How to Turn Down the Bass on a MacBook
By Julius Vandersteen
While a thumping low beat may be de rigueur when you’re blasting tunes in your car or dancing in a club, when you’re listening to audio files or watching a video on your MacBook, you might find that the bass is too heavy. Free preinstalled applications that play media files on your MacBook have controls that you can adjust until you get the frequencies more to your liking.
iTunes
Launch iTunes, an application that plays MP3 audio files and video podcasts.
Click on “Window,” then choose “Equalizer.” The iTunes equalizer window pops up.
Click the checkbox to turn on the equalizer, then click on the settings pull-down menu. Select “Bass Reducer” from the list. The low-frequency sliders automatically adjust to a lower setting. Drag them even lower to reduce the bass further; the menu listing changes to “Manual” to reflect that you are making a customized setting.
DVD Player
Start up the DVD Player application.
Click on “Window,” then choose “Audio Equalizer.” The DVD player’s equalizer settings window opens.
Click on the checkbox to turn it on, then click on a lower-frequency slider control and drag it down. Repeat this until you have lowered the five sliders on the left sufficiently to turn down the bass to your liking.
QuickTime
Launch QuickTime, Apple’s video player. Click on “QuickTime Player,” then click on “About QuickTime Player” to find out what version you are running. The latest installed version is QuickTime 10, which has fewer settings options than previous releases. Besides volume, there is no audio control in QuickTime 10, so you can’t adjust the bass settings. However, the Snow Leopard install disc comes with an older version, QuickTime 7, for people who want to use more features. You can also download QuickTime 7 for free from Apple (see "Resources").
Launch QuickTime 7, click on “Window” and select “Show A/V Controls.”
Click on the bass slider and drag it to the left to turn down the bass.
GarageBand
Start up GarageBand, Apple’s music-making application, and open an existing audio project or create a new one.
Click on the “Visual EQ” equalizer’s on/off box, located in the settings panel on the right side of the GarageBand window, to activate it. The box turns green to indicate that the equalizer is on.
Click on the equalizer’s pull-down menu and select “Reduce Bass Boom” to turn down the bass playback of your music project.
References
Resources
Writer Bio
Julius Vandersteen has been a freelance writer since 1999. His work has appeared in “The Los Angeles Times,” “Wired” and “S.F. Weekly.” Vandersteen has a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from San Francisco State University.