I really enjoyed this video of awesome, free, Mac apps. I use and give my thumbs up to most of the apps in this video and even learned about a new one or two myself.
Routing Audio from Your Apps Directly Into Your Zoom Call (Or Other Voice Chat App) with Loopback
UPDATE: Learn more about Loopback from my interview with CEO Paul Kafasis on my podcast. Listen and subscribe below…
Have you been teaching a class in Google Meet or Zoom and wanted to play a song from iTunes for your digital classroom? Or perhaps a YouTube video or any other application with audio?
Sure, you can play it right on your computer and let the audio from your speakers go straight back into the microphone input of your computer. This works ok in my opinion. But it isn't going to produce a pure representation of the audio I am trying to send. And in some cases, it creates issues with echo, delay, or a nasty feedback loop.
So what do you do? Rogue Amoeba makes excellent Mac apps that, for lack of better explanation, hack into the audio system of your Mac. I have written about Audio Hijack here before, their app that allows you to record audio from other applications (and that's just the start of all the powerful things it can do). Rogue Amoeba also makes an excellent utility called Loopback.
What does Loopback do? Think about your computer's audio settings. You have an Input and an Output. The Input is, by default, your computer microphone, and the Output is the speakers. If you connect an audio interface that has higher quality microphone and speakers plugged in, you would need to set the Input and Output to that interface to get the input and out put the be the microphone and speakers, respectively.
Your Inputs and Outputs can be controlled from the Sound settings of your computer. Some audio apps also let you control how, specifically, they behave. For example, I have manually set up GarageBand and Skype to use my audio interface as the Device I use for input so that whether I am recording for my podcast, or simply catching up with a relative, they hear me through the microphone, no matter what Device my Mac’s audio Output is set to in the System Preferences.
Loopback allows you to create Inputs and Outputs that are accessible to your Mac's Sound settings as well as your apps. In the example above, I have created an Input that combines my Mac's microphone (the usual Input) with the output of the Apple Music app, something I might want to use to play a recording example for my students in a Google Meet.
Look now as I go to my computer's Sound settings, and I can select this new custom Input to be used across the entire operating system! This way, when I am in a Google Meet, students are hearing both me speaking through the mic and all of the output of the Music app.
🎬 How to Make a Virtual Ensemble!
The school year is finally over, as is my first ever quarter of online teaching.
I wanted my students to end the year seeing themselves represented together, playing the same music, at the same time. So I sharpened my Final Cut skills and dove into the process of making a virtual ensemble.
The video in this post gives an overview of my process for making these videos, all the way from making a play along track, to advanced editing such as pitch and rhythm correction. The video includes a couple of my favorite Mac utilities for manipulating audio and video files. Scroll to the bottom to see all of the final videos of my students.
Apps Mentioned in the Video
If you want free alternatives to the apps in the video, try:
- VLC - for file conversion
- The Amazing Slow Downer - for slowing down audio tracks
To edit on iPadOS, try:
- Ferrite - for audio editing
- LumaFusion - for video editing
Subscribe Links:
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