iWoW iTunes SRS Plug-in

I played around with this plug-in for a while today. It was one of MacUpdate’s deals of the day and at $12.00 (40% off the regular $19.95) it seemed like a good deal

I ended up playing with the settings for most every song I listened to on my Dual 2.0 G5 with M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B’s running digital in through an M-Audio 2496 Super DAC (This is my mixing and mastering speaker set up and for that work I really like the flat response and the in-your-face sound field the SP-5s create.) I was trying to get the perfect settings. What worked for one song did not, necessarily, work for another. It seemed like I needed to tweak it for every song and especially if it was a change in Genre, say Metal to Jazz. Bummer because my playlists are pretty eclectic with the musical style varying a lot from song to song. Too much overhead for me. I think that if you listen to similar musical styles a lot you may get by with a standard setting like the preset “Rock” or other Genre. With the SRS on at my mix volume it was usually too much processing and I liked the clean sound straight through the SP-5s. It always sounds like the high-end of the frequency spectrum is getting muddied or something. At low volume, the type I like to work with in the background when I am doing web coding or writing, I liked the added presence of iWoW doing just a touch of work. It seems to open up the sound stage some.

Unfortunately, on my G5 running 10.4.8 there is a bug or conflict that does not let me see the iWoW window after I close it. Couldn’t do anything to get it back. It does not show up in the “Window” menu like it is supposed to. I reinstalled it and as long as I don’t shut the window using the “x” it seems to be working even after I quit iTunes and restart. Weird.

On my MacBook Pro I tried it with both the stock speakers, where I noticed the biggest improvement in sound quality and fidelity, and with my Grado S-80 headphones where it was a waste. The Grados are so good that any processing just muddied up the sound. The stock speakers, however, are so poor normally that some of iWoW’s voodoo actually helped quite a bit, especially being able to move the apparent crossover frequency with the “Speaker Size” control.

So, because of the bug on the G5 and the way I normally listen to music I guess I’ll just leave it installed on the MacBook Pro for those times when I have to use the built in speakers. That seemed, to me, the biggest bang for the buck anyway.

You can find a Mac or PC version at http://www.srslabs.com/consumerhome500.asp

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