Makes Listening To Music So Much Better.

If I had to pick the top 10 days of my life, one of them would most certainly be the day I got my first portable, battery powered, transistor radio. It was a Philco and after many years of reliable service, it was finally surgically removed from the side of my head.

Today it’s been replaced with its modern equivalent—an iPad. I can now listen to stations from all ‘round the world anytime, anyplace. Plus, I can do something I could never do with that old radio—listen to my very own music collection on the fly.

Being somewhat of a music purist, I have tried to maintain the highest bit rate possible for my digital music files. However, overtime, especially with the downloads, attempting to maintain "CD quality" has flown out the window. In order to cram as many tunes as possible onto my mobile devices, I have accepted that if 256 kbps is good enough for iCloud, it’s good enough for me. But it really isn’t.

Compressing music files to reduce their size degrades the quality of the audio. You may not notice it because you’ve gotten so used to it, especially if you listen primarily through “ear buds.” But what if you do notice and want to bring some “life” back to all that music you have stored di-di-digitally?

There are a lot of free apps that make all sorts of claims and you may stumble on one that actually works (yea, right), but let me save you some time and suggest you check out “Audio Xciter” DSP Enhanced Music Player from Aphex. It sounds techy, but once you install it on your mobile device, you simply open the Xciter app (instead of iTunes) to listen to your music. All your music and playlists are there just as they were in iTunes and you can even shuffle. There’s a free version of Audio Xciter that allows for 15 minutes of enhanced play, which is just a tease. Seriously, who listens for just 15 minutes a day?

The difference in the sound is simply brilliant—

 

"Enhanced” just doesn't do it justice. Previously, the thought of listening to music from the iPod’s puny little onboard speakers was tantamount to being certifiably looney (no offense intended). Audio Xciter restores lost harmonics and clarity so that even those lilliputian tweeters provide sparkling, highly intelligible sound. It may be my imagination, but it even seems to level out the volume variations between tracks. You can also control the level of Xcitement from the setting tab by from choosing low, medium and (my favorite) high. If you're really up for a good time, choose custom and knock yourself out.

Obviously, you won’t get growling bass out of an iPod speaker, but connect up to a sound system that has some guts and you’ll be amazed what was previously getting buried in the mud. Being a free-appaholic, I’m not on the list of big-time spenders at the app store, and this one costs a whole five bucks (unless you go for the “basic" $3 version). IMHO it’s worth every nickle. Click Here

Watch/Hear a Comparison

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with streaming audio (Internet radio), but I found a solution for that as well and will tell you about it in an upcoming post.