We're getting further off-topic here, but I'll say we've been including those disclosures for at least five years, and I think we do a pretty good job with the disclosure. Feel free to email me if you'd like to discuss ways it could be improved.
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SoundSource 5 Brings a Streamlined Interface and More to the Powerful Mac Audio Control Utility
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I use a MBP in clamshell mode, with a monitor connected via HDMI, a speaker plugged into the monitor, a headset plugged into the Mac’s mic/headphone jack, and a microphone on the webcam which is plugged in via USB. I juggle around which inputs and outputs I need several times a day, and SoundSource makes it much easier, and more clear, on a single menu pulldown, what is going where right now.
Also, adjusting volume on the speaker plugged into the monitor is clunky with the monitor’s controls - it’s so much nicer to have the media keys on my keyboard control the volume - working with, rather than against, several decades of muscle memory (macOS won’t normally control audio volume on an HDMI connection).
I’ve read a lot of product announcements and reviews on MacRumors over the years, and Ive seen precisely one where I thought the were questionable editorial choices - it was sort of a product announcement combined with a review. It did, at the end, have a disclosure, but the problem as I saw it was that it started out sounding like reporting, with the announcement, and ended up sounding like praise, with the review, and there wasn’t a clear line between the two. I said as much in the comments, and recall receiving an understanding and agreeable response from the editors. Save for that one case (which was addressed), I agree that MacRumors does a good job of separating the two, and making it clear which is which.
I suspect that one thing that may be generating more comments like this is the combining, a few months back, of the front page, iOS blog, and Mac blog, into one unified page. Lots of product announcements previously went on the two secondary pages, and likely weren’t seen by a segment of people who only looked at the front page. Now, with the combined pages, people are complaining about “more” product announcements as if they weren’t there before, when they were - just in a different place.
Rogue Amoeba is an OG indie Mac developer, and I appreciate the updates I find here.
I'd love to know the same thing. I'm still on Mojave so I don't know if things have changed in later versions of Mac OS, but it's annoying that I can't send my system audio to a stereo pair of HomePods.
I was excited about this until I saw the $29 price tag. I can't spend $29 for a utility that I can live without. $14.99 and I would be in like Flynn. Since they offer an "upgrade" price, that means you'll be paying $15 or more down the road to get the released that supports whatever MacOS the old one doesn't.
So you like software subscriptions? You can choose to live with v4 as long as you want. There will always be an upgrade fee for non-AppStore apps. The lifetime free upgrades on the AppStores have messed up peoples expectations that an app will be supported for free and forever.
That's a complicated setup. I only have a pair of external speakers for better sound, no external mics so far. Switching Microphones and Sinks is actually quite easy if you know that you can alt click on the speaker symbol in the menu bar. But adjusting levels is only possible in System Preferences, so that is probably easier with SoundSource.
Thanks for your input!
i think Loopback is what you’re looking for. You can test the demo version to see if it does what you need.
I'm thankful for this post. It highlights well supported and powerful apps. I found LoopBack by searching years ago and I love it. I never looked at what other apps the developer made. I might get this, not sure I need it but I didn't have a lot of uses for LoopBack until the pandemic. Now doing NYT Crossword on Zoom with friends is made more pleasant by being able to loop my Music through Zoom along with my own mic, and that way it's not crappy sounding music it plays like it's actually playing on all the attendees computer natively.
rogue amoeba must need a little cash cause this seems more like an x.1 or generously an x.5 release to me. It’s a nice new skin, prettier UI, but without any significant new tricks. This app started as free I believe or free if you already owned some of their other apps that more or less do the same thing, but they quickly started throwing up a paywall and it’s barely been a year and I’m being asked to pay for it again. I’m getting frustrated that this is a new trend of developers that know customers don’t like the idea of subscriptions but effectively employ them by asking for an upgrade fee annually and hey if the one you happened to own should be broken by Apple’s ever ratcheting up security in their latest release too bad for you.
it’s weird I agree and they all use that ACE audio engine of theirs whatever that is. It seems like they took the soundflower concept and ran with it to as many products as they can think of. Loopback creates virtual soundcards essentially. It’s similar to what you can do natively with audio midi setup and essentially rolling together several devices but with the added soundflower tech of piping application audio around. Sound source let’s you easily switch between devices and send audio from an app to a particular card and control levels a bit or use plugins on it. Audio hijack is the same as Loopback but has built in recording and a different layout. All use the same engine so really just different skins on the same thing I guess. They should redo them all into one product and market them as pro plus and lite or something.
the thing is, if you really try to work with Loopback into a semi complicated setup you realize how buggy it is. I can’t tell you how many times I tried getting it to work to pipe audio from a DJ app for example to a daw app and it just not work and I waste so much time troubleshooting it and shrug, reboot and then it works. And then it doesn’t. Similar things happen with them all. The engine is pretty unreliable I think.
I should probably just invest thousands into a 4x4 or more pro sound card or something but I have a nice 2x2 one that I squeak by with trying hacks with rogue amoeba, but I waste a lot of time on it
Ahh per app volume control.
I can't believe it's been almost 14 years since Microsoft released this functionality on Windows Vista.
I really thought MacOS would have this as a native control by now.
Maybe next year.
I can't believe it's been almost 14 years since Microsoft released this functionality on Windows Vista.
I really thought MacOS would have this as a native control by now.
Maybe next year.
I do DJ and karaoke work on the side. This has been extremely valuable for me. Initially, I'd use it to mute a YouTube viewer/downloader I use, so the audio from that doesn't play while music is playing from VirtualDJ. Since getting my AirPods Pros, I can now direct the audio from that app to my AirPods, to verify the YouTube video's audio before downloading, and no worries about it being heard over the VirtualDJ audio that's playing through my speakers. I'm currently on V4, and have had no stability issues to report of.
It should. I just popped in my AirPods Pros to verify it would automatically direct audio to them from the app I use them with, and it did. Download the trial version to give it a test run.
To setup per app preferences, have the app running, then click on "Add Favorite" (was "Add App" in prior versions) on the bottom left of the window. Choose that app, then you can select the output preferences for it. You can also select main system output, too. As long as your Mac recognizes the audio device, you should be able to select it with SoundSource.
This completely resolved my volume adjustments with my 5.1 speaker setup on a 2020 mac mini. Using HDMI for audio pass-through with a HDMI 2.0 converter the master volume was not adjustable. Now I can not only adjust the master volume, but any other program/task that utilizes audio. Just awesome.
For anyone else looking for a free alternative, there's also Background Music, an Open Source project under active development.
https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic
https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic
thanks for the suggestion. Been using it for a couple days now and I really enjoy it
True, but if I have to upgrade every 6 months to keep using the software it isnt much different from a subscription... I suppose you could argue that "its only because I updated the OS", but still ^^