We’re not quite to Christmas, but 2012 is just around the corner, and it’s once again time for Rogue Amoeba to pack up for San Francisco. We’ll be exhibiting in booth #742 of the exhibit hall at Macworld-iWorld 2012, and we’d love to see you there.

Details
Dates: January 26th – January 28th, 2012
Times: 12 PM – 6 PM (Thursday), 10 AM – 6 PM (Friday, Saturday)
Location: Moscone Center, San Francisco

If you’ve been to Macworld’s exhibit hall before, you’ve got a decent idea of what to expect. As always, there will be hundreds of Mac and iOS vendors coming together with tens of thousands of Mac users to talk about the software and hardware we all use every day. This year there will be a whole lot more going on, from musical performances by big name bands like Modest Mouse, BT, and Moe, to great tech talks, and much more.

If you’re going to make it, we’ve got a great deal for you – a limited number of free Exhibit Hall passes! You can register here to get in for free. Once the free passes are gone, they’re gone, but it’s still just $25 to get in.

Once you’ve registered, mark down 1/26/2012 through 1/28/2012 in your calendar, and put our Booth #742 in there too. We’ll see you in San Francisco!

Two weeks after it was unveiled to the world, our charmingly simple audio recording app Piezo already has its first major update. The just-released Piezo 1.1 provides full support for recording from VoIP apps like Skype, iChat, and FaceTime. If you’re looking to make quick recordings of a VoIP conversation, Piezo is now ready to assist!

When recording VoIP conversations with previous versions of Piezo, you would hear your own voice fed back to you while you spoke. This was somewhat disconcerting at best, and after hearing from many users, we worked rapidly to solve it. We’ve now fixed that issue for Piezo 1.1, and also split audio onto two channels, with your own audio saved to the left and the other party’s audio on the right (you can even see this reflected in the VU meters). With Piezo, recording from Skype and other VoIP apps couldn’t be simpler.

What about Audio Hijack?

A lot of folks have asked us how Piezo compares to our powerful audio recorder Audio Hijack Pro. The shortest answer is that Piezo is great for simple recordings, while Audio Hijack Pro is great for users who need more power. We’ve got a more detailed comparison over in our Support center, and you can always download the free trials of each to see what works best for you.

When it comes to VoIP recordings specifically, both apps are now capable of providing great results. If you’re looking to create a professional podcast, it’s likely you’ll want the power Audio Hijack Pro provides. For many users, however, Piezo is likely to be all that’s needed.

Details

Piezo 1.1 is a free update for all users. To update from an older version, either launch the App Store app, or (if you purchased directly) choose “Check for Update” from the Piezo menu.

New users can purchase and download right through Apple’s App Store. Of course, we’ll always sell it directly as well. Whichever way you choose to buy, you can download Piezo first to take it for a test drive.

On Wednesday, I had the chance to speak with my friend Chuck Joiner over at MacVoices, about Piezo, the Mac App Store, and more. That interview is now live, so go have a listen!

Back in August, we mentioned we were working on a top-secret project with new hire Grant Farr. It’s been a long haul, but today we’re thrilled to be able to reveal the fruits of that work:

This is Piezo, our charmingly simple audio recorder. With Piezo, getting started recording audio on your Mac is a snap. Seconds after you open it up, you’ll be ready to record audio from any application. Piezo requires almost no configuration, and it’s a blast to use, with beautiful graphics and thoughtful interactions.

Using Piezo, you can record from almost any app on your Mac. Whether it’s web streams in Safari or music from services like Spotify and Rdio, you can record it with Piezo. Just select the desired source and press record to capture its audio. When needed, straightforward settings for recording name and format are also available. Piezo can even capture audio from audio devices. Hook up a microphone like a standard Apple iPhone headset, and you can record your own audio right into your Mac.

Raisons D’etre

Piezo exists to bring audio recording to the millions of customers in the Mac App Store. That’s right: Piezo marks the first Rogue Amoeba app available in the Mac App Store, and you can get it right now.

Due to the many restrictions Apple imposes, it’s taken us almost a year to get an app in the Mac App Store. Our award-winning recording tool Audio Hijack Pro has many features which rely on deep integration with Mac OS X, but Apple’s restrictions disallow this, preventing Audio Hijack Pro from appearing in the App Store. The streamlined Piezo, however, has been approved by Apple’s review team. This allows us to bring the power of recording any app to a wider audience¹.

In the process of making Piezo, we also realized it gave us a chance to simplify audio recording. While Audio Hijack Pro is incredibly powerful, it does have a bit of a learning curve. For truly simple recording, Piezo can’t be beat.

As part of that, we worked incredibly hard on Piezo’s interface, giving it an alluring retro-modern feel. Christa really got to sink her teeth into all the artwork, while Grant had fun with some new interactions like the time display. We’re delighted with the way Piezo looks, and we know you’ll love using it.

That’s a Wrap

By now, we hope you’re ready to try out Piezo. It’s cute and fun, and in addition to being easy to use, it’s easy on the wallet. How easy? Right now, Piezo costs an amazingly low $10.

Piezo is available for Mac OS X 10.6 and higher. As noted, Piezo is our very first Mac App Store app, which means you can purchase and download right through Apple’s App Store. Of course, we’ll always sell it directly as well. Whichever way you choose to buy, you can download Piezo first to take it for a test drive.

We think you’re going to love Piezo. If you have any questions or feedback, contact us directly. Otherwise, just enjoy!

Footnotes:

1. As far as our other apps making their way into the App Store, we don’t really have anything new to say right now. We’ll always sell our software directly, alongside any Mac App Store versions, so there should never be any concern when considering a purchase. ↩

Do you own a Boxee Box? If so, you’re in luck, as it’s the newest device we’ve tested with Airfoil, and it works just great to receive audio from your Mac or PC. Sending audio to the Boxee Box didn’t actually require any updates to Airfoil, nor even a download of Airfoil Speakers. This compatibility is available with a simple update to the Boxee Box’s firmware.

The Boxee Box: No Stacking!

Getting AirPlay Receiving Set Up

When it arrived, our Boxee Box had some very old firmware. Updating this was easy though, with the built-in updater found in Settings. Once the new firmware (version 1.2) was installed, AirPlay receiving needed to be activated. This can done by going to the Settings, selecting Network, then choosing the Servers settings. The last item there is called (somewhat-misleadingly) Enable streaming from iOS devices. Once you turn this on, you’ll see Boxee appear in Airfoil:

Airfoil sending MOG’s audio to the Boxee Box.

The Result

The most important result of course is that, audio from your Mac or Windows machine flows through Airfoil and out to the Boxee Box. This works great, and enables you to send any audio from your computer. There are a couple drawbacks, however.

First and foremost, the Boxee Box does not play audio in sync with other outputs. If you just want to send from a Mac or PC to Boxee, great. But you won’t be able to include Boxee in a multi-output system if you want everything in sync.

As well, there aren’t a lot of frills here, however. When Airfoil sends audio out, we pass along metadata from supported sources (on Mac and Windows). For instance, here’s what the AppleTV shows when receiving audio from Spotify:

Airfoil sending Spotify’s audio to the AppleTV

Unfortunately, with the Boxee Box’s current setup, you’ll get only a simple screensaver:

Airfoil sending Spotify’s audio to the Boxee Box

That said, the audio plays just fine, so it’s a promising start. If you’ve got a Boxee Box, just turn on AirPlay receiving, and you’ll be able to send it any audio from your Mac or PC using Airfoil!