Makes Listening To Music So Much Better

Being somewhat of a music purist, when ripping music from CD to digital, I have tried to maintain the highest bit rate possible. However, with so much music now purchased online, I've pretty much given up on that obession. 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 also reduces 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 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 find 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 this on your mobile device, you simply open the 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” is a total understatement. Previously, the thought of listening to music from the iPod’s puny little onboard speaker was tantamount to being certifiably nuts (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

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with streaming audio (Internet radio), but I found a solution for that as well— It's called StreamS Hi-Fi radio and it's a pain to find in the app store - so just click here. It does for iradio what Aphex's Audio Xciter Studio does for iTunes in that it really improves the quality of the listening experience. But it's not the same thing. StreamS works by focusing on the highest quality streams and not through any Digital Signal Processing. So instead of getting 10,000 or more streams of questionable quality—you get 1000 or so streams of the best quality.

Watch as Rev.Bill demonstrates the
Aphex Audio Xciter app

Aphex Video: