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Streaming Recorder for the Mac


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Does anyone know of a decent streaming audio content recorder for the Mac? I'm looking for one that will allow me to go to an internet Radio URL on my browser (Safari) and then tell the "recorder" app to record that stream. I've looked at several, but it wasn't clear to me from the descriptions given that any of the one's I looked at would do that. Most seemed to just be there for note taking from the computer's microphone. Of course, I would prefer it if the solution were free, but I am willing to pay for an app that worked the way I need it to work. Thanks, in advance, for any guidance that you nice folks can provide to me on this matter.

George

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Audio Hijack does exactly what you want.

 

https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/

 

+1 on this. It's a great piece of software.

 

--David

Listening Room: Mac mini (Roon Core) > iMac (HQP) > exaSound PlayPoint (as NAA) > exaSound e32 > W4S STP-SE > Benchmark AHB2 > Wilson Sophia Series 2 (Details)

Office: Mac Pro >  AudioQuest DragonFly Red > JBL LSR305

Mobile: iPhone 6S > AudioQuest DragonFly Black > JH Audio JH5

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If you can find out the actual URLs for the internet radio streams that you are interested in, the free UPnP media server, MinimServer (familiar to those that use UPnP/DLNA renderers for their audio file playing), can be setup to record external streams, via its optional MinimStreamer transcoder component.

 

It is a bit of a manual process to setup, via a rudimentary UI & stream playlist file(s), but it does have a nice scheduled recording feature. You'll also be recording the stream itself, so it isn't using sound capture from the computer's sound system:

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https://support.apple.com/kb/PH5882?locale=en_US

 

Then if you want just audio, you can extract it and discard the video portion. (It might be possible to just capture audio directly too.)

 

Maybe Quicktime Pro (does Apple still offer that?) will do this, but when I tried to do a screen record while Safari played a streaming radio station (WCRB Boston), the audio was not recorded. The sound sources while doing this are the computer's built-in microphone or an attached microphone (analog or USB). I suspect that this feature was designed so that folks could make on-the-fly instructional demos. While they talk someone through some operation while watching the demonstrator is actually doing what he he is describing. Internal audio seems to be ignored. Thanks for the suggestion though. It was certainly worth the try.

 

Oh yes, and it is possible to capture only audio as you surmised, but again, it's capturable only from a microphone, either the computer's built-in mike or an external attached mike.

George

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Oh yes, and it is possible to capture only audio as you surmised, but again, it's capturable only from a microphone, either the computer's built-in mike or an external attached mike.

 

Soundflower is a virtual audio device that will enable QuickTime Player to record the output of Safari, iTunes and other apps. Note that 'maximum' (i.e. lossless) quality recordings of QuickTime Player are 32-bit signed integer AIFC, and 'high' quality are 320 kbps AAC. If using 'maximum', you'll probably want to convert the recordings to a 16-bit format to prevent wasting storage space.

 

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/tag/2.0b2

 

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 23.52.26.png

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Maybe Quicktime Pro (does Apple still offer that?) will do this, but when I tried to do a screen record while Safari played a streaming radio station (WCRB Boston), the audio was not recorded. The sound sources while doing this are the computer's built-in microphone or an attached microphone (analog or USB). I suspect that this feature was designed so that folks could make on-the-fly instructional demos. While they talk someone through some operation while watching the demonstrator is actually doing what he he is describing. Internal audio seems to be ignored. Thanks for the suggestion though. It was certainly worth the try.

 

Oh yes, and it is possible to capture only audio as you surmised, but again, it's capturable only from a microphone, either the computer's built-in mike or an external attached mike.

 

I recorded the video (and audio) streaming of the Santa Clara Grateful Dead 50 concerts last summer just by using quicktime. It was some sort of Adobe Flash video embedded in Safari. I did this with the Quicktime that was bundled with the operating system. Although I have soundflower, I don't think I had to use it for this. I will try to reconstruct what I did.

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 8.36.31 PM.png

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 8.36.44 PM.png

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 8.37.11 PM.png

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Soundflower is a virtual audio device that will enable QuickTime Player to record the output of Safari, iTunes and other apps. Note that 'maximum' (i.e. lossless) quality recordings of QuickTime Player are 32-bit signed integer AIFC, and 'high' quality are 320 kbps AAC. If using 'maximum', you'll probably want to convert the recordings to a 16-bit format to prevent wasting storage space.

 

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/tag/2.0b2

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25199[/ATTACH]

 

This works perfectly! The instructions are clear and the combination of Soundflower, the Audio Midi Setup application and Quicktime (not even the Pro version, just the regular Quicktime that came with El Capitan) allows me to record from iTunes, Safari, whatever, and it's FREE, laddie!

 

Thanks to all who responded. Audio HiJack also looks like a good solution, but $50 is $50 and I want to try the free solution first.

 

Cheers

George

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I recorded the video (and audio) streaming of the Santa Clara Grateful Dead 50 concerts last summer just by using quicktime. It was some sort of Adobe Flash video embedded in Safari. I did this with the Quicktime that was bundled with the operating system. Although I have soundflower, I don't think I had to use it for this. I will try to reconstruct what I did.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25202[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25203[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25204[/ATTACH]

 

I couldn't get it to see the computer's internal audio stream without the Soundflower software, but with it, this works perfectly. All I have to do (in the one case) is open Safari, go to the WCRB web-site and click on the live Boston Symphony concert stream that I wish to capture, launch Quicktime, choose "New Audio Recording" from the 'File' menu that you show above, and in the pop-up that appears next to the record button, choose "Soundflower 2 CH". Immediately the 'record meter' starts to modulate. Hit the record button and you are off! It's simple, versatile and effective.

 

Soundflower gives me two different "quality" settings in the pop-up next to the record button in Quicktime: "High" and "Maximum". Since Maximum makes HUGE files, and the audio I'm capturing is 192 kbps VBR MP3 at best, "high" seems to give me the same quality on playback as does "Maximum" (It's source limited, after all). Anyway this is a very effective solution.

George

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Well, it is working. That is the important thing!

 

I've also used Soundflower and Audacity to do this (which is a good alternative if you don't trust Quicktime to do the right thing). Audacity is free and open-source.

 

Yep, Soundflower and Audacity works and can make bit-perfect recordings.

 

Regarding Audio Hijack: I've never been able to get it to make bit-perfect recordings on either Mavericks, Yosemite or El Capitan, whereas its predecessor, named Audio Hijack Pro, would produce perfect results with Snow Leopard.

 

I've found Audio Hijack's (but not old Audio Hijack Pro) recordings to be distorted by a resampling (not change of sample rate) which seems very similar to the effect of the optional drift correction that can be enabled in a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup.

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I've used Audio Hijack Pro for many years--and also Rogue Ameoba's Fission s/w.

 

I remember some very weird issues with Soundflower installation--somehow it really put its hooks into my OS. Also reading some things about it lately with regards compatibility with El Capitan.

 

Just came across a nice looking app called Sound Siphon 2 at Static Z Software Was recommended by people who switched from Soundflower.

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Well, it is working. That is the important thing!

 

I've also used Soundflower and Audacity to do this (which is a good alternative if you don't trust Quicktime to do the right thing). Audacity is free and open-source.

 

This is what I use too when wanting to capture an audio stream: simply set soundflower both as the output device in system preferences and as the input device in Audacity.

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