Rogue Amoeba Sponsoring TidBITS

We’re pleased to welcome back as a long-term sponsor Rogue Amoeba, the quirkily named software company known for its audio utilities. Since its founding in 2002, Rogue Amoeba has become the go-to source for Mac users who need powerful yet easy-to-use apps for wide-ranging audio needs. For instance, Rogue Amoeba’s apps can help you:

• Record audio: For simple recording from any app or device, Piezo is cheap and easy to use. For more power, there’s Audio Hijack, which can record anything you can hear on your Mac, apply effects in real-time, schedule timed recordings, and much more.

• Control audio devices: With so much videoconferencing happening these days, SoundSource has become all the more helpful for making sure the right input and output devices are selected and appropriately configured. I regularly joke that before computer telephony, we’d say “Hello,” whereas now we start all calls with “Can you hear me?”

• Play audio anywhere: Although Apple generally does a good job with AirPlay, sending audio from your Mac to other devices—particularly non-Apple devices like Google Chromecast, Sonos, and Bluetooth speakers—can be difficult or impossible. Or at least it was before Airfoil, which lets you play audio from your Mac anywhere.

• Edit audio: When you start recording audio, you realize just how much editing goes into the process. That’s where Fission comes in, making it easy to fade, cut, and crop audio without any loss in quality. It also lets you convert between formats, split recordings automatically based on silence, chapterize podcasts or audiobooks, and more.

• Route audio between apps: I’ve often found real-world audio daunting—so many wires, and you have to know which jacks to plug them into in different devices. In the digital world, the cables are gone, but the desire to mix and combine audio from various sources and destinations still exists. For that, Rogue Amoeba offers Loopback.

• Add canned audio to performances: You won’t need those coconut shells to simulate horse hooves on your podcast anymore with Farrago, Rogue Amoeba’s soundboard app. It lets you create sets of sounds and play them back easily as you record.

Back when we used to record audio versions of TidBITS articles, we happily used Audio Hijack to record and cleaned up each recording in Fission. Nowadays, I rely on SoundSource to manage the volume for my various audio devices as I hop between Music, Brave, Zoom, and Skype. Aside from the fact that all of the Rogue Amoeba apps have worked flawlessly, they’re also notable for their excellent and attractive interfaces.

Rogue Amoeba has been on a roll in the past year as more Mac users found they needed to up their audio game while working, studying, and performing from home. If that describes you, I encourage you to check out Rogue Amoeba’s apps. Note that TidBITS members can save 20% on all of Rogue Amoeba’s apps—yet another reason to choose them for your audio needs!