A couple of months back, I reviewed Boom 2, the successor to the original app. After a couple of months of use, I find it necessary to revisit my conclusions.
Initially, I was totally impressed with what GlobalDelight had done with the second generation of Boom. And ‘sound’-wise I still am.
Since the time I wrote that review, I changed address, forcing me to dismantle my computer setup/audio system. Once reassembled, an issue that presented itself several weeks earlier bothered me that much more now that I was living somewhere I was able to crank my speakers. When you rebuild your system anew, you want everything to perform flawlessly. In reality, that will never come to pass, of course. None-the-less, you can but hope.
First, let’s recap my initial review of Boom 2:
PROS
– I found that Boom 2 did a solid job with my external speakers (even though they were computer speakers, the dynamic range was greatly improved).
– I was particularly impressed with the Fidelity function. I did have to play with the EQ a bit as the boost in volume (and bass) caused my speakers to pop. But this required merely a simple, quick adjustment.
– I wasn’t disappointed in its performance with my MacBook Air’s speakers. I noticed a distinct improvement in clarity and separation.
– Boom 2 definitely improves on the initial release’s sound enhancements.
CONS
– As a single listener, I felt that I would be better served using my Ear Pods or headphones.
– When you set Yosemite’s MenuBar to dark, unless you know it’s there, you don’t notice the button to launch the EQ/control window at the bottom of the pulldown menu.
In general, I was pleased with the improvements to the app’s performance. That is until a serious bug (a/k/a flaw) crept in.
One day I went to toy with the EQ setting when I noticed that the MenuBar icon could not be found. As I have many icons, I assumed that there wasn’t enough room to display it. I tried launching different apps that had fewer pulldown menus. But that didn’t remedy my situation. Not to worry, I would double click the app’s icon in a Finder pane.
Tried that. No luck. I was presented with a dialogue box that informed me that the app was already open. Alright then, we’ll head down to the dock and access it from there.
But the icon was nowhere to be found in the dock.
No matter how many ways I tried to bring up Boom 2’s pane, nothing happened. l headed over to Global Delight’s forums where I was sure someone else had found themselves in the same predicament as myself. There must be an obvious solution that I am overlooking.
Unfortunately, to my dismay, I found that many users were experiencing various bags of hurt. The kicker was that none of the complaints were about the app’s enhanced sound quality. No one was complaining about the performance. Everyone was having problems accessing the controls! Some of the posts went on to say that they had emailed Global Delight for an answer but received no response at all.
The surreal aspect of all this is that from time-to-time the icon would unexpectedly appear. When it did, you had to make sure that you accessed it and made your desired adjustments then and there, as you didn’t know as to when would be the next time that the icon would present itself.
It became a perverse and frustrating electronic version of Whack-A-Mole™.
I decided that after these weeks of wasted time and frustration enough was enough. I had another sound app (that I also liked) on my computer already, so I decided to delete the app. But during installation, Boom 2 intertwined some of its code with some of Apple’s audio code. As a result, I wasn’t able to simply delete Boom 2.
Luckily, I did find the answer to this problem in their forums. All I had to do was download the free trial and open the .dmg file, wherein I was presented with an uninstall app. I launched it, then after it finished up, I was able to delete the app and its accompanying files.
It’s a pity. Boom 2 performed very well. I was happy with the sound I was able to achieve with it. Not quite state of the art. But still, it brought solid aural improvements to my system.
My hope is that Global Delight will rectify this issue, as leaving it run in the background instead having to launch an audio app every time that I want to listen to music or watch a video via my desktop, is annoying (I mean, I have to push a button!).
Until then, you’ll either have to be happy with your initial set-up, pay catch-as-catch-can or use some other audio app.
© 2015 Frank Petrie