Last year, we hit another employee milestone here at Rogue Amoeba and today, we’re finally getting around to properly celebrating it. This time, we’re honoring Nathan Tiddy for five years (and more!) with the company.

A Look at Some of Nathan’s Work

Nathan’s done a lot of work in his time at Rogue Amoeba. Here are just some of the major projects he’s brought to life.

SoundSource 4 and SoundSource 5

Prior to joining on here, Nathan had developed an audio adjuster called “menuBUS”. That work made him a great fit to helm the overhaul to SoundSource we had in the works. With Nathan’s help, our small little audio utility graduated into a robust sound control application. We shipped SoundSource 4 less than a year after Nathan was hired. With it, Mac users gained powerful new control over all their audio, including per-application adjustments and the ability to adjust any audio with effects. Nathan fought hard for those audio adjustments to include Audio Unit effects, and countless users are glad he did.

SoundSource 4 was such a hit that it brought a deluge of feedback full of feature requests and suggestions. We generally space out our major product versions, but neither the people nor Nathan could be denied. Just 17 months after SoundSource 4 had shipped, we were ready to release SoundSource 5. This version improved audio effects substantially, and made SoundSource easier to use by automatically tracking what apps were producing audio. It also formed the foundation for several years’ worth of further updates and improvements, and Nathan’s led the way on all of those.

SoundSource has a large and growing user base, and it’s thanks to Nathan’s hard work.

Farrago 2

While SoundSource is the product over which Nathan has had the most influence, his work on Farrago has been key as well. His first shipping code after joining us in 2018 was found in our soundboard app, where he was responsible for the app’s MIDI support.

A few years later, Nathan took over lead development of the app as we worked to level up to version 2. That update shipped last year, and it included more external controls, including Stream Deck and OSC, as well as Shortcuts support, and much more. Nathan built on top of the app’s solid version 1 (created by veteran dev Grant Farr), and took the app to new heights.

Audio Hijack’s “Transcribe” Block

Nathan has also done a fair amount of R&D for us here at Rogue Amoeba, but that work hasn’t always seen the light of day. Late last year, however, we were thrilled to be able to wrap some of his work into a shippable package: Audio Hijack’s Whisper-powered “Transcribe” block. That block is still in public beta, but it’s already helping countless users transcribe audio to text, and we’ve got plans for further improvements in the future as well.

Thank You, Nathan

Nathan has led the way on major enhancements across multiple products. If you’re a Rogue Amoeba customer, it’s a good bet you’re benefitting from some of his work. What you don’t know is what a pleasure Nathan is to work with, nor how quickly he can crank out new code, or prototype ideas we’re considering. He’s a great asset to the company, and we’re thrilled to have him.

I look forward to many more great years ahead, as we continue working together to develop the Mac’s very best audio tools. Thank you, Nathan! We’re honored to have you on our team.

Any day when I get to celebrate an employee milestone here at Rogue Amoeba is a good day. I’m thus very pleased to honor our support technician Robert Charlton, who recently reached five years of service with the company.

A Key Member of Our Dependable Support Team

Since our earliest days, Rogue Amoeba has made fast and responsive customer support a top priority. We’ve had many talented support techs in our more than 20 years in business, but as a result of the demanding nature of the role, Robert is only the second employee to reach five years of helping customers.

Robert first joined us back in 2017, as we were expanding from a single support tech to a team of two people. Since day one, he’s been a remarkably steady presence at Rogue Amoeba. Robert’s thoughtful, calm, and confident disposition was a great asset. He’s always eager to help users, demonstrating tremendous patience and a desire to get to the root of every issue.

Even as needs have changed over the years, Robert has always managed to fit the bill. The expanding nature of work-from-home culture at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a substantial increase in demand for support, as usage of our products soared. We realized we’d need to quickly transition from two support techs working together to a team of three, with long-time support tech Chris Barajas moving up to be manage this expanded team. Robert has been instrumental in making that transition viable, first by working with a temporary contractor, and then helping to bring our newest hire Aaron Wasserman onboard and up-to-speed with our resources and policies.

During Robert’s tenure, our support team has gotten even more responsive and well-organized. Our documentation has been enhanced across both our public Knowledge Base and our own internal resources, and our processes have grown to support a team environment. Individual users who request assistance weren’t the only ones to benefit, either. By better integrating customer feedback into our development process, the very way we build our products has improved too. Everything we make at Rogue Amoeba is a team effort, and we’re grateful for all that Robert contributes.

Superb Bags for Superb Support Techs

Whenever one of our employees reaches five years of service, we present them with a personalized gift. Robert spends a lot of his free time working on music, so we initially considered providing him with some studio time. However, after a bit of discussion we went a different route.

Back in 2015, we presented our now-support manager Chris with a gorgeous briefcase for his five year anniversary. This, along with Robert’s feedback, led us to create a new tradition: superb bags for our superb support technicians.

In Robert’s own words, because he frequently walks and uses public transit, he’s “more of a backpack guy”. He thus selected a tremendous bag from Tom Bihn, one which will let him tote his laptop (and anything else) for years and years. He also shared an amusing story:

If you recall in my earlier times at RA, the “7UJM” row of keys on my MacBook Pro was broken. That was due to water damage sustained when toting it in…my $30 Amazon Basics backpack.

Never again!

We also sent Robert a card custom-made by our designer Neale, along with one of the custom challenge coins we’ve been issuing since 2013:

Below, you can see (and hear!) a short video Robert created as he opened the coin box:

Expressing Our Appreciation

Working as a support tech means Robert speaks directly with our customers on a daily basis. Thanks to his superb work, he receives plenty of kind words from grateful users in private, but we wanted to be sure to take the time to publicly thank him for his five years (and beyond) here at Rogue Amoeba. Since 2017, Robert has helped over 20,000 users of our products, and that list of satisfied folks grows day-by-day.

Thank you for all you’ve done and continue to do to make things better for our users, Robert! We look forward to much more great work together.

In 2011, Rogue Amoeba made not one but two phenomenal hires. As a result, for the second time this year, I’m delighted to be able to write about an employee milestone. Today we’re celebrating our developer Ed Wynne!

Ed’s Impact

Ed joined us full time back in October of 2011, which means we’re now recognizing him for a decade full-time here at Rogue Amoeba. However, he’s actually been making a difference here at Rogue Amoeba for much closer to two decades. Thanks to his efforts on multiple short-term contracts, Ed’s code served as the underpinning for our audio capture long before he was hired on.

Ed’s work has remained essential into the present, as it powers our ACE audio capture engine. Users generally don’t need to know much about ACE, but it provides audio capture to Airfoil, Audio Hijack, Loopback, Piezo and SoundSource. Thanks to ACE, those tools can get audio from other apps on your Mac, for you to manipulate as you desire.

In recent years, ACE has taken on significance outside of Rogue Amoeba as well. The audio capture it makes possible is now used by many other Mac products, through our licensing program. ACE is incredibly consequential code, with a vast number of users around the globe. It has to work seamlessly, and thanks to Ed, it does.

When it comes to more user-facing efforts, Ed’s work as the lead developer on our audio routing tool Loopback is the most notable. When we celebrated Ed’s five year anniversary back in 2016, Loopback was still fairly new and unknown. Since then, however, it’s grown to be one of our most popular and impactful products. The product really came into its own with version 2, released in late 2018. That upgrade brought an intuitive interface to cable-free audio routing, resulting in an easy to configure tool that provides amazing power.

Ed’s energy making Loopback so user-friendly was well-spent, because when so many people around the world began working remotely in early 2020, the app saw a major uptick in usage. Loopback’s audio routing power allowed people to do more with video calls, helped with podcasts, and much more. Ed’s tremendous work made that power available and accessible to countless users around the globe

If you’re a fervent Loopback user, or have ever made use of Airfoil, Audio Hijack, Piezo, or SoundSource, Ed’s code has helped you.

That 10 Year Anniversary Award

Like Grant and Chris before him, Ed has received our custom 10 year award: a silver Rogue Amoeba logo hand-poured by company co-founder Quentin Carnicelli. On looks alone, it handily beats your standard acrylic office trophy. Better yet, as a precious metal, it has a lot more inherent value than your standard paperweight.

That’s Ed’s award (on an iPad/amoeba stand), next to a celebratory adult beverage. In the background? Well that’s part of Ed’s robotics workshop. When he’s not making amazingly powerful audio software, he’s working with the robotics team at the local high school. How cool is that?

Closing

Since nearly the very beginning of Rogue Amoeba, Ed has been helping Mac users with their audio needs. On behalf of both everyone here at Rogue Amoeba, as well as the many, many Mac users who’ve been able to do so much with our products, we offer him our humble thanks. We’re thrilled to have worked with Ed lo these many years, and we look forward to much more to come.

Today, it’s time for us to commemorate another employee milestone here at Rogue Amoeba. I couldn’t be more excited to celebrate our developer Grant Farr. Grant joined us as a Mac software engineer way back in the days of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and he’s been doing tremendous work ever since. He’s now reached a full decade with the company, and we want to honor him.

Grant’s Impact

Long-time readers may recall the occasion of Grant’s five year anniversary, back in 2016. At that time, I focused on two major projects Grant had led development on: Piezo and Audio Hijack 3. It’s worth following up on both of them.

Piezo was created to make recording on your Mac a breeze. Nearly a decade after it was introduced, it still does just that. Piezo hasn’t needed massive updates over the years, because Grant has kept it working and looking great. It remains an easy-to-use tool that might be our most fun app.

Rogue Amoeba’s flagship product, however, is Audio Hijack. Long before he joined us, Audio Hijack 3 was conceived as a complete rewrite of Audio Hijack Pro 2. That project struggled for years, as it was so big that no one ever got a good grasp of it. It passed through three other developers before Grant took the reins.

When Grant took over, we quickly began to see steady progress, and we were finally able to ship Audio Hijack 3 in 2015. That update was met with overwhelmingly positive feedback, a testament to Grant’s stellar efforts. Audio Hijack has received substantial updates in the years since, while remaining bullet-proof, to ensure you get the recordings you need.

After shipping Audio Hijack 3, we wanted to explore an idea we had during development; a way to easily initiate sound effect playback. This ended up growing into its own complete product, Farrago. Using many of user interface lessons learned in Audio Hijack, Grant built Farrago nearly from scratch. It’s proven to be a great addition to our lineup, one that’s particularly popular with podcasters.

Speaking of podcasting, there’s still one more product Grant impacted, and that’s Loopback. He doesn’t work directly on our audio routing tool, but his code helps power it just the same. In the course of developing Audio Hijack 3, Grant created “GX”, an internal interface framework. Loopback’s lead developer Ed Wynne refers to GX as “insanely great”. It enabled Ed to create the easy-to-use wire-based interface of Loopback 2.

As you can see, Grant’s contributions obviously go well beyond his most notable work on Audio Hijack. In the past decade, he’s had a major impact on four of our seven current products and his work is used by tens of thousands of users every single day. Impressive!

Our 10 Year Anniversary Award

As we showed off in last year’s post celebrating Chris, rather than a boring and bureaucratic acrylic trophy, we provide a silver Rogue Amoeba logo hand-poured by company co-founder Quentin Carnicelli:

Despite a worldwide increase in the demand for silver, Quentin was once again able to fire up the melting furnace to craft Grant’s award. He even captured a very cool look at the back of the object, as it lay cooling in its mold:

After receiving his award, Grant noted how satisfying it is to hold. We don’t want his hands to get too tired to type, though, so we also sent along a nifty stand. Twelve South sells it for use with iPads, but it doesn’t say it can’t be used to display precious metals.

Closing

With all the products Grant has impacted, it’s likely you’re using at least some of his work. While Grant graciously noted that everything we do here is a team effort, his impact has been a big part of the success of more than half of our lineup. For over a decade now, his solid code has pushed the state-of-the-art at Rogue Amoeba steadily forward, providing useful audio utilities to countless Mac users around the globe.

Photo credits: A, B

So on behalf of both the rest of the Rogue Amoeba team, as well as the users of every product you’ve worked on, thank you, Grant! We greatly appreciate all you’ve done in the past decade, and we can’t wait to show the world what’s next.

It’s once again time to celebrate an employee milestone here at Rogue Amoeba. Today, we want to honor our designer Neale Van Fleet, who recently hit the five year mark working with us. We’re beyond delighted to celebrate his tenure thus far, which includes countless contributions.

Neale’s Work

As the sole designer here at Rogue Amoeba, Neale is in charge of just about everything visual. Whether it’s artwork for our blog posts, the design of our web site, or the user interfaces of our applications, you’ve definitely been touched by Neale’s tremendous work.

Since joining us in 2015, he’s made every single one of our products better. That works has included the creation of tremendously well-received new designs for apps including Loopback:

and SoundSource:

Neale also took charge of our company rebranding, an important effort which produced a more polished logo and brand that still retains a sense of fun.

Neale has also overhauled nearly every corner of our website, added helpful introductory tours to every product we make, powered our Instagram account, and so much more.

A small sample of images from the Rogue Amoeba Instagram account

He’s even written articles for this very blog, and those posts are some of my favorites. In particular, I love his reviews whenever we unveil a major new design, such as his recent look at “The Design of SoundSource 5”.

Neale has produced stellar work while being a great teammate. What more could we ask for?

Looking to the Heavens

Speaking of stellar, let’s briefly discuss Neale’s anniversary gift. To celebrating a five year anniversary, we like to find a personalized gift that will mean something to the recipient. While working on his Everywhere School project, Neale made particular note of some astronomy streams he’d watched with his son. On top of that, Neale and his family recently acquired a small cabin out away from his home city of Montreal.

Those two things inspired us to find what we hoped would be the perfect gift: A top-notch telescope.

Happily, this gift turned out very well indeed. While Neale already had a borrowed telescope, it was low-end, and needed to go back to its owner eventually. Now, Neale has a vastly superior telescope to call his own. It even features a computerized stand, which solves one of the most annoying problems of using a telescope, aiming it at tiny objects millions upon millions of miles away. It should provide many years of stargazing delight.

Closing

Since joining Rogue Amoeba, Neale has had a dramatic influence on the appearance and feel of everything we do. Whenever I step back and look at our website or our products, I’m blown away by the level of quality and attention to detail that are a direct result of Neale’s efforts.

Speaking for both the Rogue Amoeba team, and our entire user base, thank you, Neale! We’re delighted with what you’ve done since joining us, and we hope for many more fruitful years together.

P.S. We’re Still Hiring

Once again, a celebration post is coinciding with job openings here at Rogue Amoeba. In addition to the Mac software developer we’ve had open for a bit (we’re taking our time there), we also have an open role for a new Support tech, which we’d like to fill soon.

If you’re interested in joining our team, see our Jobs page, then get in touch. We just might be celebrating you in a few years.