Marin’s blog

Audio Hijack software review Today I ran into a piece of software I was looking ever since I got my mac. Basically it is a capturing application that can fetch the audio stream from virtually any program running on your mac osx.

What’s hijacking session ?

Let’s have a look at the main window and we’ll discuss the possibilities this software provides.

The main window main area is providing you with the list of pre-defined sessions. You have few that come with the software and you can of course create your own sessions.The “session” is basically the set of configurations that tell Audio Hijack what would you like it to do : which application you will be capturing audio from, is it a one time task or reoccurring task, and any other settins you set up trough the session inspector.

Let’s see how it works.

The simple way to setup a session goes like this. Press the New button in the main window. Drag your application’s icon from the Desktop (let’s say Firefox) to the Application field and close the settings window. Voila ! Session is created.

How does it work then ?

Press the Hijack button in Main window. The Firefox application starts. Open say youtube and run a movie. Now press the Record button in Hijack window. There it is - you’re recording the audio coming from Firefox. Stop the recording and you have the audio file at your disposal.The program is so straight forward and simple that is just a piece of art.

What else does it do ?

If you go trough the settings and trough the user’s manual coming with it you’ll see there are pretty lot of stuff you can tweak if you are into that. The program can export to a dozen of audio formats (which you can drag then directly into your GarageBand song) My favourite feature though is the schedule feature. The program connects to your iCal and creates event for reoccurring recording sessions. So .. how would that be useful ?

Imagine you have a radio play on air say “the H2G2″ every Wednesday at 14.30PM. You can’t listen it in the office of course … but you can tell Audio Hijack to record it for you every week. And you can listen it after you get home

How do I get it ?

Go grab the demo version which works for maximum 10 minutes recording here : http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/

If you buy a license for only 32$ you will be able to record as much you want.

I hope I was helpful

Marin

More on Mac OS X audio tools to come soon,  reviews on MIDI recording applications, WAVE editors and more