Android has always been a little funny about equalizers. The OS has supported equalizers for a while. However, it’s still not a great experience. Some music apps have them, and some devices have native ones in the settings that work system-wide. However, many apps like YouTube Music don’t, and it’s weird to get it all to work all the time. Plus, with the Bluetooth revolution, many of the Bluetooth headphone companion apps adjust the EQ of the headset itself and bypass Android entirely. Still, you do have some options should you want to try to EQ your device yourself. Here are the best equalizer apps for Android.
The best equalizer apps for Android
Equalizer and Bass Booster
Price: Free
Equalizer and Bass Booster is fairly self-explanatory. It has an equalizer and a bass booster. To be more specific, it includes a five-band equalizer, ten equalizer presets, and a bass booster. The developers state that it should work with most music players, video players, and FM radio. The only major issue is that the app will close sometimes when left in the background, and sometimes it doesn’t always work. It’s one of the simpler equalizer apps and it should work on most devices.
Equalizer FX
Price: Free / $1.99
Equalizer FX is one of the cleaner, more modern equalizer apps. It is exceptionally easy to use. It comes with a five-band equalizer, bass boost, virtualization, and even a loudness enhancer (Android 4.4 and up only). Like most, it comes with a widget along with presets to get you started. The developer has also stated that this should work with most music players, including Spotify, Google Play Music, Pandora, and others. The paid version is the same as the free version. It simply removes advertising.
Music Volume EQ
Price: Free
Music Volume EQ and Bass Booster is one of the most popular equalizer apps out there. Thankfully, it actually works pretty well. It includes the standard five band EQ along with nine EQ presets. Along with that, you’ll get volume control, bass boosting, loudness enhancement, and more. The developers also boast that it should work well with most video and audio players. All in all, it’s a positive experience for a software equalizer. It obviously won’t work with everything and you get more presets than others on this list, but this works okay. It’s also entirely free as far as we can tell.
neutralizer
Price: Free / $5.00
Neutralizer is one of the most unique equalizer apps that we’ve seen. Instead of giving you an EQ to adjust yourself, it has one that adjusts itself based on what you like. During set up, you’ll be asked to listen to sounds at various frequencies. You turn them up or down based on how well you hear them. When you’re done, the app auto-generates a unique equalizer preset just for you based on the speakers or headphones you’re wearing.
The free version lets you create one preset while the pro version lets you create as many as you need. If you try this, we recommend re-doing the audio test with each new set of speakers or headphones you plug in as they will produce different results. Unfortunately, this app hasn’t seen an update since 2016 so your mileage may vary.
Poweramp Equalizer
Price: Free / $1.99
Poweramp Equalizer is one of the newest equalizers on the list. The app includes a lot of stuff other equalizers don’t, including a customizable number of bands, bass and treble tone controls, and more. It’s relatively easy to use once you learn the various settings. It should also work with most Bluetooth and wired headphones along with most streaming music apps and local music players. It’s newer so it benefits from its modern approach. This is one of the ones you should try first.
SoundID is a unique premise. It tries to make your headphones sound like a different pair of headphones. You can do a lot with digital equalization, and this app proves it. It works with most of the popular streaming and local music players. You can mess around with the sound and make fine adjustments to make everything how you want. It’s a bit more complex of an app than most other equalizers, but it’s not terrible once you get the hang of it. This app has improved dramatically since it first launched, so the developers are also doing a good job of squashing bugs.
Wavelets
Price: Free / $5.49
Wavelet is the newest equalizer app on the list, comparatively speaking. It came out in 2020 and it’s not half bad. The app includes a 9-band equalizer along with a bunch of various presets if you want to keep it simple. Additionally, it includes the ability to auto-EQ to over 2,400 different pairs of headphones. The AutoEQ function measures and compensates for the Harman curve for optimal sound. This sounds like an advertisement, right? In any case, this one is actually really good and among the best you can get without root access.
Viper4Android (root only)
Price: Free
Viper4Android is, by far, the best of the equalizer apps. Unfortunately, it’s only for root users. It’s been under development for years. It’s installed to the system partition so it has far more control than any of the normal equalizer apps on Google Play. The app also includes a ten band EQ, tons of presets and settings, effects, and more. It’s a pain in the rear end to install sometimes. However, it’s totally worth it once you do. Viper4Android should be compatible with most rooted devices and many custom ROMs add it by default. It’s exceptionally good and we hope that one day, Google gives us something like this in Android proper.
Many music player apps
Price: Free / Varies
Many music player apps have equalizers built-in. Some notable examples include BlackPlayer, Poweramp, and Neutron Player. These apps have effective equalizers that do actually change the sound. However, they only work within the app. Thus, those of you that stream music can’t use the equalizers in these apps for your streaming music. On the other hand, those with private collections can use these all day. Music player apps vary in price and functionality, but it’s almost difficult to find a bad one these days.
See also: The best music player apps for Android
On-device equalizers
Price: free
Many Android OEMs have EQs in the sound section of the settings. Some devices do it better than others, but about half of them let you adjust device-wide audio through an EQ. Usually it’s something close to a 10-band EQ along with some added stuff like Dolby Atmos or EQ presets. LG devices with Quad DACs have a 10-band EQ and a separate set of presets you can also apply. Sony’s more modern devices with headphone jacks also have some extras. Finally, most Bluetooth headsets have some configurable sound profiles that you should also check out. It really depends on what you want, but Samsung and LG tend to do it a little bit better than the others.
If we missed any great equalizer apps, tell us about them in the comments below. You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists.
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