If you use an iPhone, a Mac, an iPad, an Apple watch, an Apple tv, or are simply a technology enthusiast, you're going to love learning more about your technology with your new favorite geeks over at macgeek Gab. Get your questions answered and have some fun along the way. Visit macgeekgab.com or search for Macgeek Gab on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't get caught without having Mac Geek Gab in your rotation. Welcome, everyone, to Mac Chat. We're so glad to have you along for this first Mac Chat of the new year. So, whether you're joining us over a cup of coffee or you're on your way somewhere and you're listening to your favorite Unmute podcast, that is just great. And I actually have a guest, but he's not really a guest. He said he's a huge part of everything that goes on at Unmute. I have Michael Babcock with us today. Hi, Michael.
Hey, Chris. This is weird. I'm not supposed to be on this show, so thank you for inviting me and thanks. It'll be fun.
You're welcome. Yeah, absolutely. So. And I think maybe you dropped in one other little time when I accidentally got a keystroke wrong and you popped in and like. Well, it's actually.
Oh, yeah. VO shift C to copy phrase to clipboard.
Exactly. Right. So, yeah, I misremembered that. I mean, there are only a couple hundred keystrokes, so you're like, okay, it happens.
It happens to us all.
It does.
And then you feel silly that you. You forgot it too, because you're like, I use it every day.
Yep, yep, that's right. So it's great to have you pop in. So. So you've been here before. So you know that we. We just like to have a little chat about all things Mac. And I usually pick a major topic and then have some cool keyboard shortcuts and some little extras in there. So I. I just want to know, first of all, did you get any new cool Mac tech gear or anything for Christmas or. Or did you get other tech things?
Not really. Other people in my family got tech things for Christmas. They got meters. So the smart meat thermometer that you can connect to your phone with Bluetooth. No, no. Mac soft. I bought the upgrade to Hazel because that was something. So I bought that for myself for Christmas.
Excellent. All right. That is great. I have yet to check that out. You love that. I think Double Tap was talking about it, too.
Yeah, he was sharing My content that I shared with him about his because I had the older version. So I paid for the upgrade, which gives me some sort of new features. I'm not honestly quite sure what it is, but I just wanted to support noodlesoft and it's one of those apps that once you get it set up on the Mac, it just runs and does what you need it to do. It's just taking the time to get it set up to say, hey, I want all the MP3 files in my desktop downloads folder that start with the letters M4A. Files in my downloads folder that start with the letters GMT to move to a folder in Dropbox that says Zoom projects in process, because that's where the original Zoom files are. But once you get it set up, then you don't have to really worry about it. So paid for the upgrade and hopefully we'll take advantage of whatever new features are there.
Oh, that's great. Wow. Just as long as you're in charge of what goes where. Because I don't like an app or an operating system deciding that for me, so I think that's great. That's awesome.
You set up the rules and it'll keep everything organized, especially if you're a neat person and you try to keep your file names the same. I am horrible about that. But if you do you want to organize things into folders, then you can use Hazel.
That's great. So not only are you sort of roped into neatening your file names, but they put it where you can find it.
Yes, yes, exactly.
Kind of forced into submission of organization. That's great. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's great. I'll have to check that out and. And review that content too. That's awesome. Yeah. I just purchased a little piece of software that we will mention coming up here from Rogue Amoeba. But other than that, I really didn't get any tech for Christmas or mostly people got me chocolate. So that works. I know. Eat your chocolate while you work with your tech.
There you go.
Yeah, so that's kind of what happened for me and I. I took a bit of a tech break, you know, so that's okay. We're back in the saddle now.
Yep.
Yeah. So that's cool. Well, I wanted to chat about some keyboard shortcuts that I really like. And I really enjoy putting necessary things on the dock. And I know that I have been more inclined to organize my doc and not include things that I don't use very often. And I get annoyed when I download a program and it's put on the doc and it bumps something else off. I'm like, wait a minute, I wanted that there. So anyway, so I was going to mention some handy dandy keyboard shortcuts for the doc and a really cool tip about moving things around. So, yeah, so if you want to add an item to your doc, say you're focused on an application. You can press control shift command T as in Tom. And it's always finger gymnastics with this thing. I'm like, oh, my word.
And it's remembering all the ones that you need to press. That's a keystroke that I know. But every time I go to use it, I forget what it is. And unfortunately, keyboard help mode with voiceover doesn't tell you that that's what that does. So thank you for the reminder.
No problem. Well, and sometimes it's finger memory. Did I do this with my fingers contorted last time I went to the added item to the dock? Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a bit of a process. And then you can also hide the doc entirely. Like, I don't know why you'd want to do that, especially if you're non visual like I am. Yeah. So I think that another. Another one. I was listening to a recent podcast, trying to remember if it was Twit, the Twit Network or sometimes Mike Sargent has been doing some things the doc recently. But apparently if you press the up arrow, it will go to the menu menu of the app that you're focused on, the dock, which is kind of cool.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that does work. Yeah, that's pretty cool. You don't have to open the app and then go to the menu bar. Isn't that neat?
That is. Huh. So just for clarification, that's not. With voiceover, you can just arrow to the application that's on your dock. And then, for example, I have downloads here. If I tap my up arrow key, it doesn't do anything because I picked on that. Let's try tapping my up arrow key on system settings. And if I do that, then it says Menu 46 items and I'm down arrowing through the different categories and system settings right now. And if you go to the end of it, you can open or you can locate the options if you want to remove it from your dock.
Great. That's really awesome, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
Yep. So removing something from your dock is exactly what I end up doing. And they've changed the menus a little bit Since I wrote my directions. But that is in the menu items that you just mentioned. And this is really cool. You can reorder the items in the doc. So like, I put all of my apps that have to do with remoting into my computer, like TeamViewer, Remote Incident Manager, and those type of things together. And I kind of have my doc arranged, the things I most commonly use, even though I do use first letter or two to get there. It just kind of made sense to me. But if you want to move things around, you can hold down your option key and use your left or right arrow to relocate and it'll say move to the left of Safari or move to the right of mail. And so you can completely reorder your doc, which is really cool.
That is awesome. That's another one of those keystrokes. When you said it, I said, oh, that's how you do it. Mail, move to right of maps is what I got when I just press option right arrow. Now I use my left arrow key and I don't need my maps anymore. So now I have to stop my up arrow a couple of times, go to options and then up arrow one more up arrow one more time to remove from dock and now it's gone. That is amazing, Chris. Thank you.
Awesome. That's great. Yeah, Working efficiently with these little known keystrokes that no one ever mentions.
Did you know that Mac os, when you're with Voiceover, you can use Control option D to get to the dock, but if you want to not take all of your hands or. Well, I guess that's only one hand. But if you want to do it a different way, that's not dependent on Voiceover, you can use control F3 and that'll take you your doc.
Yes. That is awesome. I do have that in my list, but I had not tried it because I'm so used to Control option D, but that is.
And then just navigate your dock with your left and right arrow keys. Don't use the voiceover keys.
Oh, got it. Okay, cool. That's great. Removing some finger gymnastics is always okay.
Or giving you more to try to remember because.
Yeah. Oh well, whatever's in your common workflow is what you remember, I think. Yeah, that's great. Did you have any keyboard shortcuts that you're especially thinking of lately that you wanted to mention?
So control F2 will take you to your menu bar in the app that you're in. So if you want to do that quickly, of course you do have the VOM to get there Then Command option W will close all windows in Finder. So what happens to me sometimes is I get 20 different windows that are open. And so I'll hit Command option W and that'll say close all. And it moves your focus to your desktop. You might say, well, why do you need multiple windows and how do I get between those to open a new window? You just do Command N in the finder and that takes me to my recent. You can configure that in the Finder preferences with Command comma. But then I can go to maybe my downloads folder and grab an mp3 file and I know I have multiple mp3 files in my downloads. I can just do Command N again. That opens another new window. And then, then I can go to my Dropbox Folder, paste that one mp3 file in, and then use Command Grave Accent to switch back over to the downloads window and then copy the next file that I need Command Shift Grave Accent to go back to Dropbox and paste it. And then again Command option W to close all windows at once.
Great. That's awesome. Well, thanks for running through that because it can be kind of daunting to flip back and forth, but if you know how to get the Command Grave Accent and Command Shift Grave Accent. Yep, those are. That's really handy.
Or you can use the window menu in the menu bar and that'll bring up a list of all your open windows to jump to that if you forget where. What windows did I have open? So that's an option.
That's right. That's cool. That's great. Thanks for that. That is awesome. Well, it's about working efficiently and then remembering how it is that we did that. Exactly. That's great. I feel like fully sighted people would benefit too from knowing these, because there are some sighted people who really enjoy keyboard shortcuts too.
There are. Especially when you're working like in a fast paced environment. I remember when I was doing customer service for Peloton, I sent a list of all the common Windows keyboard shortcuts to my team because I realized while talking to some sighted people that they could easily benefit from the keystrokes. And then they just weren't using them because they didn't think about navigating the computer with keystrokes. And once you show them it, it's like, oh, wow, why was I spending so much time moving my hand to the mouse to click the notes button to leave a note before I could take my next call? And they asked, my supervisor asked me, why is your handle time down or Your after call time down to 30 seconds. Our average is two and a half minutes for the team. And I'm like. Because I said in the notes with the keystroke and don't move my hands off the keyboard to click the mouse.
Wow. Well, that's real life testimony there to the efficiency of keystrokes. That's awesome.
Yeah. Unfortunately, the software they use is horrible on the Mac. Getting it back to the Mac.
Oh boy, oh boy. Well, just. Just to say, you know, we can work efficiently and surprise people. That's great for sure. Yeah. Well, I wanted to bring up the topic of new software that's newer to me, that's not new to you, and it's great software and it solves particular issues that people have. And that is the group of software by Rogue Amoeba and their tagline on their website in part is strange name Great software. Right. So they've been around since 2002, which is quite a long time, and I know things have probably evolved over that time, but they have some really great software for the Mac. How did you start using their software and what issues are they trying to solve for people?
So how I started using them is someone, I think it was Tomasi said, you need to get these and I'll help you learn them. And then there's some other resources out there that you may mention to learn specifically Audio Hijack. But I got the application, so I think I forgot my. I bought Audio Hijack for the first time in like 2008 or something like that. And then I switched to Windows and then by the time I came back, I needed to buy Audio Hijack again. So then I got it because I needed the ability to route my audio to different places. And I'll tell you, Audio Hijack took over while for me to wrap my brain around. Like, one of the nice things about Audio Hijacked is someone can create a session in Audio Hijack and share it with you. So when I first had it, I just imported a session and said, okay, I'm just going to use this session and that does everything I need. I don't remember if I was importing sessions back when I originally got it or if it was when I got the newer version of it. However, the. The point is you can get sessions set up and you don't have to really touch it, aside from going in and giving it a little bit of resources, either an app or a device to be picked. But when I started building my own, I had to think about what is it that this app does and that in some instances can be a little complicated to wrap my mind around. So Audio Hijack is an app that allows you to put blocks on a canvas and the block can have a different type. So your canvas is your session and that's what we build out. And for example, when I jump over here to finder and I press command shift A to go to applications and then type in audio and hit command O, I am in my system audio session. And what this has is a couple of blocks on it. And I'll give you an example. It has system, audio and microphone device. And if you listen to Voiceover, it will give you feedback based on how this app works. So how much do you want me to get into this? Do you want me to go into how I'm using it?
Yeah, I think first though. So what we're doing is, are we having inputs and outputs and you're sort of putting together a chain of events to bring in audio. Is that kind of the purpose for it? Because you can't get it in there any other way?
Yep. So a block is a. You have several different types of blocks. And what you have to do is figure out what type of block do you want to add to your canvas. So some of the sources in these blocks are. Some of the sources are applications, output, input, device, system wide, audio. And then you have another group of blocks that you can add to your canvas. For example, outputs, and it says output, device, recorder, live stream, broadcast, etc. And then you have another group with built in effects. And if you want to skip past the effects, you can press VO space to collapse that. And then after that is meters. Well, I don't really care about meters myself. And then there's advanced, and you can add each of these blocks to your canvas. You press vospace to add the block to the canvas and it just throws it on the canvas. No, it doesn't. V space will copy the block to your clipboard. So it doesn't add it, but it copies it to your clipboard.
So a person is trying to bring in an audio source that wouldn't be available to you otherwise unless you use the software. Right, right. And yeah. And so then you're putting together like there are these little wires that connect things together so that it makes a chain that makes sense. And I'm just not wanting to get into the weeds too much, but just kind of talking about what, what problem is it trying to solve? What do people want to do that requires the use of Audio Hijack?
So in the blindness community, the Biggest reason to use audio hijack is to make audio debris demos. And when you're making an audio demo, I don't know about you, Chris, but sometimes voiceover can get a little chatty talk, and you're like, why did you say that? People don't need to hear that much information. Or it talks underneath you, and you don't want to talk over voiceover if you're doing a good demo for individuals. So when you have audio hijack and one of the sessions that I have here is to record my microphone with voiceover, this has two blocks that sit on top of each other. They have an application block, and that's going to capture audio from a specific application. In this case, voiceover. And then underneath that block, I have an input device, and that's my Vocaster 2 USB. If you listen to voiceover, when you arrow up and down or around the canvas, if I arrow up to application voiceover, it tells me the coordinates where it is. And right now, this is at 1.5x1x. And then if you listen past that, it'll tell you, now I have to do it. It says application can't have input wires. So, you know, there's nothing going into that application block because the application block can't have any input wires. But it does have one output wire to recorder, and it gives me the coordinates of where recorder is. In this case, it's at 3.25 x1 y. So it's two squares to the right of where application voiceover is. It can really sit wherever you want it. But what we want to do, though, is we want to have a recorder block that has input from the application voiceover. So again, if you listen to what the block tells you, it tells you that the recorder has one input wire and one output wire, and that output wire from the recorder is taking all of the audio that comes into this recorder, which in this case specifically is just voiceover, because voiceover is the only thing that is inputting to the recorder, and it's sending that audio out to an output device, which is my headphones. Because when voiceover talks, I want it to be recorded, but I also got to hear what voiceover says while I'm doing my demo. So if I don't have an output of the recorder, then voiceover will be recorded. But when this session is running, I won't be hearing what voiceover is saying. So keep that in mind when you're setting this up. If I tap my left arrow back to the application voiceover in 1x 1.25x1y. So think of that as the top left corner. I can tap my down arrow key and remember, that'll take us to input device. And the input device can't have input wires, but it does have one output wire to recorder at 4x 3.25 y. So that's a recorder that I have. And that recorder doesn't have any outputs because I'm monitoring myself and my headphones on my audio interface. So I don't need to send that recorder to an output device. So. So as you can see, audio hijack gives me the ability to route my audio in different directions and send some to my headphones and some to recorders. In this case, I happen to be recording with both. You can send them to live streams and other places. And that's the problem audio hijack solves.
Okay, so you're working with a grid and you have to know what is coming in, where you're routing it. And it seems like a fairly visual process. A setup which I would probably make a tactile diagram. If anyone is head is spinning and they're wondering what did he just say?
Yeah, exactly.
Thinking about making a raised diagram or something where I have in and out, you know, and just. Yeah, just trying to imagine this visually. I think probably if someone could see it, it would probably make sense that these wires are going from in to out. Is that. Is that correct?
So I'm going to. Because this is a show. I own a property in a little bit. I have some investment in it. I'm just going to say I'm throwing an at dies at here. This is a great opportunity to get a braille doodle because what you could do with the braille doodle is draw the lines between the letters of the. Of the block so you can make a BL be a letter so you can see it on the device and then draw a line going from that letter to the next block so you can visually interpret where these are. And they even kind of have a grid on the braille doodle already.
They do. And I was going to mention that too, is that I would put this on my braille doodle. So you, you. We're thinking along the same wavelength here. Yep. That's awesome because I feel like I'm a really visual learner and to hear this, hear it auditorily explained to me, it makes my head swim just a little bit, which is no one's, no one's fault. It's just. It's just that I need to because I'm A visual learner with no vision. But I would be. And so that's why I need a picture to explain the ins and outs and where we're routing things. And this one can't have this, you know, so I'm gonna have to have a picture. But I think knowing that you can learn your tech in that way, if you're learning something new, a piece of software that has places to go and people to listen to, you maybe want to have a representation of it, which is an encouragement to me to actually sit down with this and wrap my head around an already created session canvas to say, oh, okay. And the coordinates could be whole numbers, right?
Yep. So the. The we. This is all a lot about keystrokes. Rogue Amoeba has done amazing about giving you information about the the that you need for this. So I'm gonna go ahead and. And I'm doing this in my headphones and I'm using another tool that we'll talk about in a couple of minutes. Loop back so you don't hear what I'm doing. But I'm going to tap my down arrow and it says Recorder MP3 256k. And that is sitting at 4.25x 3.5 y. So it automatically went there. I'm going to use my option down arrow key will take me down by a quarter. So now I pressed option down arrow twice and Recorder is at 4.25x y 4.25x 4 y. So now. Yep, if I want to move that, I can hold my. Another way I can move it is if I hold command and I tap, let's say right arrow. That moves it. Hold on 1 second to 5.25x4y. That moves it by 1x. Now if I use option left arrow, then it says Recorder, move to 5x4Y. And so optioning your arrow keys will move by quarter and commanding your arrow keys will move by whole coordinate.
So bringing you back to your high school algebra, pre algebra graphing.
Yep, yep, yep.
Which is why we learned that. That's probably the only reason I learned it. So I could do it 50 years.
Later, like, okay, but you could, if you wanted to, you could set up your blocks in the shape of a braille cell and have three on the left side and then three in the. On the right side or in the middle. And then start experimenting with building things and listening to what voiceover is telling you. And then you realize, oh, I can move. One thing I recommend doing if you're going to play with this, because by default, audio hijack, when you add a block to a session, will snap it into place and it will determine where your wires are connected to. And that can be confusing as well. So what you can do is if you go up to the menu and you go to the, and you go to the session option, there's a check mark that says Automatic connections. If you press enter on that to disable automatic connections, you can then hit command E and it'll say stop editing connections or hit Command E again and that'll edit connections. So if you uncheck that from the menu, then you're in edit mode. And then what you can do is you can find the application voiceover VO right arrow. From there, don't just use your arrow keys and it'll say output for application, press VO shift M on that and then you have the ability to connect that output to any other block in your grid.
I see. I'm going to be going back and listening to our show for this tutorial. That's awesome. That is great. You know, there's somebody out there that doesn't know this. It's going to really super appreciate it. Yep. And that is, that's awesome. And I'm also going to get my braille doodle out. I just have to mention The Braille Doodle. 30 seconds. It's, it's a two sided, how do you say this? It's a two sided board that has hundreds and hundreds of little ball bearings inside and there are, you know, holes in the, the configurations of, of Braille cells basically, especially the first side. And you take a magnetic pen and you, you put it into the hole and it draws up a little ball bearing and they're of course, they're magnetic. And so then it stays there until you push it back down. So you can practice your braille. You can draw pictures, you can draw grids. They even include graph paper like what we're talking about here. Like a stencil that you can put over the top so you can make your own graph lines.
So yeah, it's pretty cool. I'm, I'm kind of impressed with it, but it's great.
Yep.
Great learning tools. Great learning.
Yeah.
So another app that I use is, and I'll mention two more, we won't go as much in depth of these other ones. I can definitely answer questions if you have them. But one, Well, I guess there's three more. And you use some of these too, I think so. Loopback is an app that I use that allows me to see what channels are in my hardware, for example, and that's how I'm using it right now. So you might say, what do you mean by that? Well, where Audio hijack lets you pick different blocks and put them in places, Loopback lets you interact with the audio drivers inside of your Mac. So when you create loopback sessions, well, they're called loopback devices. These devices can be typically added as a input or output device within your application if you're able to change it. So the first thing that you get to when you choose Add new device is an edit box that you can give your device a name in. So because the Mac kindly selects the text for you when you get into an edit field, in most cases you can just start typing and say something like test device. And then if you use your VO right arrow keys, from here you'll hear New source menu button creates a new source. And if you pop this open, then you have different applications you can pick. So let's say I want to get all the audio from Windows or I want to get all the audio from Zoom. Or there's a special services which gives you the background sound finder, Siri system effects, and a couple of other ones. That's where voiceover is chosen. You also have audio devices as a category. So why you might want to use this over Audio hijack is let's say you're in an environment where you want people to hear your microphone. So in this case, I would pick my vocaster because that's my audio device that I use. And then I also want people to hear because we're playing an audio demo of something that we wanted to show people text to speech can sound like. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play that audio in an app called QuickTime. So I'm going to hit enter on Select Applications, I'm going to hit Command shift A, press Q until I get to QuickTime. Well, I go locate the. What is this called exactly? Column View browser. I interact with Column View browser, I find QuickTime and I hit enter. That adds QuickTime to this device. And remember, we're working with a device that's called Test device. So now I have a new source. I have two sources. I have my microphone and I have QuickTime. I also have a new output channels and new monitor. I'm not as familiar with those. I don't really use those too much. But now if you press VO right arrow, you'll get a delete button. Again, that's if you press VO right arrow past add New output channels and new monitor. There's going to be a item that you can interact with called test device, because that's the device we're working with configuration. So if we interact with test device configuration, we're on a vertical list of sources that we've added to this specific device. So if I tap my down arrow, not with voiceover, just my down arrow, I hear vocaster 2 USB, I hear pass through, or if I tap my up arrow, I hear quick time. And then if I tap my right arrow, I get to the channels and I'll explain. Well, I'll kind of explain channels. I don't quite understand how they work, but I'll give you an explanation that I helps me. But for example, you can up arrow and down arrow. And then if you want to delete a channel, you can press command delete when I press my left arrow. And I'm currently on QuickTime Player, if I down arrow to Vocaster 2 USB, if I interact with this, I'm in the settings for that specific source. So I can turn that source off, but leave it connected to this device. If, let's say I don't always want QuickTime to come through, but during this Zoom presentation, I do want QuickTime Audio to come through so I can demonstrate this. So you can turn sources on or off. And then if you press VO right arrow, there's a source channels that you can interact with. And then my Vocaster, for example, has 15 channels. I only need channel five routed to left and right, and that captures my microphone. So you can press VO space on the channel number and it will add it to your device that you're working with. And once you get all your sources set up, most people don't have to make changes to this channel, but I wanted you to know that it's there. If you stop interacting with it, you can press VO right arrow and get to Options section. And this is a place where you can mute this source. So maybe you want to keep it on your device, but you want to mute it. I don't know the difference between mute and disable. So if someone has any comments on why you might disable a source versus muting it, please let us know. Often you'll also see another section in here that says, what does that name say? It says, because this, this will catch you off guard. By default, in this configuration, when I'm playing QuickTime, I will not hear QuickTime in my headphones. So I had to find QuickTime, interact with it, locate the Options section, and then there's a button that says mute when capturing. Selected. And it's always selected when you add a new software source to your device. So if you want to hear quick timing your headphones while the people on Zoom, for example, are hearing it, then you unselect this button and it'll say mute when capture. Capture toggle button. And then it'll play that in your headphones. So we set up our device now, if we go into Zoom, to the right of the mute button is a button that you can choose that says audio submenu. If you choose that, then you'll see that right now there's a new device in here called test Device. I'm not going to activate it now, but, I mean, it'll work. But if I press VO space on this now, then anything that goes into those sources or hardware, hardware in that loopback test device will be played through the device that you have chosen. And you can tie pretty much anything to a device.
Got it. Wow, that is something that. That's a lot of steps.
It's a lot of steps. But. But when you go back and you work through it step by step and say, here's the problem I want to solve anytime I want. Like, maybe you set up a device that says play my microphone in quick time, then go set those items up and then pick it. And once you do that, a time or two, a lot of times you'll be like, oh, that's how I do it. And that was what it was for me, is I needed someone to explain it to me. That's why teaching is important, because we all teach differently.
Exactly. And just having the way in which it makes the most sense to you. And then those devices are saved for next time, right?
Yep, yep. They're always available. You can set it as an input or an output to your computer. There's even a source called pass through that gives you some additional routing capabilities that even my brain kind of is like, I don't understand. I should. I should understand it. It seems simple, but I don't get it.
Well, the fact that you understand all that you just said is awesome. So. So if someone was looking to do demos, like, even could they just use loopback and a microphone with voiceover? I mean, would that be something easier maybe to do?
So the thing is, is loopback just is a device. So it's just hardware. So there isn't a source or really a destination to send those sources to to record it. So if you're doing live demonstrations, loopback would be great. You can send that Into. Into Zoom.
Got it. And it records or broadcasting. Okay.
But if you want to. If you want recorders to capture specific audio, then you would use a tool like Audio Hijack. Now, where it gets a little bit more meta is when you start using devices in Audio Hijack that are actually loopback devices.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. I think our friend Allison had me doing that. So my head swims. Then two more. Yeah, it's really good to define. Okay. Live. Live things. Loopback is. Is your best friend. Audio Hijack is for recording those things and then combining them together is yet another story.
Yes, yes. We won't get into that today.
No, no, no.
Two more apps that I use. One is called Farrago. I'm sure you're familiar with that. One that allows you to assign sound clips to little carts for people in radio, they're little players that you can just hit the letter A in the. That always plays the same sound or the number 17. Well, you can't do 17. The number seven, and that'll play a different sound. So that's Farago. Do you have anything to say about that?
I love it. I'm just trying to figure out how to get those sounds into Zoom and into my. So there again, I'll have to use those other pieces of software to get my Farago in there.
So for that, what you could do is set up a virtual device in Loopback that's called Farrago, and mice then go into Sources, add Virago, and then add Mic, and then whenever you're in Zoom, you don't have to go connect any wires or anything, but whenever you're in Zoom, then you choose the Farrago and Mic for your input. And then playing sounds through Farago, as long as you interact with Farago and then interact with Options, and uncheck that box that says mute when capturing. Then through Farago, you'll be able to hear the sound clips, and your people on Zoom will be able to hear sound clips.
That is what I need to do. Because when I teach a class and no one has any questions, I do have to have those cricket sounds.
Yes. And in Farago and all of these apps, you can actually go in. And I have F19 assigned. It's the top right key on.
Where the heck is that?
It's the top right key on the function row on the MX keys key.
Oh, got it.
And so I tap that and that actually, I press and hold it, and that will trigger Farrago to open then for me. So I always know if I hit that, then I can open Farrago and then trigger my keystrokes. The next software that I use is M. I've got tied to F18, which is the key directly to the left of that. And this is Sound Source. What Sound Source lets you do is pick what device you want any application to go to. So right now, if I open Sound Source, I'm going to do it and it's going to probably mess my audio up. So bear with me while I do that. But if I open Sound Source and then I press the keystroke again, it pops open Sound Source and Sound Source. If I use my arrow key or my VO right arrow key will let me choose the input or output devices. And then I see all of my running applications. So, for example, I have Safari here, here. And if I interact with Safari, I have a mute Safari, so I can mute Safari right there without having to do anything else. And then I have a slider that I can adjust the volume of Safari really quick. And then I also have a redirect option which lets me send Safari to a different device if I wanted to, whether that be physical or virtual. So if I go over here, and this is impacting me right now, I found Voiceover, and I interact with Voiceover, and right now I have voiceover Set to 56%. So I interacted with it, and now I'm turning that up, and now Voiceover is back to 100%, which is what I had it on before I opened Sound Source. But this is a great tool to reroute your audio or adjust the volume. Let's say you're like me, multitasking. You can turn Zoom down a little bit, and then you can turn Safari up. And the last thing that I'll bring up that can be done with Sound Source is you can set up a virtual device that plays out of your your left channel or your right channel. And you can say left or right, and then go in and set Safari and Chrome and Edge to your left channel and Zoom to your right channel. So Zoom will always be coming out of your right speaker. Voiceover will be coming out of both speakers. And then any of your web browsers will be coming out of your left speaker. And then if you ever want, you just hit command Q and that quits Sound Source. All of your sound goes back to the whatever settings they had prior to opening Sound Source, and your volumes back up to 100%. Sound source will tell you if you have the volume, like at 7% and you go to Quit, it'll be like, just so you know, it's going to get. It may get really loud now. Are you sure you want to do. But that's sound source and Farado.
Wow, that's really. I. I did not know what sound source did it. That's really. That's really cool.
Mix them all together. You got. You can do anything with audio. Literally anything.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The Mac was made for media, right? Yeah. That is great. That's great. Awesome. Well, thanks for that explanation. I ran into another of their pieces of software today called I believe it's Piezo P I E Z O. And it's like the little brother of Audio Hijack. And I'm still exploring it because I just downloaded it today. But you can have an input source, whether it's Zoom or YouTube or. Or even clips, Spotify, you know, just any kind of Internet music or whatnot, and bring that into whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's zoom or whatnot. So yeah, they make really great. And the tutorials are really awesome, by the way.
And they talk about it in some instances from voiceover users perspective, effective as well.
They do. And they're really responsive because if, if like. One of our fellow famous podcasters, Allison Sheridan, was giving me a lesson on audio hijack and we ran into something that wasn't very clear to me, that voiceover was saying, I can't remember what it was now, but she wrote them, she got a response back within minutes or an hour or something. And they're like, thanks so much for the feedback. We really appreciate it. We'll think about that in our next iteration of the software or whatever, you know, so nice. It's really great.
Very responsive. And if you go to podfeet.com and you type in Audio Hijack, Alison talks a lot about it and one of them is one of her episodes. At least one of them is a tutorial from a voiceover perspective. Again, we all teach differently, so maybe what I said was too not. It didn't connect with you. Then go check out Allison's podcast if this at all interests you. Because really, it's just finding the right way that you can learn in order to be effective.
Right. And that's Pod Feet. F E E T. Correct.
Yes.
Everybody kind of rattles it off really quick and I'm like, is that Pod feed or.
Yeah, me too.
Feet. Yes. Allison is just great. So, yeah, it's really good to know what these pieces of software do and what. In what use cases, you know, just to clarify the differences between them and kind of how you can get started. So if someone was going to get started with one of these. I guess it depends on your use case, but I guess Loopback for me is a little bit easier to understand just. But taking the Audio Hijack slowly and. And finding the best way to learn it. Right?
Yeah. If. If I were to have done it again and I would have got into Audio Hijack, I would have bought their podcasters bundle because that saved you a little bit of money. It looks like a front, but I guarantee you'll get your money's worth out of it if you're doing anything at all productive with audio on the Mac. And that gets you Audio Hijack, Loopback, and Fission, which is their audio editor. I don't use that, so I can't speak to that one, but I would get that. And then. Oh, it might give you Farago too, if I recall. And then I would buy Sound Source separately because Sound Source is amazing and I love it.
That's awesome. Yeah. Well, you've used it for a long while, and you can really testify to the efficiency, and it really makes your workflow possible.
They do have another app called Airfoil. I don't know if you've played with that, but that lets you send audio to different devices that are on your network. So you can send your audio from your Mac to your phone or take your audio from your phone and send it to the Mac. So that's pretty cool as well.
That's great. Yeah. Well, this has been awesome to really explore on, to some degree, the differences between the software use cases and how you got started doing this and how you might encourage people to explore what Rogue Amoeba has to offer and all the audio editing possibilities.
Well, thank you for having me. It was fun to come chat about audio, and I guarantee we all have something different. We can learn about what we're doing to improve that productivity.
Awesome. Thanks, Michael.
Thanks a lot, Chris. Feedback at Unmute Shop.