Posted By Paul Kafasis on July 20th, 2013

It’s time once again for an update to Airfoil for Windows, our audio streaming tool for Windows. We’re always working on improvements, and today, we’ve got a big one in the form of full System Audio capture. You can get that in the new version 3.5.¹ Read on to learn more about Airfoil for Windows 3.5, or download it right from the Airfoil for Windows page, or by selecting “Check for Update” from within your current copy of Airfoil for Windows.

System Audio Capture

Last time around, we updated Airfoil’s Instant On component, to improve audio capture. Now, we’ve added an entirely new method of audio capture: System Audio capture. When you select System Audio in Airfoil’s Source menu, you’ll be able to capture all of the audio playing on your machine at once. This can be useful in its own right, but it’s also a great workaround for capturing audio from otherwise troublesome applications.

Airfoil ready to capture System Audio

This improvement should be particularly welcomed by Windows 8 users. On Windows 8, several major applications can’t be captured due to the restrictive nature of the OS. With System Audio, you’ll get audio from those apps, and be able to stream it with Airfoil.

Using System Audio is a snap. When you select it the first time, you’ll be prompted to install the System Audio driver. After that, it’s just select System Audio from the Source menu, and click your desired outputs. Now all of your machine’s audio will flow out. Excellent!

Thanks to VB-Audio

The System Audio driver Airfoil uses is based on VB-Cable, from VB-Audio Software. The software is free, but we’ve made a donation to the developers to support its development. If you find the System Audio capture in Airfoil useful, you might like to show your thanks by donating as well.

Get It Now

There are plenty of other tweaks and fixes, so update your copy of Airfoil for Windows now!

P.S. Airfoil Remote

You may have seen the release of Airfoil Remote this week, our iOS app for controlling Airfoil for Mac remotely. Please note, Airfoil Remote is not yet compatible with Airfoil for Windows. However, we hope to add support in the future, so stay tuned!

Footnotes:

1. Unfortunately, System Audio capture is not available on Windows XP. We highly recommend all users update to a newer version of Windows. ↩

Posted By Paul Kafasis on July 16th, 2013

Airfoil for Mac is one of our most popular applications, and over the years it’s helped tens of thousands of users stream audio to compatible devices all around their houses. One of the most common feature requests we’ve received has been the ability to control Airfoil for Mac remotely. Today, we’re very pleased to be able to introduce an iOS application to make that possible: Airfoil Remote.

With Airfoil Remote, you can use any iOS device to control Airfoil running on your Mac. No matter where you are in your house, you can turn speakers on or off, adjust their volume, and even change the source application from which Airfoil is pulling audio. As well, Airfoil Remote can control over a dozen audio sources playing through Airfoil, including Spotify, Rdio, and many more!

Whether you’re hosting a party, or just too tired to get up off the couch, Airfoil Remote provides you with full control over your audio streaming. Awesome!

Key Features in Airfoil Remote

• Full control of Airfoil for Mac, right from iOS. Toggle outputs on or off, and adjust their individual volumes too.

• Better yet, you can switch the source Airfoil for Mac is pulling audio from, wirelessly.

• Control playback of over a dozen of the most popular Mac audio players, including Spotify, Rdio, Last.fm, MOG, and many more!

• See what’s playing too, with title and artist metadata, as well as album artwork.

Get It in the App Store

Airfoil Remote is the perfect audio playback companion, giving you full control of Airfoil for Mac right from the palm of your hand. It’s available right now for purchase right from the iOS App Store. It features full interface support for both 3.5″ and 4″ iPhones, as well as the iPad and iPad Mini’s displays. Learn more on the Airfoil Remote page, then purchase in the App Store today!

Airfoil Remote is fully universal and compatible with all iPhones, iPads, and iPods Touch running iOS 5.0 or higher.

Don’t Forget to Update Airfoil for Mac

To use Airfoil Remote, you’ll need to update Airfoil for Mac to version 4.8 (or higher). Do note that Airfoil for Mac now requires Mac OS X 10.7 or higher.¹ This is a free update for all Airfoil 4 users, so we certainly recommend getting it now by choosing “Check for Update” right inside Airfoil (it’s in the Airfoil menu). You can also learn more and download it from the Airfoil for Mac page. In addition to full support for Airfoil Remote, this update to Airfoil for Mac includes a slew of minor bug fixes and improvements, and it is of course recommended for all users. Update today!

Closing

We hope users who already love Airfoil for Mac will find Airfoil Remote to be a useful companion. Be sure to grab Airfoil for Mac version 4.8, then learn more about Airfoil Remote. We think you’re going to love it!

P.S. A Note to Users of “Reemote for Airfoil”

As some folks will be able to discern, Airfoil Remote has evolved from a product called Reemote for Airfoil, by our colleague and friend Kai Aras of 010dev. We’ve acquired Reemote for Airfoil from Kai, and made Airfoil Remote a free update for previous purchasers.² We hope you enjoy it! You’ll no longer need to use the Reemote Server on your Mac – it’s all built into Airfoil now.

If you have any questions, please contact us directly.

P.P.S. A Note to Airfoil for Windows Users

Airfoil Remote is not compatible with Airfoil for Windows. Yet.

Footnotes:

1. If you’re still on Mac OS X 10.6 or below, you’ll need the newest possible version for your OS, available from our Legacy page. Airfoil 4.7.5 on Mac OS X 10.6 will work with Airfoil Remote, but it will require running the “Reemote Server” application. See this page for details.↩

2. Unfortunately, Apple has not made it possible to provide a free upgrade to the iPad-only Reemote for Airfoil HD. That product has been removed from the store (though existing customers can still download the last version). We encourage all iPad users to purchase Airfoil Remote, which is now universal. ↩

Posted By Paul Kafasis on July 15th, 2013

I was honored to take part in a quick interview with AppStories.org, a great collection of interviews with all manner of different Mac and iOS developers. App Stories is part of App Camp for Girls:

App Camp for Girls, a non-profit organization that seeks to address the gender imbalance among software developers by giving girls the chance to learn how to build apps, to be inspired by women instructors, and to get exposure to software development as a career.

It’s a great effort, and there’s still time to donate.

Posted By Paul Kafasis on June 21st, 2013

Long ago, back in the days of EDGE smartphones, we welcomed aboard Jeff Johnson as employee #008 at Rogue Amoeba. That was back in June of 2008, which means we’re now celebrating five full years of working with Jeff! Such an anniversary is most decidedly worthy of note, and so we’d like to take a moment to show our appreciation.

When our first employee Mike reached his fifth anniversary, we procured a special gift in the form of a hard-to-get SSD drive for him, and customized it with a personalized engraving. For Jeff, we went a slightly different route.

Tennis, Anyone?

As anyone familiar with our Staff page knows, Jeff quite enjoys playing tennis. For Jeff’s anniversary, we came up with the idea of a VIP shopping experience to acquire some new, top-of-the-line tennis gear. A quick search led me to The Tennis Shop, a small and well-reviewed family-run business in Madison, Wisconsin. Speaking with the Dermodys for just a few minutes was all it took to know I’d found the right business to work with, and they were happy to help us out.

We prepared an elegant card to inform Jeff of his gift:

As Elegant as Ammo Gets

Jeff will be working with Peter Dermody to pick out exactly what he wants (on us, of course). After that, he’ll be storming the courts, so watch out, Wisconsinites.

Members Only

In addition to Jeff’s personalized gift, we also created something we’ll be giving to all members of Rogue Amoeba’s Five Year club: a challenge coin. If you’re in the military, or know someone who is, you’re probably familiar with challenge coins. If not, they’re custom coins which prove membership in a club or celebrate an accomplishment. In this case, our challenge coin recognizes an employee’s five years with the company:

Shiny!

Replete with Latin (“For Five Years with the Company”), the coin signifies Jeff as a member of a very exclusive club. While we hope to add all employees to this club, it’s still a rare thing worth marking with a bit of pomp.

Say It Again

While we celebrated with Jeff privately, it’s also worth noting his accomplishments publicly. Tens of thousands of users have benefited from Jeff’s great work over the past half-decade, particularly in Airfoil. But Jeff’s had a hand in almost everything we’ve released in recent years, so if you’re using a Rogue Amoeba product, he’s probably made it better for you.

And from the founders, thanks for the past five years Jeff, and we hope to have you around for many more!

Posted By Paul Kafasis on April 11th, 2013

First up, we’ve got a small but important update to Audio Hijack Pro today, which fixes a handful of small bugs. That update is available now from the Audio Hijack Pro page, and it’s free for all current Audio Hijack Pro users of course. Get it by downloading from our site, or just select “Check for Update” in the Audio Hijack Pro menu inside the app.

With this update, we also realized that Audio Hijack Pro had just celebrated its tenth birthday. First released on March 3rd, 2003, the app remains incredibly popular, gaining thousands of new users each year. Today’s release marks the 59th release of Audio Hijack Pro, and it’s still going strong. Given the many changes over the years, it’s useful to give a quick overview on where things stand with the app.

Realtime Audio Capture

Audio Hijack Pro’s most basic functionality is its ability to capture audio coming from other applications (as well as audio devices, of course). Audio Hijack Pro has always been able to capture audio on a per-application level. This is definitely the preferred way to capture audio, as it means beeps and blips from other applications won’t ruin a recording. Just select your desired source application and click Record, and Audio Hijack Pro will capture and record that app’s audio.

Alternatively, using the System Audio source, you can capture all audio currently playing on your Mac. Recording from System Audio requires the installation of the Instant On extra, but once you’ve got that installed, you’ll be able to grab everything into one file.

Audio Hijack Pro can start capturing audio from other applications and devices right out of the box, with no installer required. It simply needs to launch the application from which you wish to capture audio (or re-launch it, if it’s already open). This same technology is used in our simplified recorder Piezo, which is sold via the Mac App Store.

For additional functionality, the application will offer to install our Instant On extra. This extra works to improve audio capture for Audio Hijack Pro, as well as Airfoil and Nicecast, and it’s in use on tens of thousands of Macs around the world. With Instant On installed, Audio Hijack Pro can capture audio from running applications without needing to relaunch them (very handy!). Instant On also makes it possible to record System Audio, as mentioned above.

Worth mentioning, Instant On no longer uses the long-deprecated Application Enhancer (APE) framework. In order to make grabbing audio as robust as possible, we’ve developed our own dedicated audio capture system in-house, one which relies on no private system APIs.

OS Support

The current version of Audio Hijack Pro supports Mac OS X 10.6 – Mac OS X 10.8 (all the way up to the current 10.8.3, of course). We also provide Legacy versions of our software, for users on older OSes. We’re committed to keeping our software working for you even as Apple releases new updates. We strive to have support for new versions of Mac OS X as soon as humanly possible.

Future Plans

How about the future? Over Audio Hijack Pro’s dozens of releases, we’ve added great new features and functionality. However, it’s been some time since the app has had a truly major new version. As you’ve likely seen, our audio editor Fission hit version 2 last year, followed by a substantial version 2.1 released a couple months later.

The recent updates to Fission are great, but they’re also making it clear that Audio Hijack Pro should get some love as well. Fear not, as we’ve got a lot of plans for the future of Audio Hijack Pro and audio recording on the Mac. We’ve been hard at work implementing these ideas, and should have exciting Audio Hijack Pro-related news to share in the near future.

More to Come

Closing

For now though, just be sure to grab the latest update right from our site and enjoy! Keep your eyes on this site, as well as our Twitter feed, for more news soon.