Silence iTunes when another application plays audio

[titaniumdoughnu]

Hello! Long-time lurker of MacRumors here...

A quick question for my fellow Mac folks.

Is there a way (through third party apps, scripting trickery, anything) to mute or pause iTunes automatically whenever certain other programs are playing audio content?

I work in After Effects and Final Cut a lot. I'm not normally cutting video, and I don't need to listen to my work non-stop, but it's really difficult to play music because then, every few minutes when I *do* need to listen to something for a few seconds, I can't hear it well enough.

If there were just a way for my system to somehow detect audio coming from another program and quickly pause or mute iTunes til that other program was done making noise, it would be amazing.

 

[GGJstudios]

If there were just a way for my system to somehow detect audio coming from another program and quickly pause or mute iTunes til that other program was done making noise, it would be amazing.

What about simply pressing the pause key on your keyboard?

 

[titaniumdoughnu]

Ahh, see, I did think of that

I guess maybe my issue is pretty unique to me. I spend a lot of time tinkering with stuff in the After Effects timeline. I'm in the zone. Every few minutes, I need to check audio and quickly preview a second or two of work with sound. I just hit 0 or . on the numeric keypad, and two seconds later I'm back to no sound for a while.

I KNOW I could stop being a lazy bum and hit the pause button myself, but I'm trying to find an automated way to just sort of catch audio coming from another program, and tell itunes to quiet down for a moment.

 

[lars666]

I would love such a function, too. Guess we're both just lazy bastards ...