Audio routing on Mac post Mojave, quicktime and soundflower

bonemap

Hi,

I have recently started porting projects over to Mac OS 10.15.x. I knew t was going to be painful, but had put it in the back of my mind until the necessity of upgrading hardware - now the day has come.

I am starting with audio routing and currently looking at alternatives for Soundflower audio device routing in Mac OS Catalina. I have installed the free Black Hole software from existential audio. This is described as a Soundflower alternative although it has some quirks associated with setting up a Multi-Output Device in Mac Audio Devices. Reading the documentation is essential to using it successfully. I also installed a trial version of the Loopback software, it is expensive at $110 US and I haven't committed to it yet, but provides a simple and intelligent routing interface that makes every audio IO routing possibility into an immediate visual representation.

What I found is that the combination of both Black Hole and Loopback provided a great level of flexibility in routing audio through Isadora and to targeted outputs. Specifically when using the Input/ Live Capture Settings/ Sound Input and Sound Frequency Analysis.

Before I commit to anything long term, I thought there might be another Isadora user who has found an alternative solution to audio device routing in MacOS 10.15?

Kind Regards

Russell

sommerdi

Hi,

i am using Blackhole to for rerouting (OS X 10.15.3) It is working fine ... i am rerouting from Motu to jammr ....

I had in mind loopback too, but the expensive ......Please could you give an idea for what do you use the combination with loopback?

Have you already tested Audio hijack?

Diether

Michel

@bonemap

I have tried a trial version of Sound Siphon a few years ago it seemed quite ok for me. It costs around $ 50 but offer a 14 day trial. https://staticz.com/soundsipho...

Best Michel

bonemap

@sommerdi said:

Please could you give an idea for what do you use the combination with loopback? Have you already tested Audio hijack?

Hi,

Using the visual interface provided by Loopback made device routing very efficient and quick to manage. black Hole became a node within the Loopback interface so it too could be configured visually.

The suggestion made by @Michel appears to have a similar visual interface to Loopback - so I will have a look at that next.

Best wishes

Russell

kirschkematthias

@bonemap said:

Black Hole software

I'm using Dante Via which works fine for me. You can route anything to anything, but it cost $49.99, which is quite a lot, but it is also fully integrated in a Dante Network.

greetings Matthias

Juriaan

Second Dante Via, really powerfull software.

Fred

@bonemap I have been using looopback for some time ,It is really great and allows mixing an montior outputs, app targeting (as well as services like voice over). It is very stable and low overhead and the support is great, I would definitely recommend, I am wondering what the combination of blackhole and loopback give you that cannot be done with loopback alone.

bonemap

@fred said:

I am wondering what the combination of blackhole and loopback give you that cannot be done with loopback alone.

Possibly nothing - I am just working through as many scenarios as I can think of to test audio device routing and arrive at a final software investment. I just made the observation after installing Black Hole that it appears in a list of selectable nodes in the Loopback interface. So for example Black Hole could be used to route an audio stream into Isadora live capture / frequency analysis e.g Soundcloud and Loopback provides a visual interface to manage multiple discrete outputs such as zoom and headphones. But it looks like this can also be done with more or less ease with either software alone. So there may be no additional advantage with implementing both simultaneously. Dante Via and Audio Siphon also look like they are worth a try out- they are certainly substantially less expensive than Loopback.

Thanks for your advice, much appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Russell

bonemap

Hi,

I just want to update this thread with some findings. I have looked into the four audio software solutions that have been suggested previously in the thread. Only one solution provided the raw routing flexibility to be effective with Isadora and OSX 10.15.x in the most use cases. That software is Loopback. The criteria used was a fairly straight forward task. Taking audio from an online stream e.g. SoundCloud and routing that as a live input within Isadora where additional manipulation of the live audio could be undertaken before sending audio to an output device. There were really only two options for achieving this in the tested software: 1/ Black Hole, and 2/ Loopback Audio. Black Hole does not offer an interface and there was no way to separate the output and isolate the audio out from Isadora. Dante Via looked really good, however it has not been released for OSX10.15 yet as far as I could see and I was unable to locate even a trial version with compatibility. Sound Siphon allowed the mixing of various input devices for recording, however I was unable to get it to work on the output side and isolate the audio to be only audio output from Isadora.

Looks like I will join @Fred as Loopback Audio user. Although, I am gasping for air at the cost with the current exchange rate to US$.

Kind Regards

Russell

dbini

has anyone tried Jack? https://jackaudio.org/

sommerdi

it tested it .... with linux fine, but with 10.15 i failed .... i don't why

Diether

bonemap

@sommerdi said:

Have you already tested Audio hijack?

I did look into this but decided against investing in Audio Hijack. It is basically the same functionality as Sound Siphon that @Michel suggested. Allows sound sources form different apps and audio hardware to be combined and recorded. Rouge Ameba offered a bundle with Loopback and Audio Hijack but I wasn’t swayed to spend the extra on it.

Best Wishes

Russell

sommerdi

i tested this https://jackaudio.org/download... with OSX 10.15.3 .... i don't get a connection to a motu microbook & jammr .... i don't know why ..

Under Linux it is working ..... but the install is not so easy ... with blackhole & OSX not topic ...

i don't tested Audio Hijack ....

@ Michel .... Do you have already some experiences with soundsyphon for multichannel audio ?? or someone else?? I am very interesting on rerouting like loopback as bonemap described

Diether

Michel

@sommerdi

No I have no experiences with multi sound. Its also a few years since I played around with it.

Best Michel