeping a call or video at full clarity. Compared to juggling individual in-app volume sliders, managing everything from a unified menu bar interface is far more efficient.

Independent Output Device Routing

SOUND lets you route different apps to different output devices. In theory, you could send music to your desktop speakers and calls to your headphones — true audio splitting that, under native macOS, typically requires complex third-party virtual audio driver setups to achieve.

No Virtual Audio Driver, No Account — Privacy as a Feature

SOUND highlights two things in particular: no virtual audio driver installation, and no account registration required.

These might seem minor, but they're actually significant. Many Mac audio enhancement tools rely on installing virtual audio devices, which often require elevated system permissions, can introduce compatibility issues, and frequently break after system updates — a persistent source of user complaints. SOUND sidesteps this approach entirely, and promises that all audio data stays on-device and is never uploaded to the cloud. For users who care about privacy and system stability, this is a clear differentiator.

SOUND is also currently free and supports 10 languages — impressive breadth for a menu bar utility.

A Virtual Audio Driver is a software-emulated audio device that the operating system treats as a real sound card. Traditional per-app audio control tools (such as Loopback, BlackHole, and Soundflower) work by inserting such a "virtual sound card" into the system to intercept, mix, or split audio streams from different apps. The trade-off is that these solutions require loading kernel extensions (kext) or system extensions — historically a major source of compatibility issues after macOS security updates. Apple has been progressively restricting kext permissions since macOS Catalina, causing several audio tools to break. SOUND claims to avoid this path entirely, which — if accurate — means lower system risk and better cross-version stability. However, the specific macOS native APIs it uses under the hood (such as CoreAudio tap or AudioServerPlugin) have not been publicly disclosed.

Who Needs This Most

SOUND's target user profile is fairly clear from its feature set:

• Heavy multitaskers: People who regularly run multiple audio-producing apps and need granular control over each.
• Content creators and audiophiles: Those who want to apply targeted EQ settings to different apps for better sound quality.
• Multi-device users: Anyone who needs to route different apps to headphones, speakers, or other outputs simultaneously.
• Privacy-conscious and system-hygiene users: Those who don't want to install virtual drivers or create yet another account.

For everyday users, SOUND fills an obvious gap in macOS. For power users, it consolidates what previously required stitching together multiple tools into a single menu bar experience.

A Few Open Questions

As a product that just debuted on Product Hunt, publicly available information is still limited. A few things worth watching: how SOUND actually captures and routes per-app audio without a virtual driver, and whether its underlying approach is stable across all macOS versions; whether the free model is sustainable long-term and whether paid features will eventually be introduced; and the real-world impact on system resources and audio latency.

That said, the product philosophy is sound (no pun intended) — it addresses a real and widespread need, and delivers a clean solution with the combination of "no driver, no account, local processing." For users frustrated by macOS's single-volume limitation, it's at the very least worth downloading and trying.