How to grab and record “what you hear” audio on a Mac with open-source tools, using Audacity, Soundflower, and Sunflowerbed.
- Download and install the Soundflower open-source audio routing system (which now includes Soundflowerbed application).
- Download and install the Audacity open-source audio editing application.
- Start the Sunflowerbed application: /Applications/Sunflowerbed.app
- If not presented with a Sunflowerbed welcome or initial configuration screen, click the flower icon in the task bar, and beneath Soundflower (2 ch), click Built-in Output.
Soundflowerbed output settings for Sunflower
- In your system audio preferences (
-> System Preferences, Sound -> Output), select Soundflower (2ch).
Sound preferences in OS X 10.6
Note: in 10.5 (and likely earlier), the Sound panel is a bit different:
Sound preferences in OS X < 10.6
- Start Audacity, and in its Preferences, in the Audio I/O tab, under Recording, change the Device to Core Audio: Soundflower (2ch).
Audacity Audio I/O settings
- Now, anything you can listen to or stream to your system can be recorded, including Internet audio, DRM-protected content (which you’ve obviously bought but were unable to transfer to other formats), etc.
- When you’ve finished recording, you may want to switch your Sound output setting back to Internal Speakers.
#1 by Froggy on November 8, 2009 - 2:22 PM
You rock! This works great!!!!
#2 by Shai on November 11, 2009 - 5:48 PM
Fantastic! Thank you. Free too!
#3 by Michael on November 13, 2009 - 3:37 PM
Thank you for this. One of my favourite radio programs has switched to a flash audio stream (probably to prevent us from recording it) and it PISSES ME OFF because I am never home to listen to it (Ideas, on CBC Radio One). So with all the bits and pieces listed above, I am now, as I write this, recording one of their radio documentaries (take that, CBC!!) in Audacity. It wasn’t too complicated to set up once I had installed (a) Audacity’s latest version; (b) LAME (just because I can); (c) Sunflower; and then going to the system prefs and choosing Sunflower 2CH as the output, and then into Audacity’s preferences to choose Sunflower 2CH as the input. It is happily recording the show The only thing I forgot to do was to set up Audacity to flow through the sound so I could check audio as it was recording, but I can see the VU meters and the waveform…
#4 by John DeStefano on December 27, 2009 - 10:57 PM
I’m glad it’s working for you all! And thanks for the additional tips, Michael.
#5 by Soundproofing on April 24, 2011 - 6:33 PM
Works great, was getting some feedback issues earlier today….
#6 by Craig Love on October 20, 2011 - 7:03 PM
Thanks heaps
totally appreciate you sharing this
do you happen to know if one can put an automatic finish time on audacity so that you can start recording and walk away?
cheers
#7 by John DeStefano on October 21, 2011 - 8:30 AM
Hi Craig,
Audacity v1.3 (beta) has a recording timer feature that provides this functionality:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/features-1.3-k.php
#8 by dominique on December 13, 2011 - 2:01 AM
thank you – this was really useful!
#9 by Journo Julz on March 8, 2012 - 4:38 AM
Ace! What a find! Ta.
#10 by Journo Julz on March 8, 2012 - 4:39 AM
And it works in Garageband – who needs audacity?