[HN Gopher] Software audio routers
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Software audio routers
Author : irsagent
Score : 107 points
Date : 2023-12-21 07:10 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (danmackinlay.name)
(TXT) w3m dump (danmackinlay.name)
| cheap_headphone wrote:
| A good list. I would definitely recommend Blackhole for Mac. It
| is easy to recompile and create multiple virtual devices. With
| the OS Aggregate Device feature, you can do some good complex
| setups.
|
| Another one for Windows is ASIO Link Pro, which is quite old but
| still works well under Windows 10.
|
| https://give.academy/downloads/2018/03/03/ODeusASIOLinkPro/
| leetrout wrote:
| There is a world of difference between the quality and robustness
| of the rogue amoeba software and VB software on windows.
|
| I hate how much audio software on windows lacks.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is something that goes back to the dark ages too. I can
| remember using my dad's SE30 and sound 'just working', while
| friends with PCs were screwing around with sound card and
| driver issues.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I'm not a macOS guy but I was pretty surprised how woeful the
| default audio experience is on macOS. Coming from Linux
| background it was strange you need third-party tools that
| require you to boot into recovery.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The built in Audio MIDI app that was a holdover from the OS
| 8/9 days was actually quite powerful for a long time, but
| when the kernel extensions got locked down some of the third
| party options were harder to get working smoothly (across
| upgrades especially).
| gumboshoes wrote:
| The Audio Midi manager app on macOS is still pretty great
| and is more or less the backend of Rogue Amoeba's Loopback.
|
| It's always strange to me when people call Loopback
| expensive, because I will pay for reliability and ease of
| operation. I have also had very thorough help from Rogue
| Amoeba for a situation that involves interconnecting Google
| Voice and Zoom so that I can call out with Google Voice and
| join the person on the call to an ongoing Zoom session and
| it is invisible and seemless for all.
| leetrout wrote:
| I have been repeating something since 2014:
|
| There is value in the porcelain.
|
| I have zero issue paying for RA software. Or any software
| that works well and doesnt charge me a subscription.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| From an outsider looking in, I'm just confused why Apple
| hasn't purchased Rogue Amoeba (or Sherlock'd them)
| considering they make keystone applications for the media
| application landscape on macOS (unless I'm misled from
| the Apple podcasts I listen to).
| heads wrote:
| The audio part of OBS is the one thing I've never really played
| with, but I'm wondering why it doesn't also move into this "mux
| stuff" space in the same way that it has done with the virtual
| camera.
|
| Switching between cameras is a godsend for calls (one for my
| face, and another one pointing vertically down at a blank pad of
| paper) but I guess there's less demand for switching between
| audio in a streaming studio setting, and mixing live audio from
| multiple sources is a music thing, where there are much better
| solutions?
| soundarana wrote:
| On Windows many use VoiceMeeter with OBS for basic audio
| mixing.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Missing Audinate Dante
| atoav wrote:
| Some details for those here who like to know: Dante was
| originally only an Audio over IP protocol, you can get PoE
| powered XLR to ethernet dongles and go over IP into your
| digital mixer which also has a Dante card and then manage the
| whole flow from your machine with a software called Dante
| controller on it. That routing is active within all machines
| until you change it even if the controller software is not
| running.
|
| Nowadays they also have software called "Dante virtual
| soundcard" (which is just that) and "Dante Via" (which allows
| you to additionally route individual program's IO -- e.g. if
| you want to put that computers powerpoint and Browser on
| different faders and send some microphone signal to the Zoom
| client).
|
| All in all good stuff, but if you "just" want to route things
| within one machine, probably overkill.
|
| In my experience this works perfectly fine using pipewire on
| linux, on MacOS Blackhole, on Windows I never needed it because
| my RME soundcard allows loopback recording and complex routing.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Should have (2017) in the title. We have Pipewire on Linux now.
| kabes wrote:
| Yeah, the article contains a 2023 update, but still no mention
| of pipewire
| koinedad wrote:
| I've had positive experiences with SoundFlower on Mac. I remember
| jack on Linux with early Ardour being a nightmare
| plussed_reader wrote:
| What about a laddish environment with the Kx studio tools?
| Pipewire?
|
| Some glaring omissions, IMO.
| naruhodo wrote:
| Add PulseAudio. Patching is not as explicit as JACK, but you
| can stream across the network with it.
| IndySun wrote:
| Have to agree, the article is lacklustre.
|
| "...BlackHole is new and I have not tried it yet..."
|
| Anyone can type that line and, having tapped the link, I am
| disappointed to see it (on a hackernews post).
| igor47 wrote:
| As someone who also writes blog posts about stuff I'm
| researching, I don't think authors owe their readers to be
| 100% comprehensive. It's okay to publish notes. I would be
| sad and discouraged to see this kind of comment. I would be
| stoked to see another post that responds to mine and fills in
| the gaps.
|
| As a reader, I don't need it to be comprehensive either. It's
| great to find an entry point and I'm happy to do more
| research as needed.
| cfr2023 wrote:
| Factual inaccuracies within: Loopback can pass multi-channel
| audio and devices can be set as an input and output for
| applications, including with other audio processing between them,
| in an effects loop type configuration. Why spread misinformation
| like this?
| ec109685 wrote:
| Written 6 years ago.
| dishsoap wrote:
| I thought loopback could pass an application's audio back to
| itself even in 2017, maybe I'm misremembering
| cfr2023 wrote:
| You are not misremembering, it could/can still do this.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| JACK is capitalised. I use the PipeWire implementation of the
| JACK API; it still has advantages over using PipeWire directly,
| like easier metadata and CV connections.
|
| The NSM (Non/New Season Manager) system is best for saving and
| recalling the state of the graph. RaySession is a modern NSM
| front-end+backend.
|
| There's also LV2; it uses RDF to define both the audio unit
| properties and the relations between them. If only Ingen and mod-
| host and Carla, with their LV2 plugin graphs, went the full hog
| and could be used in their (Ingen and Carla anyway) LV2 plugin
| forms to work as easy-to-make semi-modular software synths, that
| would be cool. (Part of the thought behind LV2 was to provide a
| session/graph saving format)
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| This comment sums up how impenetrable software audio feels to
| me.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Unfortunately things like wayland end up like this too. All
| sorts of different systems and plugins and implementations
| and exceptions and arbitrary names and acronyms.
|
| It seems like no one who designs this stuff ever says "this
| is too complicated, it doesn't have to be this way, we need
| to work on simplifying it".
|
| I think when clever people get together and there is no adult
| in the room to represent people who actually have to use this
| stuff, no one wants to admit that it's over complicated,
| because that becomes an admission of not being as clever as
| everyone else in the room.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| > It seems like no one who designs this stuff ever says
| "this is too complicated, it doesn't have to be this way,
| we need to work on simplifying it".
|
| I think they do, but it's yet another XKCD 927 case.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I'm not talking about making something different after
| the damage has been done, I'm talking about the design
| process itself.
| bgribble wrote:
| JACK is far from perfect but one thing worth mentioning is that
| the API is really stable. I have been hacking on one audio app
| for about 13 years; in that time the GUI toolkit has deprecated
| the key UI elements I use, which have bitrotted to near
| uselessness; the primary programming language (Python) changed
| incompatibly and required significant work to convert the app;
| the predominant audio interface technology has gone from PCI to
| Firewire to USB. JACK's API has not changed at all that I know
| of. The bits of C code I wrote years ago to set up the app and
| connect to the server probably have the same commits attached
| to them that they did over 10 years ago. Love that.
| superb_dev wrote:
| I've been using BlackHole on MacOS for the last few days. So far
| it's been great!
| ruuda wrote:
| I recently discovered Helvum for Pipewire and suddenly it was
| easy to configure my audio setup the way I needed.
| Nab443 wrote:
| Helvum is great, but if you need to recall patch
| configurations, raysession is even better.
| thefz wrote:
| Missing the most powerful on Windows, Voicemeeter.
| weinzierl wrote:
| [1] makes me believe that on Windows JACK doesn't really belong
| in the list. As great as JACK is on Linux, on Windows its power
| is limited to applications with native JACK support or
| applications and drivers with ASIO support.
|
| What I expect from a virtual cable is to allow me to connect any
| source with any sink and that is what solutions provide.
|
| [1] https://jackaudio.org/faq/jack_on_windows.html
| notpushkin wrote:
| The same is true for JACK on Linux, too. (On Linux you could
| use PipeWire though, which can route audio to/from both
| PulseAudio and JACK apps, but it _isn't JACK proper_.)
|
| > or applications and drivers with ASIO support
|
| I guess it should be okay to assume all professional apps do
| support ASIO (and some support JACK natively)?
| _0ffh wrote:
| You can set up routing between PulseAudio an JACK manually,
| with pulseaudio-jack.
| qwertox wrote:
| Also Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) for Windows
| https://vac.muzychenko.net/en/
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| It's such a shame the ASIO Link Pro project died with the author
| (according to hearsay) and no source is available to pick it up.
|
| In many ways it'd been one of the most capable solutions for
| Windows.
|
| The fine article looks a bit shallow not mentioning it at all.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| > BlackHole is new and I have not tried it yet.
|
| Hmm it's not that new, I guess maybe the article is old? In any
| case, BlackHole works very well for me on Mac (I only really use
| it for real time recording the system audio into Quicktime screen
| recordings, so have not stress tested it).
|
| An interesting related-ish Mac app is Monkey Audio Rewind[1],
| which runs in the background and is always recording the last n
| minutes of audio, then if there's something you want to capture
| (e.g. you're playing around on a soft synth and some
| serendipitous brilliance happens), you can just go into Rewind
| and export that bit of audio from the buffer. It's nicely
| designed and seems to work well.
|
| [1] https://monkeyc.audio/
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