How to Make Everything Louder on a Mac
Sometimes "full blast" isn't loud enough. Maybe the stuff you're trying to hear was recorded at a low volume, maybe you're listening in a noisy environment, maybe you don't feel like turning up your hearing aids just for one little YouTube video. Maybe Apple should put better speakers in their Macs. Whatever the reason, sometimes you turn your Mac up full blast and you still want it louder. A nifty little program called Boom is just what you need.Boom is easy to get, and easy to install and use. You can download Boom right here. Get the demo version for free and if you like it, pay $3.99 (on sale!) and own it. Boom is an application so drag it to your Applications folder and open it from there with a double-click. Then, click the "Install" button, give it a minute, and "boom" you're done.
UPDATE: Sorry to say, no longer on sale. Now it's back to $6.99 but don't worry about that, it's still worth it. As long as you're buying, you can score some points with your humble correspondent (me) if you buy Zoom from the Mac App Store using my affiliate link.
After installing, look for the Boom icon in your menubar. When you click it, you'll get a volume slider representing the amount of boost that Boom's providing.
The bottom of the Boom menu gives access to Boom's preferences, but by default they're set the way they ought to be, so you don't have to bother if you don't want to. There's a nice equalizer for those who like to tweak their sound but you can leave that alone too.
You are probably wondering how they do it. So am I. Probably a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) function (of course) but who cares, it works! Give it a try for yourself.
Tom N. wins the coffee cup for inspiring this blog post. Tom couldn't make the Sharknado movie trailer loud enough to be realistic (yes I know that is sort of funny), even with his Mac at full volume, and he turned to me for help. The answer was Boom.
