Earshape
Earshape
Shape and normalize the loudness of your local music, podcasts, and voice memos with a saved EQ profile for every pair of headphones.
Coming soon to theApp Store
Earshape is a multiband equalizer and loudness shaper for the audio your iPhone lets an app touch: local music files, downloaded podcasts, voice memos, and the audio of imported videos. A parametric EQ plus a makeup-gain stage with a peak limiter makes quiet or bass-shy recordings sound fuller and perceptibly louder — without hard clipping and without pretending to break the system's output ceiling.
The differentiator is per-headphone profiles. Earshape detects your current output — a specific pair of earbuds, wired headphones, a Bluetooth speaker, or the built-in speaker — and binds a saved EQ and loudness preset to it. Switch devices, and the right tuning recalls automatically.
Earshape is upfront about what iOS allows: no app can process or boost the audio of streaming apps, and no app can push the hardware past its maximum output. What an EQ can honestly do is rebalance frequencies and normalize quiet material toward that ceiling — and that is exactly what Earshape does.
Drag per-band controls to shape bass, mids, and treble for the audio you play in the app.
A makeup-gain stage raises perceived loudness of quiet recordings while a peak limiter stops hard clipping.
Each detected output — earbuds, wired, Bluetooth, speaker — remembers its own EQ and loudness curve and recalls it on connect.
Podcast and voice, bass boost, flat, and a quiet-room night preset — each savable per headphone.
A relative dB readout shows how hard you're driving the signal, with a gentle cue when sustained gain runs hot.
Local files, downloaded podcasts, voice memos, imported video audio, and a live mic mode — stated clearly before you start.
Open a local track, a downloaded podcast episode, a voice memo, or the audio from an imported video.
Pull the EQ bands to taste or start from a preset, and add loudness gain until the meter sits where you want it.
Earshape binds the tuning to the output device that's currently connected — one profile per pair.
Next time those earbuds connect, their profile loads automatically. Different headphones, different saved shape.
No — the hardware output ceiling is fixed by Apple, and no app can exceed it. What an app can honestly do is make audio sound louder: many recordings sit well below the ceiling, and equalization plus makeup gain brings them up toward it. Earshape does exactly this, with a peak limiter so the louder result doesn't distort.
No. iOS does not let one app process or amplify another app's audio, so any booster promising to make your streaming music louder cannot deliver it. Earshape states this before you start and focuses on what genuinely works: local files, downloaded podcasts, voice memos, and imported video audio played inside the app.
Inexpensive or small-driver earbuds often reproduce weak bass and uneven mids, which reads as quiet and thin even at full volume. An EQ can compensate by lifting the weak bands, and gain normalization raises the overall level of quiet recordings. Earshape saves that correction as a profile for those specific earbuds.
Podcasts are often mastered quieter than music, so there is real headroom to recover. Play the downloaded episode in an app with a voice-focused EQ and makeup gain, which lifts the level without letting peaks distort. Earshape's Podcast preset boosts speech clarity and loudness in one tap.
A parametric EQ lets you cut or boost specific frequency bands — deep bass around 80 Hz, presence around 4 kHz, air above 10 kHz — rather than only picking a genre preset. It is the precise way to correct headphones or a recording. Earshape gives you draggable per-band controls plus simple presets when you don't want to think about it.
In Earshape, yes — this is the core feature. The app detects the connected output route and stores a separate EQ and loudness curve for each one, so your bass-shy earbuds and your studio headphones each keep their own correction and swap automatically when you switch.
Yes. The EQ processing happens on the phone before the audio is sent over Bluetooth, so it applies to any output — wireless earbuds, a Bluetooth speaker, wired headphones, or the built-in speaker. Earshape treats each of these as its own device with its own saved profile.
Voice memos are usually recorded far below full level, and the voice sits in a narrow frequency band. Boosting that band and applying makeup gain makes them dramatically clearer. Earshape opens voice memos directly and its voice preset does both in one tap.
When you add gain, the loudest moments of the audio can exceed the maximum level and clip, which sounds like crackling distortion. A limiter catches those peaks and holds them just under the ceiling, so the average level rises while the peaks stay clean. Earshape's loudness stage always runs through its limiter.
Sustained loud listening at any volume can contribute to hearing fatigue, whatever the source. Earshape shows a live level readout and a gentle cue when you have been driving high gain for a while — informational only, not medical advice — so the level you choose is a visible, deliberate choice.
Earshape includes a live mic mode that plays amplified ambient sound into your connected headphones, with the same EQ shaping applied. It is a convenience listening feature, not a hearing aid, and it works best with wired or low-latency earbuds.
Every headphone has its own frequency response — one pair exaggerates bass, another sharpens treble — so the same track genuinely sounds different on each. The fix is a per-device correction curve rather than one global EQ. That per-headphone memory is exactly what Earshape is built around.
Tune each pair of headphones once — and hear your own audio the way it should sound.
Coming soon to theApp Store