Mac Daddy Monday: Recording OS X’s Internal Audio

Ever needed to record the audio tracks coming out of Firefox, iTunes or iDVD? Logic and Soundflower provide an easy solution to that. Soundflower is an OS X extension that allows passing audio among different applications. In simpler words, Soundflower will receive the audio coming out of an application (like Safari); the audio will then be routed to Logic (or any other Digital Audio Workstation), treating it exactly as the signal of the guitar you plug in your audio interface. Soundflower should already be installed in your Mac: in case it isn’t, you can download it for free from www.cycling74.com.

First thing to do it setting Soundflower as your output device: go to System Preferences and select the Sound panel.

In the Output tab, set Soundflower (2ch) as your output device and close the window.


Now create a new project in your DAW (Logic in the example) and add a stereo audio track. Launch the Preferences panel and in the Audio and Devices tabs select Soundflower (2ch) as the Input Device.


Apply changes and record enable the track (it should be already set on Input 1-2). Now launch the application you intend to stream the audio from: as soon as you’ll start the recording in Logic, all the audio coming from the application will be recorded.


Keep in mind that you can change Logic and Firefox with any other DAW or audio source. Those are just two variables, the equation doesn’t change.

-by LC Tech Blog contributor Andreas Russo