Take Control of Audio Hijack, 2nd Edition

Book excerpt: Find sound advice for recording anything on your Mac! Version 2.0, updated March 31, 2022 Most of this book discusses Audio Hijack, a handy utility from Rogue Amoeba that can record and enhance any sound your Mac can play. There’s also a chapter about using Fission, also from Rogue Amoeba, to edit sound recordings.n Learn how to use Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack version 4 to capture and enhance any audio playing on a Mac. Audio expert Kirk McElhearn provides instructions for setting up common scenarios—recording audio playing in Safari, capturing Zoom and FaceTime calls, digitizing your old LPs, extracting audio from concert DVDs, and working with mics and mixers, and much more. Kirk also helps you edit recordings in Rogue Amoeba’s Fission audio editor. You’ll learn how to pipe sound through Audio Hijack to enhance its quality without recording. For example, by boosting the volume or tweaking the bass—movies on Netflix never sounded better! You’ll also discover special features such as reusable sessions, recording to more than one file (and format) at once, scheduling recordings, time shifting during live playback, effects like ducking and panning, adding automatic metadata before recording, and more. And you'll learn how to use Audio Hijack as a powerful tool for live streaming or broadcasting. The Fission chapter has directions for trimming, cropping, adding, replacing, splitting, and fading audio. It also explains how to turn an audio file into a ringtone and—podcasters and educators take note!—how to make a chapterized AAC file. As far as recording goes, you’ll find help with: • Recording literally any audio played on your Mac. • Setting up reusable sessions with Audio Hijack’s Audio Grid interface. • Scheduling when your Mac should record something automatically. • Recording from a mic. Or two mics. Or a mixer. Or a food processor. • Capturing a chat from Zoom, FaceTime, and other voice-over-IP apps. • Checking volume levels before you record. • Ducking one audio source when a second source kicks in. • Digitizing an LP or cassette, while reducing hiss and noise. • Breaking a digitized album into separate songs. • Recording to multiple files and formats. • Using Audio Hijack to live stream to Twitch or YouTube Live, or to broadcast a streaming radio station. • Finding your recordings in Audio Hijack and the Finder. • Use Audio Hijack's new scripting feature to add automations to your sessions, and even integrate them with Apple’s Shortcuts app. If you’re interested in enhancing your aural experience, you’ll find help with: • Enhancing audio while you listen to it. For example, your little laptop’s speakers might not provide enough oomph for an action thriller’s soundtrack, but with Audio Hijack you can boost that sound and enjoy the flick. • Time-shifting live audio while you listen. You can pause and resume live audio you’re listening to, or go back a few seconds or jump ahead (if there’s anything to jump ahead to). Lastly, you’ll learn how to use Fission to polish your recordings. You can: • Trim unwanted bits. • Insert one audio file into another. • Fade in or out from silence. • Adjust a recording’s volume. • Create a ringtone or alert tone. • Make a chapterized AAC file. • Convert nearly any audio file to MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, FLAC, AIFF, or WAV format.