Ambrosia Software released Wiretap Anywhere, a System Preference that allows you to route sound to sound editing applications, regardless where the sound originates from. Wiretap Anywhere can route the sounds that Mail makes, together with microphone input and iTunes music to for example SoundTrack Pro. It's the best sound tool of 2008 for podcasting, software training, and Skype or iChat recording.
Wiretap Anywhere offers computer sound routing for Macs. No more, no less. By doing so, it allows you to create aggregate (virtual) sound devices. For example, if you have an iSight and a USB microphone connected to your Mac and you want the sound of the iSight and microphone to come together in one channel in SoundTrack, GarageBand, or Logic, Wiretap Anywhere enables you to take the two input devices together and present it to those applications as if it were one device.
Better yet, you can also take together a real device like a microphone and software sound—let’s say the sounds Mail makes—and record those in any sound editing application. Finally, you can record the remote caller’s voice in a Skype call or iChat session and route that to any sound editing software.
In one word, Wiretap Anywhere frees you from having to deal with “yet another sound editing tool”, and use the applications you’re used to dealing with. It enables professional-level sound editing using any sounds that you can hear or reproduce on a Mac, simply because it allows you to use any professional sound editing program you like.
Audio Unit Generator
Of course, there are caveats. Wiretap Anywhere won’t work without some adjustment with for example Logic Pro. Applications like Logic Pro expect aggregate devices—devices that have an input as well as an output stream. For that purpose, Wiretap Anywhere includes an Advanced Settings panel. And the odd program may crash on the presence of Wiretap Anywhere—ScreenFlow used to, until Telestream issued a patch.
In addition to the virtual devices created with WireTap Anywhere, the software also has a generator Audio Unit. Audio Units are Apple’s plug in technology for creating audio effects and virtual instruments. Generator Audio Units are a type of Audio Unit that actually create, or generate audio as opposed to just manipulating an existing audio signal.
With WireTap Anywhere’s Generator Audio Unit you can route the audio of any and all applications running to any Generator Audio Unit compatible application from within that application.
For all these reasons, I think Wiretap Anywhere deserves to be nominated as the best sound tool of 2008.
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