PISSNAROUND  apparently breaks in Snow Leopard  
(Version 2.1)

JHT69  I recently downloaded the trial version of AstoundStereo on a friendÂ’s recommendation. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to use. Hear was just plain confusing as I felt that it should have come with an audio engineering class to be able to make adjustments; and iWow failed to "WOW" me.

What surprised me most is that although I was impressed by the improved stereo imaging in my little desktop speakers, I was blown away at how much better my 5.1 system (running 5 channel stereo mode) sounded with the AstoundStereo enabled. I figured it would be a vast improvement over my little speakers but seriously impressed with the sound out of my big speakers. Admittedly, IÂ’m a bit of an audiophile geek;o)

Another nice aspect of the quality of the processed tunes is that it "wakes up" many artifacts that are buried in lower fidelity audio files. Although you may have to play around with the "more/less" slider to find the right sound for you, there are now new sounds coming out of very familiar music that just makes those "old tunes" sound fresh again.

Best of all, I can run the AstoundStereo processed tunes through Airtunes to all my audio zones via Airfoil (Rogue Amoeba's software) to my Airport Express and control it all with my iPhone. Technology is WONDERFUL!

The only thing that was a bit annoying was the trial pop-up "buy now" notices. I've come to grow to accept this minor nuisance for trial software. There's always a trade-off for free stuff. But that is now a thing of the past since I bought my copy last night for a sale price of 20 bucks. No more pop-ups & hello fidelity!  
(Version 1.2)

TAHOME  I just bought this after a recommendation from a friend of mine and I must say I am totally blown away by the sound of it. In addition to my hifi speakers down in the basement I have a pair of Cube speakers on my desk (yes, the ones that came with the Mac Cube in 2003(?)) and this makes them sound extremely wide, crisp and clear and they are now able to reproduce frequencies that I never would have thought possible given their size. I have tried Hear, Volume Logic and iWOW and had nothing but problems with them. Volume Logic doesn't work with iTunes 7 and 8, so I can't use it. Hear wasn't effective enough for my taste, introduced some strange volume changes and required too much messing around with the various parameters until it sounded about right (to my ears anyway). Same goes for iWOW which in addition to sounding crappy on my speakers occasionally comes up insisting on being a demo version (even though I have bought and paid good $$ for this copy!! WTF??). Also, if an app comes with too many settings it always feels to me like the developer is hiding the fact that he didn't find a good setting that works with all music behind a s##tload of parameters, and no matter how long I tweaked iWOW and Hear they never really sounded right. Not so with AstoundStereo. There's not much to tweak here, it simply works. I had occasional sound glitches (no kernel panics) after putting the machine to sleep (which is why I am giving it 4 out of 5 on stability) but IMO this is a minor issue since turning it off and back on always fixed the problem, and it affects my MacbookPro only anyway. All in all, this gets top marks from me. Maximum sound, minimum hassle - you can really feel the instruments playing all around you. And I like the fact that it has one big slider, too. True quality doesn't need 20 parameters - if this doesn't work for you you don't waste 2 months tweaking something that doesn't sound right to begin with. As far as I am concerned, this is awesome!!!  
(Version 1.2)

PISSNAROUND  Just downloaded this. I have both Hear and SRS Wow installed. So far with minimal listening, this is every bit as good as either. perhaps better. 10.5.6 Leopard, Cambridge Soundworks Speakers. Might be a little hot on the high frequencies.  
(Version 1.2)

JHT69  Just downloaded the v.2.0 update. Sounds even better than before primarily via the new features. I dig the speaker mode although I'll have to do some more extensive testing on my home system this weekend.

I have some recordings that would push a little distortion when played loud and with the more/less slider on Max setting. That was resolved easily enough by decreasing the slider position to the less position. However, That does not seem to be an issue now that the have added a "PreAmp" feature. This acts like adjustable gain to reduce the audio wave form and keep it in a non-distorted state even when the more/less slider is set to max and the volume is up to a concert-like level.

I also really like the "On/Off" mode. Now I can turn the Expander off when running other software programs that need all the CPU juice I can spare. I was a bit concerned about this before since the constant ON process would eat up about 20% of a single core. Obviously this is no longer an issue for me. Plus I can now enable or disable the Expander from the menu bar icon...this is a shortcut that was definitely needed.

Well done! They seem to have addressed the several of features I wanted the most. Now if they can just make a version for my iPhone, I'll be in iPod heaven!  
(Version 2.0)

HOLYPOLY  A " four dimensional audio experience"...?

Well done, Einstein  
(Version 2.0)

DANA SUTTON  I've been running this as a demo on my MacPro for several days without encountering any stability problems. Maybe that's exclusively an iMac issue? This pretty much works as advertised, my only concern is that pretty obviously at least part of the way this works its magic is by tweaking equalization and, at least for my taste, given the kind of music I listen to (classical) and my particular loudspeakers, the sound is excessively bright unless I throttle its intensity slider all the way down to Minimum, thereby losing a lot of the benefits of its other sound-improving routines. So I wish there were some way of introducing my own equalization profile so I could run it at any intensity I wanted while reining in the treble. Another point: potential users should be aware of this item from the document that accompanies the download: "If you use Apple iTunes, turn off iTunes Sound Enhancer. From within the iTunes Preferences, select the Playback category. Uncheck the Sound Enhancer option." I don't understand why they say this, I use it with iTunes with no problem, but your results might vary.  
(Version 1.2)

KILLER KLOWN KAR  This is running on my Mini media Mac. Since it only plays movies and mp3's no issues. On my iMac which is used far more for various activities it started getting kernal panics for the first time ever. I uninstalled this and they all went away.

Probably best if only used on Mac not doing a whole heck of a lot. Does sound great though...   
(Version 1.2)

O5220803  WOW! Works like a charm with IT9 and SL! This what VL became!  
(Version 2.1.2)

DJEFIS  I must correct some things written in the precedent comment.

The Technical Support has contacted me and they has resolved me every problems related to the registration on my Mac Pro.

That was the first time that I incountered some problems with Astound.

I have not understood well probably some particular ones on the Legal Information.

It is everything ok now and they have been very professional with me.

The PluogIn?

I had already told in my previous comment that it is the Best . . .  
(Version 2.1)