TrainYourEars costs EUR 49 once. SoundGym costs $142 a year. That is the whole money question, and for most producers it settles it: if you plan to train for more than a year, the pay-once app is cheaper by a wide margin.
But the more interesting difference is method. TrainYourEars trains you on your own music and makes you undo the EQ move you just heard. SoundGym gives you far more breadth — compression, stereo, reverb, delay, level — plus a leaderboard that keeps people coming back. Both prices and details below were checked August 2026.
The arithmetic, plainly
SoundGym passes TrainYourEars’ one-time price inside the first year, and never stops. TrainYourEars EQ Edition 2 is EUR 49 for a lifetime licence, reduced from EUR 89. SoundGym is $24.95 a month, $142 a year, or $495 for lifetime access.
We are not going to pretend a euro figure and a dollar figure convert cleanly. Take each as the number that site charges.
| SoundGym | TrainYourEars EQ Edition 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $24.95/mo, $142/yr, $495 lifetime | EUR 49 once (was EUR 89), lifetime licence |
| Format | Browser, no iOS or Android app | macOS and Windows standalone only — no VST, AU or AAX |
| Trains | EQ, compression, level, panning, stereo, reverb, delay, distortion | EQ only |
| Source audio | Their material | Your own tracks |
| Answer method | Games, mostly multiple choice and matching | Guess mode and Correct mode |
| Competitive layer | Leaderboards, workouts, streaks | None |
| Free version | Yes, 3 games per workout | No |
Three years of SoundGym on the annual plan is $426. Three years of TrainYourEars is EUR 49. If money is the deciding factor, the article can stop here.
What does TrainYourEars actually do differently?
It makes you fix the EQ instead of naming it. That is the part worth paying attention to.
There are two modes. Guess mode is the familiar drill: something is boosted or cut, you say what. Correct mode flips it — the app applies an EQ move and you have to reverse it, moving the band back until the sound is right again. That is not a quiz answer. That is the actual motor task you perform in a mix, hand on a knob, listening for the moment it stops being wrong.
The second difference is the material. TrainYourEars loads your own music. You are not learning to hear 400 Hz on someone’s demo loop, you are learning to hear it on the kind of tracks you make and the monitors you make them on. That transfers straight into your session, which is the thing most ear trainers are worst at.
Multiple choice teaches you to recognise a set of options. Undoing a move teaches you to make one. Those are different skills and only one of them is what you do on a Tuesday afternoon with a mix due.
Where TrainYourEars falls short
It is EQ only, standalone only, and the site looks parked. Take those one at a time, because two of them matter and one might not.
EQ only is the real limit. Compression is where most self-taught producers are weakest — ratio, attack, whether it is even compressed — and TrainYourEars does not touch it, nor stereo width, nor reverb, nor phase. SoundGym covers all of that.
Standalone only is the practical annoyance. There is no VST, AU or AAX build, so you cannot drop it on a channel in your DAW and train on the track you have open. You train in a separate app, then go back to work.
And the site footer still reads 2020. That is not proof of anything — a finished tool can sit still and keep working — but you should know you are buying software that is not visibly under active development before you spend the EUR 49.
Where SoundGym is genuinely better
Breadth and the pull to come back. SoundGym has 18 games listed by name — Sonar Beast, EQ Mirror, Compressionist, Stereohead, Balance Memory, EQ Knight, Peak Master, Dr. Compressor, DB King, Filter Expert, Kit Cut, PanGirl, Bass Detective, Delay Control, Distorted Reality, Reverb Wizard, EQ Cheetah, Feedback Eliminator. Their shop page says 21; 18 are listed. That is the gap as it stands, and we are not going to guess at the other three.
That spread covers most of what a mix engineer needs to hear, not just EQ. And the daily workout, the leaderboard and the streak do a real job: they get people to train on days they would otherwise skip. Do not underrate that. The best trainer is the one you actually open.
SoundGym also claims 500,000+ members, which is their number, not a measured one. There is a free tier: free accounts “get the same 3 games on each workout” per their help pages, while Pro gets the full catalogue and 5 games per workout.
The honest criticism, from SoundGym’s own public feedback thread, is that “SoundGym games are about measurement not training”. Sound On Sound made a related point in 2021: because settings are randomly generated, difficulty is uneven — an EQ move is easier to hear on a busy synth than on a sparse drum loop. Its reviewer also noted reverb results swing between headphones and speakers.
There is no native mobile app either; their help page says there is no iOS or Android application and it runs in a mobile browser.
The free desktop option that overlaps both
EQ Academy from Mastering The Mix is free, and it overlaps most of what you would pay either of them for on the EQ side. It is a desktop app for macOS 13.3+ (Apple Silicon native) and Windows 10/11, released 15 July 2025.
It has 100 levels across 10 sections covering frequency, gain, Q width and mid/side. Levels are randomly generated, there are monthly leaderboards, a Challenge Builder unlocks at level 20, and from level 30 you can import your own songs — which is the TrainYourEars trick, for nothing.
What it does not do is compression, stereo imaging or reverb. So the honest map is: EQ Academy free covers the EQ ground, SoundGym covers the rest for money, and TrainYourEars covers EQ deeper and more physically for a single payment.
If you want the whole field rather than this one matchup, we keep a running list of SoundGym alternatives, and there is a separate roundup of free ear training tools for producers if the budget is zero.
Which should you buy?
Buy TrainYourEars if EQ is your weak spot and you hate subscriptions. One payment, your own music, and the Correct mode drill is closer to real mixing than anything in a multiple-choice game.
Pay for SoundGym if you need the breadth and you know the competitive layer is what keeps you consistent. Compression and stereo perception are worth real money to a mixer, and SoundGym is the widest coverage of the two.
Try both free options first, though. That is the boring advice and it is still right. EQ Academy costs nothing, SoundGym’s free tier gives you 3 games a workout, and our own Monosounds Ear Training is free with no paid tier at all — full disclosure, we make that one, so judge it on the same terms as everything else here.
What ours does, so you can compare like for like: browser-based on phone or desktop, 500 levels across 10 chapters, first 10 with no account. 54 exercise generators in 6 answer formats — multiple choice, a slider you match by ear, quiz questions, ABX, ranking three clips, and a “fix it” mode with two knobs where the right values make the audio identical to the reference. That last format is the same idea as TrainYourEars’ Correct mode, applied to compression and saturation and reverb as well as EQ. The audio comes from our own sample packs, including real stems and full mixes, and there are hints when you miss that tell you what that frequency range sounds like.
Its limits: it is a game, not a curriculum, there is no video teaching, and being browser-only it has no offline mode. If your question is really about the sibling comparison instead, we also wrote up SoundGym vs ToneGym, which is the same company selling a different skill.
Get the training into the mix
None of this counts until you repeat the move on a real track. Ten minutes of drills, then open a session and sweep a boost until you find the ugly resonance, cut it, and check whether the mix agrees with you.
Practise on material you did not make, too, so you are not just hearing what you expect. Our free Serum 2 presets give you sounds to mangle, and the Serum 2 bundles include stems and finished mixes if you want to practise on complete material rather than single sounds.
Trainers measure the ear. The session builds it.
FAQ
Is TrainYourEars cheaper than SoundGym?
Yes, over any period longer than a few months. TrainYourEars EQ Edition 2 is EUR 49 once for a lifetime licence, while SoundGym is $142 a year or $24.95 a month. SoundGym’s lifetime tier is $495. Checked August 2026.
Does TrainYourEars work as a plugin in my DAW?
No. TrainYourEars is a standalone application for macOS and Windows only. There is no VST, AU or AAX version, so you cannot load it on a channel and train against the track you are working on. You run it as a separate app.
What is Correct mode in TrainYourEars?
Correct mode applies an EQ change and asks you to reverse it rather than name it. Instead of picking a frequency from a list, you move the band back until the sound is right. It is closer to what you physically do when mixing than a multiple-choice answer.
Does SoundGym train more than EQ?
Yes, and this is its main advantage over TrainYourEars. Its named games cover compression, stereo imaging, level and balance, panning, reverb, delay, filters and distortion as well as EQ. TrainYourEars EQ Edition 2 covers EQ only.
Can I train my ears for free instead?
Yes. EQ Academy from Mastering The Mix is a free desktop app with 100 EQ levels and lets you import your own songs from level 30. SoundGym’s free tier gives 3 games per workout. Our own browser trainer is free with no paid tier, though it is ours, so weigh that.
Is TrainYourEars still being updated?
We cannot say for certain, but the site footer still reads 2020, so treat it as a finished product rather than one under active development. The licence is a one-time purchase, so the risk is limited to the software eventually breaking on a future OS version.
I run Monosounds.studio and make the packs myself. Ten-plus years of producing, 97+ releases, 16,000+ downloads. Every Serum 2 preset we ship passes a CPU check on a mid-range laptop and gets used in a real track before release. If it does not survive a mix, it does not go in the pack.
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