iWow's interface is a lot easier to use than iTunes' equalizer. And it's a looker.

Discerning listeners tend to cringe at the audio quality of music from the iTunes Store, which uses lossy compression on its music files. They're faster to download, but at the cost of sound quality. Just when audio snobs thought the iTunes Store was off-limits to their sensitive ears, in swoops SRS's iWow Plug-in for Mac to improve the sound quality of your digital music.

iWow works as an iTunes plug-in, so you can't use it for listening to songs in GarageBand, QuickTime Player, or any other software. The straightforward interface makes it easy to tweak the sound based on the music that's playing. You adjust settings using slider bars, and if you're not sure what a setting does, hovering your cursor over it for a second or two results in a pop-up box that will tell you in refreshing detail.

We tested iWow with rock, rap, pop, classical, and a bunch of songs we didn't quite know how to categorize. In all cases, the music sounded better with iWow. The plug-in adds more body - highs and lows sound more complete, and midrange tones become richer. iWow even improved the sound of podcasts, although in some cases background static was more noticeable. But we don't blame iWow; there are a lot of amateur podcasters out there. The plug-in has six presets - Blues, Classical, Country, Hip-Hop, Jazz, and Rock - and you can also create custom settings. But you can't save them, unfortunately. And if you have several different genres in a playlist, iWow can't automatically pick up on that and switch to the right preset.

The bottom line. You won't pay a lot to increase your enjoyment of music purchased from the iTunes Store.

COMPANY: SRS
CONTACT: www.srslabs.com
PRICE: $19.99
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2 or later, iTunes 6 or later
Affordable. Improves iTunes media sound quality. Universal binary.
Can't save custom settings. Can't sense the music genre and switch its settings appropriately.