How do I record in audio from a browser?

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hey,

this might sound like a standard question that’s been answered many, many times, but I couldn’t find anything to resolve this problem.

I have a Mac mini M1 after switching from Windows after being a Windows user for 26 years.

How do I record from a browser into Audacity on Mac? I tried literally everything. Audacity gives me “Core Audio” as an option and thats it.

How can I play music from youtube on a browser and record it into audacity?

2

I’m a Windows user but: [u]Tutorial - Recording Computer Playback on Mac[/u].

Somebody once said, “Everything on a Mac is either easy or impossible.” :smiley:

There are also websites & applications for “stealing” (downloading) audio/video from the Internet. Then you can optionally extract the audio from the file.

3

Thanks for the reply. But I don’t get it. I have a MOTU M2 Audio Interface and under "input I only can choose “M2”.
Bildschirmfoto 2021-09-03 um 20.00.43.png

4

Unlike Windows, a Mac can’t natively route audio from your browser to recording software.

To make this happen without routing a physical cable from output to input, you’ll need either:

5

In terms of a paid app, Audio Hijack is a better choice, from the same company.

– Bill

6

medcalf wants to record in Audacity though. Can you route to Audacity from Audio Hijack without Loopback or similar? Not sure.

7

The MOTU M2 has loopback, which doesn’t seem to work under Big Sur, even though I have the newest MOTO driver installed. The driver doesn’t offer anything. In Windows I can change the sample- and bitrate and under system settings I can choose the loopback option - same in Audacity itself. There are multiple “source” options.

I don’t think there is a way to manually route anything. There’s a USB-C cable coming from the Mac mini M1 (basically audio out) into the MOTU M2 (basically audio in). There are two mono inputs in the front but they can only be used with other external devices.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to rant but it’s pretty baffling that the newest MacOS can’t do what Windows 95 could do. Maybe it’s Audacity for Mac that doesn’t offer the loopback option, I don’t know. In any case it should not be hard to record audio from the browser, e.g. a youtube video where you need a 10 second clip from a speech or something.

8

Yes, it’s a Mac thing and always has been, def not Audacity’s problem.

Motu seem to think the M2’s loopback will work on M1 Big Sur though, so I imagine the Motunation forum will help you out one way or another, even if it’s just to say that it actually doesn’t.

Forget the manual routing. It is possible but I’m not suggesting you use it.

If you get no joy with the M2, youtube is chock-full of tutorials for Blackhole. It’s simple to set up for your purpose.

9

I managed to get it to work - kind of.

You have to select 3+ channels in Audacity to record Audio, because cannels 3-6 (6 is max. on the M2) are the loopback channels. But you’ll have as many record lanes as you’ve selected in Audacity. Lanes 1 and 2 don’t have any audio and all the other lanes are just mono.
Bildschirmfoto 2021-09-07 um 13.21.54.png

10

Audio Hijack makes it super simple to record the audio from any app to AIF, WAV or MP3. Then import the recording into Audacity for editing.

– Bill

11

I’m not stingy or anything but I paid over 1000 dollars for the Mac, almost 200 dollars for the Motu M2 and 600 dollars or so for Ableton Live already. It really shouldn’t be necessary to spend another 70 or 80 dollars on an app that can record audio from a browser, which should be an absolute standard feature of every OS… well it was since the Audio Recorder in Windows 95.

12

I managed to get it to work flawlessly with Blackhole.

13

Smashing, well done :slight_smile:

14

Another vote for Blackhole from me. Excellent piece of software.
https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole [Link updated by moderator to the open-source page rather than the commercial page]