How to add sound equalizer on Windows

If you love music, you probably want to enjoy the best possible audio quality. The equalizer plays a key role in your listening experience, but unfortunately Windows doesn’t feature a built-in equalizer. In order to enjoy music, movies, audio from games and more, with a better quality, you can add a default system-wide sound equalizer. This will enable sound equalizer on the direct audio stream so that you can enjoy this option in all the applications that you use on your Windows PC.

There are some things that you need before getting started. First of all, it is crucial that your computer has audio drivers installed and that they are working. You also need a user account that allows you to install programs with admin privileges. You will also need an internet connection. In order to install the system-wide equalizer, we are going to use Equalizer APO in this guide and to control the equalizer presets, a front end will be used. Here are the steps that you can follow to add sound equalizer to Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10.

1. Download Equalizer APO from https://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/ and install it. Keep in mind that during the installation, you will be asked to select the Playback devices that should be supported. The options available are Headphones, Speakers and Digital Audio. You can select all of them if preferred.
2. Once you have selected the playback devices for which the APO should be installed, click OK. After Equalizer APO is installed on your computer, it will be rebooted.
3. After your computer restarts, the next step is to control the Equalizer by a front-end called PC Equalizer – GUI. This can be downloaded from https://sourceforge.net/projects/pc-equalizer/
4. Once PC Equalizer GUI is installed, it will ask permission to write to configuration file. Click Yes to grant this permission.
5. In PC Equalizer, you will be able to change the default Equalizer presets from the drop down menu. The options include Jazz, Classical, Rock, Bass, Party, Soft and noise reduction. This is all you have to do to successfully change the default audio output equalizer in your laptop or desktop computer running Windows.
6. Apart from adjusting the equalizer treble, vocals, you can also change the audio output stream to mono or stereo and adjust highs and lows. The app even allows you to boost sound output. The equalizer enabled sound will be available on all the apps run on your computer.