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Airfoil and Airfoil Satellite are in the vein of what you’re looking for, so far as software goes. There’s also AirParrot that can act as a sender. You might be able to use Airfoil Satellite with an old iPod Touch receiving audio through the 3.5mm headphone/mic jack, which then transmits it back to Airfoil on a PC/Mac, which then transmits it via AirPlay to the HomePods, but I have no idea if that’d actually work and it sounds like way too brittle of a workflow.

Besides which, why introduce latency concerns, especially if you’re watching movies or talking about hooking up consoles? It’s one thing for music, where latency isn’t a problem, but it’s something else when you now have lips out of sync with the words being spoken or audio cues that don’t correspond to the inputs you’re providing or the action on the screen.

Airfoil and Airfoil Satellite are in the vein of what you’re looking for, so far as software goes. There’s also AirParrot that can act as a sender. You might be able to use Airfoil Satellite with an old iPod Touch receiving audio through the 3.5mm headphone/mic jack, which then transmits it back to Airfoil on a PC/Mac, which then transmits it via AirPlay to the HomePods, but I have no idea if that’d actually work and it sounds like way too brittle of a workflow.

Besides which, why introduce latency concerns, especially if you’re watching movies or talking about hooking up consoles? It’s one thing for music, where latency isn’t a problem, but it’s something else when you now have lips out of sync with the words being spoken or audio cues that don’t correspond to the inputs you’re providing or the action on the screen.

Exactly. Up until recently, the vast, VAST majority of people using audio software were professionals who got their start by working with real knobs and real buttons on real mixing boards. Each of those controls was on that mixing board to serve its very specific, important purpose, and any audio software intending to replicate that functionality would need to provide some way for controlling the functionality provided by each of those knobs. Unfortunately, filling the screen with hundreds of pull-down menus or text boxes would have confused the hell out of their target audience, so it made sense for the time that the software's interactions reflected the real world's interactions. It may have been less convenient, but it was far more understandable.

In the last few years, however, we've seen a gradual democratization of the field as fully digital boards have replaced analog and hybrid boards, prices have dropped, and the pace of app development has skyrocketed. In a very short span of time, audio production has become the domain of the everyman, rather than being relegated to people who had access to or could afford professional equipment.

In response to this shift, we have seen a number of apps eschew skeuomorphic designs and instead go about fundamentally rethinking the nature of how we interact with audio (e.g. Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack may not be intended as a replacement for a mixing board, but it does do a lot of interesting things with audio). Many of them don't align especially well with the functionality provided by any particular audio device that currently exists. Instead, they'll combine subsets of functionality from a variety of devices in new and interesting ways that open up new approaches for interacting with audio. We're seeing a lot of design experimentation as developers try out new paradigms for interacting with audio, but, as you'd expect, most of these efforts are being aimed at newcomers who don't have established workflows, don't have the high requirements of professionals, and don't have rigid expectations about how their audio software should behave.

I'd expect that within the next few years we'll see a convergence on certain patterns for how we interact with audio when we aren't constrained by having to use knobs, buttons, and faders, and that we'll eventually see the professional caliber apps adopt those conventions as they become more mainstream. In the meantime, however, we're still in a state of transition.

Rogue Amoeba makes a nice program Airfoill that allows my Apple OSX to play nice with the Google Chromecast. Casting audio to my old Stereo is now a cinch. Why Google and Apple don't seem to get along is no mystery.

You mean, except for the one that was listed off immediately prior to that assertion? Though VLC is cross-platform, the Mac version is native to macOS.

I think what they meant to say was that no first-party apps support FLAC, but even that's not strictly true, since you can use Fluke or other utilities to enable support for FLAC in iTunes, QuickTime, and other first-party apps. Or maybe they meant that no Mac-exclusive apps support FLAC, but that's not true either, since there are plenty of Mac-only apps that can operate on FLAC files (e.g. Rogue Amoeba's Fission).

FLAC support isn't baked in, to be sure, but there have been simple ways to use FLAC files on Macs for the vast majority of the format's lifespan. I'm even planning to go through and re-rip my entire collection to FLAC in the next few months.

http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/ - definitely worth the $32 to be able to record anything passing through the computer's audio chain.

Downside (small): realtime. Upside: uses VST plugins to screw your sound all over the place if you want.

> If you want me to agree that Apple has done as much harm as Microsoft, you're going to be a long fucking time ranting.

Well, maybe they haven't done as much harm as Microsoft yet, but they're getting there and will cause immense harm in the next few years.

They essentially implemented Microsoft's Palladium letter by letter and made it socially acceptable and very very cool. They can't even keep the iDevices on the shelves, people are falling over each other to buy them. The same pundits who railed against Palladium now can't praise the iDevices enough.

And the Mac gets closer to that vision with every release. http://gizmodo.com/5885837/this-is-how-apple-will-block-unapproved-apps-with-mountain-lions-gatekeeper

Firefox is banned from iOS App Store and every day a new story of abusing a developer is in the news. http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2012/06/08/in-response-to-mr-schiller/

Their biggest contribution of making lockdown DRM acceptable is going to have a lot of repercussions in the long term. And none of that "not a monopoly" BS please. They are a platform that developers can't really avoid because they have most paying users. Also, three companies having 30% marketshare and allowed to lock down everything doesn't help things rather that one company having a monopoly. Look at the US wireless carriers for proof.

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

https://www.ohloh.net/p/axStream

http://nanocr.eu/software/justeport/

http://raop-play.sourceforge.net/

First two should do the trick for Mac and Windows. The third is DVD Jon's reference implementation. The last one looks like it can pretend to be a second sound card on Linux.

What phone are you talking about? I have loads of music ripped from my own CDs and purchased from Amazon on my iPhone. And I've been using a free utility to make my own ringtones for like two years.

I'm not saying that the iPhone is as open as most Android phones, but overstating your case only makes it seem like you're spreading FUD.

-Peter

"using Apple icons improperly"

I assume that you're referring to the Rogue Amoeba rejection here. As I understand that situation, it's not entirely clear that they did use Apple icons improperly. They weren't shipping any Apple icons in their software, they were obtaining the icons through documented API calls and using them in a nonconfusing and reasonable way -- the implication of doing so is that they were using the calls in precisely the way that Apple wanted. There certainly is nothing in the developer agreements that made this obviously a Bad Thing.

That Apple thinks differently points to one of the (perhaps the) major problem with iPhone development: the rules aren't clear, and appear to be largely arbitrary. That's anti-developer right there.

I haven't found an app that would let it function like an airport express

I have. Airfoil and it's affiliated speaker programs are great software and work fantastically well for me - anyone with airfoil installed on their computer can stream to my audio system. Quite reasonably priced, too.

You buy an app, you download it, you use it. [...] An average user is going to see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Agreed. Until...

If you get a new phone, you might have to pay that hefty $0.99 again.

Whoops! Then there will be hell to pay.

I never really had a problem with Apple's DRM. Then Apple released music videos. I bought one because I liked the song and I liked the video. Then I decided I wanted to put the song on my non-video capable iPod. Bzzt! Can I rip the audio into an AAC file? Nope. What can I do? Buy a copy of the song for an extra 99 cents.

Sorry. I got the song when I paid $1.99 for the video. Don't need to pay again, thanks. Audio Hijack to the rescue! And I haven't bought another music video from the iTunes Store since.

It's sort of like the old saw that a Conservative is a Liberal who got mugged. DRM doesn't bother people until they run up against it doing something they feel is legitimate. Then they become offended. And offended customers tend not to purchase again.

Or get a drag-and-drop application that will convert to the m4a format, change the extension and import it to the Ringtones section of iTunes automagically?

See? Computers are good for automating tedious and repetitive operations :)

how about the accessory market for iPods, which requires special licensing and fees?

Good job, you named another one. But the problem with is.....what, exactly? If Bose wants to sell a fancy iPod doc for over $200, why is it unreasonable for Apple to get a chunk from an accessory market that they created?

Airtunes, Airtunes, Airtunes

There's a difference between "proprietary" and "not holding your hand". This is a case of the latter:

With Airfoil you can take audio from any application and send to your AirPort Express units, as well as Apple TVs, and even other Macs and PCs running Airfoil Speakers! Transmit audio from RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, and other media players. Send audio from web-based applications like Pandora, Last.fm, and more. You can even stream audio from audio devices like RadioSHARK, XM and Sirius radios, all around your house.

Heck, how about this very patent? You "Yawn" about it because everybody abuses patents, which makes Apple a saint of course, because Microsoft does it too.

Yes, yawn. Apple is not a patent troll. If you want examples of that, look at how Adobe and Macromedia would sue eachother every six months over lame patents.

The problem of the anti-Mac fanboys is that they're making false comparisons between Microsoft (a convicted monopolist) and Apple, which doesn't have a monopoly on anything. If you don't like FairPlay or the licensing fee, nothing is preventing you from having a similar experience with similar devices from other manufacturers.

That a company doesn't operate the way you want it too != design flaw or abusive practice. Porche wont sell me a 911 Turbo for $30,000, but you don't see me whine about it.

There is such a thing for Macs. I would be quite surprised if no one's written such a thing for Windows/Linux.

Rogue Amoeba - Audio Hijack Pro: Record any audio on Mac OS X

The 7.4 Quicktime upgrade hosed Premiere Pro on two machines. I had to back out of the last security fix to get SSH to work again.

To summarize, your Premiere installation was broken by QuickTime because "Adobe products don't write the headers until it renders the movies" and your SSH was broken because you installed a hack that the developer admits had a bug that caused the issue.

Your problem isn't the operating system or that you're living on the bleeding edge of updates. Your problem is that you use software from two third-party developers that had bugs. Not Apple's problem.

Let me be clear here. They can code up operating systems that contain date-based expiration code all they want. So can anyone else. But when they try to prevent developers from modifying the OS so that it doesn't expire or from installing a homebrew OS, that's unethical.

And when have they done either of those things? Have there been assassinations? Does the iPhone give hackers electric shocks? I think we would have heard by now if that were true.

If you (I speak hypothetically, since your confusion makes it unlikely that you actually do any iPhone coding) want to reverse engineer and hack the firmware, go right ahead, just don't expect Apple to welcome you with candy, flowers and toppled statues of Jobs. If you brick it, you're on your own.

The beta firmware expired (and was replaced by Apple even before your remarks).

Not to let my inner fanboi take over, but I've been using multiple AirPort Express to do wireless whole-house audio for some time with great success. You don't even have to use iTunes to deliver the audio. I use Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba software. It is an elegant solution and one that can be done at a reasonable cost.

You can also burn the DRM music to CD in iTunes and then rip it into any format you want. It's a pain, but well worth doing. Not that I condone such behavior...

One could use "Audio Hijack Pro" (OS X) to capture this
stream-only programme to a file, then write to CD, or move
to iPod for portable listening...

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/

Another potentially real problem would be that vista as an actual OS in a computer runs slow as hell. People using virtual machines to 'test' Vista would end up with an even slower crummier machine and thus taint their perceptions for the negative. Nothing kills a product faster than the good old 'Word of Mouth' and there has been plenty badmouthing of Vista by all levels of tech support (not sales people though they gotta sell those Vista pieces of crap any way they can.

I have as much reason to hate MS's operating systems as the next guy. No, scratch that, I have vastly more reason to hate MS's OS's than the next guy, having watched them attempt to undermine and destroy OS/2 back in the early 90's, back before it become fashionable to hate MS OS's. I remember having to put up with the constantly shifting Win32s extensions for Windows 3.1, which were modified for the sole purpose of breaking OS/2 compatibility. Or their (then new) "per-processor license agreements". I haven't run a Windows machine as my desktop since 1992, having run OS/2, Linux, and Mac OS X (in that order) since that time.

As such, it really pains me greatly to say -- Vista under virtualization is surprisingly decent and well behaved. I've been running the 64-bit Business Edition of Vista inside VMware Fusion on a new 2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 2GB of RAM, and it's surprisingly quick and agile. Sure, I don't get Aero (which just looks bad to me anyhow -- honestly, how is an alpha-blended window title a good thing?), and I'm not using it to play games, and I don't use it to browse the web or do e-mail or digital media, but overall it has been very well behaved, and has been surprisingly quick to boot and run. I've even experimented with it running digital video, and the performance has been very good.

Now of course, I can see why they'd be worried about their DRM stance. As the VMware audio and video go through a virtualized driver/device to the Mac's hardware, it would be easy to use readily available tools to hijack the stream (like Rogue Amoeba's excellent Audio Hijack Pro.

Now there is no way in hell I'd ever run Windows as my primary OS -- still think their UI scheme is garbage, and don't like the fact they have both systematically loaded their systems with crap to appease other corporations while punishing their own end-users (DRM), and that they've frequently promised features they've never delivered (anyone else remember when they promised a stand-alone MS-DOS v7? Or when they promised an OODBMS-based filesystem for Cairo starting back in 1996? That same filesystem they didn't deliver with Vista? Or how about when they finally decided it was time to introduce a new filesystem for the 9X line that instead of using a well-designed FS they owned all the rights to, like HPFS or NTFS, they instead exacerbated the problem with a band-aid solution and invented FAT32?). It's still not what I look for in a desktop OS, but as much as it pains me to say it, on a modern machine (and the latest MacBook is hardly top-of-the-line, although it's certainly quite a capable system), under virtualization, Vista actually runs pretty acceptably. If I had to use it as my day-to-day system (and I don't use it much at all -- it's there to support a development toolset for some embedded programming I'm peripherally involved in), it certainly wouldn't be slow or painful to use -- it's instantly responsive, and has so far behaved very well (i.e.: it hasn't crashed yet).

Strange but true.

Yaz.

Then to the user, it is a watermark, as it's metadata embedded in the file that cannot be removed by consumer tools.

Except that it can.

I'm a Mac user and a fan of FOSS. I like OS X because it's easy to use but also because I can set up a MAMP server and have a fully functional portable development environment. I use NeoOffice, Gimpshop, Scribus and Inkscape because the price is right for what I use them for. I also use Transmit, Unison and TextMate because I haven't found FOSS software that's anywhere as good. I've also paid money for Rogue Amoeba's stuff because there's nothing in the FOSS world that touches it, and very little in the expensive world for that matter. How much are these apps? Transmit is $29.95 and Unison is $24.95, TextMate is EU39, AudioHijack, which is an amazing piece of software if you do stuff with audio, costs all of $32.
There is an undeniable overhead in developing for the Mac because you have to use dedicated hardware, but it's not that much, and the quality of the software is very high, so I think it's worth my throwing my pocket change at them. That Coda sure looks purty too...

I've got an audio editor on OS X called Fission. I opened one of my iTunes Plus files in Fission, then saved it back out (without touching anything), and it no longer has these tags. So, it seems like Fission will do what a lot of people want. Play nice...

You can find Fission here - http://www.rogueamoeba.com/

Buy AirPort Expresses. iTunes will drive multiple units in perfect sync. If you don't like iTunes or need to play from some other source, the Mac version of Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil can also drive multiple units in sync using any application on your computer as the source.

Surprise #2: The AppleTV doesn't require a "Widescreen TV" or an HDTV

Actually, it turns out it does support 4:3. I can only assume Apple aren't talking about this because they want to keep the whole marketing message dead simple.

And, there are tons of other entities besides major labels that provide filtering services. There are music reviews, both in print and online, there are indie record labels (To name just two, I like http://www.quannum.com/ and http://www.ninjatune.net/ but a lot of people on /. might not) that are specialized enough that if you like one of their artists you probably like several of them, and, of course there is the radio. These days, if there is not a good radio station near where you live, that's no excuse. I live in Maryland and listen to http://www.kexp.org/ in Seattle. I discover new artists that I love there all the time. (Rather than listen live or to the archived shows, I use this software: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/ I can schedule it to record specific shows that I like and then listen to them on my mp3 player.

Oh, and another thing, whether it's Amazon, or the All Music Guide, or some other place, the Web is filled with "if you like that then you might like this"-type recommendations. Furthermore, in the old days, you might get recommendations from somebody you knew in your town who was into the same kind of music that you are. Now, if you don't know anybody in your town with your tastes, you can probably find a whole group of people online who like the same stuff you do.

So, there are more ways to find music you like than ever before and with the ease of recording and the cost of recording equipment plummeting, there is more music being produced than ever before. (Yes, more bad music, but also more good music.)

In conclusion, the "I'll just listen to Led Zeppelin for the rest of my life" guy (I love LZ, by the way, but I love the wide spectrum of wonderful music out there and can't imagine limiting myself like that.) obviously just isn't that into music, which is fine. It's easier than ever to find great music and if you're using some method where you have to listen to 100 crappy songs for every one good one, then you're not going about it very logically. If, OTOH, you're content to just listen to the same record over and over again, that's cool too, but it can't be blamed on the lack of good music or the difficulty of finding it.

Yes, MS innovates by copying MacOS freeware.

From http://www.rogueamoeba.com/ to convert directly to MP-3 without using up one of my CD burns. Then I can load my iTunes into my Creative RAVE-MP. I just never saw the need to carry ALL of my music with me all the time. Just what I want for the drive I am about to take.

Take Airport Express. Apple has encrypted all the music that goes from your Mac to the Airport Express ... thus making it impossible for anyone other than Apple to take advantage of the audio capabilities of Airport Express in their applications.

iZac!

~Philly

...no need to burn iTunes purchased music to a CD and then rip to MP3. (if you're using OS X, that is.)

Audio Hijack intercepts the audio stream, stores it, and then gives you the option to safe it in diverse formats, including MP3 or a lossless format.

It also does the same thing with any streaming audio source, as well. Real, WMA, et al.

US$16.00. Worth every cent, in my opinion.

ANYthing that generates sound in OSX can be saved to a file in many different formats.

Streaming: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/
There are very few free alternatives and they are somewhat complicated

Audio Routing: http://www.jackosx.com/
Free

DJing: http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=tra ktor3_us
Not free, but can stream directly to a shoutcast server.

Almost any multi-channel soundcard works with OS X.

have you seen the *size* of the Apple human-interface guidelines book

Speaking as a Mac developer... the HIG is obsolete. Apple doesn't follow it, the third-party developers don't follow it. Apple has a "do as I do, not as I say" sort of thing going on. http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/Thoughts/iweb -hig-2006-02-06-11-30.html

Jennifer, you basically have two options. One would be to record it on your computer (which I assume is a Mac because that's what the Audio 85 is designed for) using a utility like Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba. The other way would be to use splitter cables for both the audio in and out and use a separate recording device, like a minidisc player or another computer, to record.

I'm curious though, what method for recording were you using before (that resulted in the hissing)?

If you're running this on a Mac, try Audio Hijack Pro. It's the best recording tool I've used for recording audio from applications. http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/

__
"First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." --Mohandas K. Gandhi
"SURPRISE!" --Nathuram Godse http://ngodse.tripod.com/

nd no i'm not going to connect my computer up to the stereo becase evry time someone IM's me or I get an email or windows breaks you get horible alert noises that would drive everyone insane!

There are wired and wireless appliances for the house. Philips have a load like this and you can pick that and this from Dlink up from your local PCWorld. At home I have an Airport Express plugged into my stereo and Airfoil feeding every kind of audio media into it. Even Sky have got into the act with their Skygnome (needs Java, isn't really worth it). The hardware is there, basically.

Per application audio control? Like Detour on OS X? (All audio streams are per app but this lets you have fine control over them).

As the Senator's webmaster, I can tell you he doesn't read his podcasts. He does have communications staff and researchers as all Senators do, but he gets the point of podcasts and prides himself not reading from a prepared statement.

The usual process is he decides what to talk about that week, writes down a few bullet points and then I hit record. Occasionally he'll have supporting docs as well if there are statistics or quotes he wants to use, but in general it's an extemporaneous podcast.

Take yesterday's podcast for example, he didn't have any staff in his meeting with the President, so it doesn't make sense that someone else would write what the meeting was about just for him to read it.

For the podcasts he recorded from the Middle East, I set up a Skype Voicemail account that he called and I pulled it off with Audio Hijack Pro.

Plug: Subscribe to the podcast with iTunes or with your favorite podcast client(rss feed).

Ok, this is a little bit of work, but on the Mac, I can use Audio Hijack (Pro) for this purpose -- hijack the browser, then hit the Mute button in Audio Hijack. I also find this useful when the browser's volume balance is out-of-whack with iTunes -- I can hijack the output volume and lower it. All in all, I've found Audio Hijack Pro very useful, for more than just these purposes.

Will this help with the Sirius streaming?

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

Using JACK I regularly stream realtime audio (iTunes, QuickTime) from my PowerBook running OS X Tiger to my Debian Linux server where my speakers are attached with minimal latency.

There's a good port of JACK available for OS X and jack.udp readily compiles on OS X. I use Audio Hijack Pro as my JACK source to grab audio from applications and send them to JACK which then uses jack.udp to send via the network.

Of course if you're running Linux on your workstation, everything you need should be included in your distro's repositories already. I have no idea about Windows support.

Capture the FM audio with your tuner card on a Mac. Then use Nicecast to stream it. Nicecast can basically stream any audio on your Mac.

I don't doubt the quality of Mac products here, but I doubt their breadth. I agree that Microsoft "forces you to live by their standards," but Apple does too. I bought an Airport Express with the understanding that I could only use it with iTunes*. To use an iPod with any other music store's DRM is impossible unless that music store lets you burn and rerip. The same can be said of the iTunes Music Store, which works with no other devices besides the iPod unless you burn and rerip your tracks. Apple locks you in pretty hard once you've bought in. Just look at Mac OS X: short end-of-life times mean that a Mac OS X version is effectively unsupported in three years whereas Windows 2000 and Windows XP (which went on sale in 2001) are still supported as we head into 2006.

I bought a PowerBook because I had read good reviews of Apple's support, but after long lines at the Genius Bar and a three-week repair turnaround to replace a hard drive this past January, I've been less than impressed with Apple's ability to support their products. I'm glad I bought AppleCare at the outset because I don't trust this machine to withstand three years of daily use on its own.

* Or Airfoil, but that's $25 shareware that I didn't feel was worth the cost

That is, if you have a Mac.

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/

Grabs audio on the fly from any app--local or streamed. I use it to make sound clips from my DVDs.

http://rogueamoeba.com/