Just having upgraded recently to Windows 8, I found that my on-board sound-card has lost its driver’s Equalizer function, and being the owner of some shitty speakers, I really wanted to change how they sounded.

So by Googling around, I found this amazing piece of software: Equalizer APO.

Equalizer APO is, like it’s name says, an APO, a system which was introduced in Windows Vista. Windows already comes with a few APOs by default, and you surely must be familiar with them:

Windows Enhancements

While Equalizer APO is a really awesome piece of software, really does everything I want (and more!), it lacks a configuration GUI. There is no simple UI to have you move some sliders and listen to how your sound adjusts. Equalizer APO recommends using Room EQ, but I found that way too complicated for my needs, so instead, I made my own GUI!

Equalizer APO Config GUI

It has some pretty basic functions – it only writes to a config file (eq.txt in it’s directory), and reads those values back upon re-opening it again.

How to use

By itself it does absolutely nothing! You have to install Equalizer APO first!

After you install Equalizer APO for your soundcard, there’s 2 things you have to do:

1. Edit the default config file ( \Program Files\EqualizerAPO\config\config.txt ) to read something like this:

   Preamp: 0 dB
   Include: eq.txt

   The “eq.txt” file name is hard-coded at the moment, so it will only work with that!

2. Drop the GUI’s .exe in the config directory (again, \Program Files\EqualizerAPO\config\)
3. Start the GUI and play around with the settings. You should notice a change in the sound as soon as you move the sliders.

Download

The file comes in 2 versions, though the 32bit version should work on both 32bit and 64bit without any issues:

• 32 bit
• 64 bit

Source is available upon request. It’s written in AutoIT.

ChangeLog

0.1.0.0 - Initial Release