As a podcaster and streamer, routing audio on a Mac has historically been an absolute headache. I use SoundPipe to manage a multi-track setup: I route my browser audio (for capturing reaction clips), my music app (for background tracks), and my microphone into completely separate virtual tracks that feed directly into OBS and Logic Pro.
It is fantastic because it finally gives Mac users a visual, intuitive mixing board for virtual devices. Instead of blindly routing audio and guessing if an invisible virtual cable is clipping, I can see the meters and control the levels of every app in one clean, unified interface. It takes a notoriously complex, technical problem and makes it drag-and-drop simple.
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@chrisbattarbee Nice, the "every route is a visible wire" UI is what BlackHole always missed, hand-wiring multi-output devices in Audio MIDI Setup is genuinely painful. One use case worth covering: piping a specific app's audio into a browser tab for web-based recording/streaming tools. Clean launch.
The visible-wire routing with live meters on every channel is what would pull me off BlackHole — hand-wiring multi-output devices in Audio MIDI Setup, you can never actually see what's flowing. I'd use this mostly to record calls and screen captures: do the routes I set up persist across reboots and show back up as a stable input in OBS or Zoom on next launch, or is it a rewire each session?
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@leo404 Hey Leopold, yes they persist across reboots! Should be stable in OBS and Zoom too!
@chrisbattarbee Amazing — persistence across reboots is what makes it viable for a daily call-recording setup. One more: when SoundPipe feeds system audio plus mic into OBS as a single input, can I keep them on separate channels so I can pull the mic down in post, or does it sum them into one stream?
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@leo404 Yep exactly - so in this example you have spotify and my mic being mixed in channels 1 and 2 then im also routing my mic to channel 3 - so you can play channel 1 and 2 to the stream and record channel 3 :)
Nice, the mix-to-stream / mic-on-a-separate-channel-to-record split is exactly the setup I had in mind. Day-one question on the routing: once I wire that channel-3 mic split, does SoundPipe expose it as its own named input device that OBS and Zoom just list automatically, or do I have to re-map channel 3 by hand each time I open the app?
As a producer this solves a real headache — getting a standalone synth or an iPad music app straight into Ableton without a hardware loopback cable. Quick q: can I route a DAW's master back into an input channel on the same machine for internal resampling, or does feeding an app into itself get weird? The sub-15ms latency + per-channel meters look perfect for that.
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@lennoxbeflying Hey Ziang, so you should be able to no worries, as long as you dont end up routing that channel back into the soundpipe virtual audio device again (or else you get a feedback cycle!)
I love the visual wire concept reminds me of Reason or old-school analog patches, qq does the app support multi-channel audio output (like 5.1 or 7.1 mapping) ? congrats to ship @chrisbattarbee
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@vikramp7470 Hey Vikram, it does, all the way up to 64 channels for a single virtual audio device! (couldn't fit them all in the screenshot)
@chrisbattarbee Nice! Support for 64 channels opens up a lot of possibilities, all the best for launch🙌
Does this work with Discord and OBS at the same time, or do I have to pick one app to receive the routed audio?
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@muammer1177418 Yup works with multiple apps. Just select the virtual device as the input in however many apps you like
Curious how this handles latency when routing mic input live into something like a Zoom call? That kind of sync issue would be a dealbreaker for me.
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@canancssc Hey Canan, so overall e2e latency is typically 10ms, worst case 15ms. For Zoom this would be entirely unnoticeable!
Been wanting proper per-app audio control on the Mac for years, the one system slider for everything drives me up a wall. Does SoundPipe let me route a single app's output on its own, like sending Kontakt to one interface while everything else stays on my headphones? I run virtual instruments and the routing is the part macOS makes weirdly hard.
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@chielephant Hey Anthony, it does indeed. You can send just Kontakt to the virtual audio device (then wherever you like)!