I have just bought an Apple Mac Book Pro specifically for music and cannot record what is being played by the computer with Audacity.
I am a previous Windows user and have recorded with Audacity for many years. I record from YouTube etc with audacity and play back through Traktor Pro 3 DJ software.
I have installed Audacity on my Mac which has Sonoma 14.5 os. I can upload music files to Audacity and play them either through Traktor or the built in lap top speakers. I can also edit those files.
However if I play something on YouTube and try to record it in stereo I get nothing. I have tried altering the sound permissions in Sonoma but this hasn’t worked.
Looking at the internet this appears to be a fairly well known problem but I can’t find the solution.
Can you help? Has anyone found a way round this problem or do I need to install loopback software?
Hey there! Dealing with recording desktop audio on a MacBook Pro can be tricky. Have you tried using loopback software like Loopback by Rogue Amoeba? It’s designed to route audio between applications and could potentially solve your issue. Good luck!
I was hoping to resolve the issue within the MAC OS but from reading what’s on the web that looks trickier than my skills - which is why I’m here.
I can always revert to Windows for recording and transferring to the Mac but I wanted to move to a Mac and have that as my only computer - having to use two types and transferring is faff I have been trying to avoid by doing this.
I noticed the Loopback software and was holding out to see if I could resolve the issue without having to buy that. If anyone has any experince of this, guidance gratefully received.
If you want to record some sound which is playing on your Mac (from youTube, or whatever) you need to install additional software. One such thing would be “Blackhole”, it is freely available.
You install this package, then set the audio output in systems settings to Blackhole, and the recording input in Audacity also to Blackhole. If you also want to hear what you are recording, you need to activate “software playthrough” in Audacity (it is called differently in Audacity v.3.5.x).
There was also a package called “Soundflower”, which also was free- but I do not know wheter it works on the latest Macs / macOS versions. . It is no longer available at the website of RogueAmoeba.
If you’re going the paid route, I’d recommend Audio Hijack over Loopback (both from Rogue Amoeba). Audio Hijack is cheaper. It has advantage and disadvantage that it is a stand alone audio capture program. The advantage is that you can set it to record from a browser (for example), but mute that audio and carry on doing something else. The disadvantage is that you need to import the captured audio into Audacity (instead of recording directly into Audacity). This is what I do and I find it easy and convenient.
After your advice I had a look at some YouTubes and chose to download BlackHole: Virtual Audio Driver. Getting it installed was fine, Audacity and Sonoma recognised it but I still couldn’t record from my desktop so I went back to the YouTubes and found a reference to changing settings in Audio Midi Settings, which I did, and I can now record from my desktop into Audacity, which is great.
This is the first time I’ve used this/any forum for advice and it worked. So thanks for all your suggestions and help. Hope I won’t be back too often from now on.
