Ever wish your life could be like Myst or Riven, full of gorgeous scenery and intriguing puzzles? EarSaver takes you one step closer to that. It's not a new virtual reality simulation or a real world puzzle adventure, but rather EarSaver fills a gap 
in the Mac market as an ambionic soundscape player. The purpose of an ambionic soundscape player is to help you relax and focus by playing soothing music that helps prevent outside distractions from affecting your concentration. It can also be used the other way; when there's virtually no sound in a room EarSaver can act as an "audio screensaver."
EarSaver comes with two included albums which feature everything from a running stream with other sounds from nature, to the easing sounds of soft acoustic instruments. EarSaver requires very little CPU power, enabling it to run on systems as low as a 20 MHz 68040, or in the background while other processor-intensive programs are running simultaneously. Thanks to the method of compression that's used, the albums of music, each of which contain a couple hours of music, occupy a scant 1.5 MB of drive space each.
Ambionic sounds are best known for soothing and relaxing the listener, although it varies from person to person. For most, though, EarSaver will be a welcome addition in a working environment that's normally clouded by the whirs of cooling fans and other distracting sounds.
© 1998 The MacNN Review
