My phone’s audio was being held back by a basic equalizer, and a free app removed the limit

My Galaxy S10+ has plenty of useful audio features, but its built-in equalizer’s handful of sliders could only do so much for my music. I could boost the bass or brighten up the vocals, but I wanted more precise control over the sound coming through my AirPods Pro 2. That’s how I ended up installing RootlessJamesDSP, a free Android app with so many audio controls that the stock equalizer looks like it’s barely pulling its weight.

Getting past Android’s audio gatekeeper

Shizuku does the heavy lifting

RootlessJamesDSP is a free, open-source audio app that works without rooting your phone. It grabs the sound from compatible apps and adds processing that goes well beyond Android’s built-in audio effects. The catch is that setup takes a bit more work.

You can download it from the Google Play Store or F-Droid. On Android 11 or newer, the easiest way to set it up without a computer is with Shizuku. You can also use ADB from a PC.

• Install Shizuku and turn on Developer options by tapping Build number seven times under About phone. On Samsung phones, you’ll find it under Software information.
• Open Shizuku and tap Pairing. Then turn on Wireless debugging in Developer options and choose Pair device with pairing code.
• Enter the code in the pairing notification from Shizuku, then go back to Shizuku and tap Start until it says it’s running.
• Open RootlessJamesDSP, choose the Shizuku setup method, approve the permissions it requests, and follow its setup wizard.

When prompted, allow audio capture, play a song in YouTube Music, and make sure processing is turned on. After you restart your phone, you’ll usually just need to restart Shizuku’s wireless service. You won’t have to go through the whole app setup again.

I gave my music a much bigger mixing desk

AutoEQ is the shortcut I’d try first

The Multimodal equalizer gives you 15 different sound sliders and a visual graph where you can drag points around to shape your audio. I bumped up the low end (raising 63Hz by 3.3dB and 100Hz by 3.1dB) while leaving everything else alone. That gave the bass a lot more kick, though the coolest feature was actually hidden under Arbitrary response equalizer > Magnitude response > AutoEQ profiles. Some Android music players already offer powerful equalizers, but RootlessJamesDSP lets me apply these adjustments to compatible streaming apps without switching music players.

AutoEQ uses frequency-response measurements of different headphone models to create presets that bring their sound closer to a target curve. Search for your headphones, choose a matching profile, and load it. My AirPods Pro 2 preset contained 127 adjustment points, far more precise than anything I could dial in with Samsung’s basic sliders.

While playing a song on YouTube Music, I flipped the effect on and off at the exact same volume to compare. To my ears, the adjusted audio sounded noticeably cleaner and punchier. Of course, that comes down to personal taste rather than magically unlocking hidden details in the music. Just make sure you use a profile made for your actual headphones; using an AirPods Pro preset on a completely different pair of earbuds won’t give you the same results.

Bass and space are tempting rabbit holes

RootlessJamesDSP also includes a separate Dynamic bass boost setting. I could hear the low end get noticeably deeper as I turned up the max gain, and it stayed clean up to around 7dB during my test. Pushing it any higher started to make the audio sound blown out and distorted. Start with the lowest boost setting and increase it gradually while replaying the same part of a song. More bass doesn’t automatically mean better bass.

If you’ve already applied an AutoEQ profile, be careful about piling extra bass boosts on top. You can end up pushing the signal into distortion, so start with one effect and adjust the output gain if necessary.

The spatial controls had surprises too. While listening to Stevie Wonder’s As, increasing Soundstage wideness made the percussion crashes easier to distinguish. Convolver applies an impulse response to simulate an acoustic or spatial character. Its built-in CorredHRTF_Surround2 preset helped me pick out different instruments, while Church scattered the music into an unpleasant wash of reverberation.

Crossfeed also changes the stereo presentation by blending some sound between the left and right channels. I noticed more of a difference with its stronger presets, but the Dynamic range compander barely changed anything with my settings. I left it off rather than enabling effects I couldn’t appreciate.

The impressive controls come with house rules

It remembers my earbuds, and its limits

In Settings, turning on Per-device profiles gives each connected speaker or headset its own setup. I tested it by disconnecting and reconnecting my AirPods, and the app brought back their AutoEQ curve on its own. The processing also kept going after I swiped RootlessJamesDSP out of Recent apps. Suspend audio pipeline while idle can pause the processing when nothing’s playing, and the app lets you back up your settings if you’ve built up several profiles.

I did notice somewhat quicker battery drain during listening, although I didn’t benchmark it. That’s one reason to avoid running processing unnecessarily. The app can also conflict with other audio-effects apps, including Wavelet, while added latency can make it less attractive for games or time-sensitive video.

This is an app for people who like to tinker. If all you want is a quick bass boost, Samsung’s equalizer may be plenty. But if you stick to supported music apps and want to tune your headphones more precisely, there’s a lot here to dig into.

Some songs deserve a little tinkering

I doubt I’ll spend every listening session moving frequency points around. Once I’ve found a setup that suits my earbuds, I can leave it running and get back to the music. And when an old favorite reveals an instrument I’d barely noticed before, I don’t mind having an excuse to tinker again.