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WHAT YOU NEED

You’ve likely found yourself in this position more

than once: Your Mac is playing audio that you’d love

a permanent copy of, but the application you’re

using doesn’t provide a way to do that.

While you would turn to one of the few commercial

Mac applications that perform this task, there’s a

way to go about it that won’t cost you a cent.

VITAL INFO

Device: Mac

Difficulty: Beginner

Time required: 5 mins

What you need: Soundflower (free; cycling74.com)

1 Getting prepared. The first thing you need is a copy of Cycling 74’s Soundflower, which you can get from cycling74.com. Click on the Free Download link, choose the appropriate version for your Mac, click on the installer link and it will be downloaded to your Mac. Install Soundflower and, if asked to, restart your Mac.

2 Sort out the settings. Now move to System Preferences, select the Sound preference, and in the Input and Output tabs, select Soundflower (2ch). Doing this takes the audio playing on your Mac and routes into the Mac’s audio input circuitry, allowing you to then capture it. Quit System Preferences.

3 Choosing the player. To perform the capture, launch QuickTime Player, choose New Audio Recording from the File menu, and in the window that appears, click on the small triangle on the right-hand side. To ensure the audio is heading in the right direction, make sure that Soundflower (2ch) is selected under the Microphone heading.

4 Quality choices. In the Audio area below you have two options – High and Maximum. Both produce an AAC file encoded at 256 kbps. The difference is that High quality records at a resolution of 44.1 kHz and Maximum records at a higher quality of 48 kHz. Select your preferred option, play the audio you wish to record and hit record in QuickTime Player.

5 Listen up. One thing you’ll immediately notice as you record is the sound of silence. To hear what your Mac is recording, launch the Soundflowerbed application, which, when the Soundflower application was installed, was placed inside the SoundFlower folder, now inside your Applications folder. A new menu will appear in the Mac’s menu bar. Click on it and choose the output you’d like to monitor from – headphones jacked into the Mac’s headphone port, for example.

6 Capture and save. Now go about your capture and, when you’re finished, click QuickTime Player’s Stop button. Close the window to name and save it as an audio file. This will save your recording as a 256kbps AAC file. And that’s it, capturing your Mac’s audio on the cheap.