I am hoping there will be a simple solution out there for this....

I am trying to simplify my desk as much as possible, and I really like my Squeezebox. I only want one set of speakers on my desk, so I would like to take the optical feed from my Squeezebox into my Mac Pro, and have the Pro then output both it's own audio and the Squeezebox at the same time.

I can get this to work, but, I have to open Quicktime and select New Audio Recording to get the Squeezebox audio to come though. This is a bit of a pain. Google fu must be weak today as I can't find another solution, anyone know of something that will automatically do this for me?

Cheers

Cris.

This is one of those features that has gone away and come back from version to version of Mac OS. Frankly, I don't know what the current state is and I'm not sure exactly which versions of the OS in the past few years have messed with it.

What you're looking for is a "monitor" or "play-through" feature. There used to be a check-box in the Audio-Input prefs to turn on this functionality. This would play back the input source. There's definitely no such check-box in 10.5.6

It should be easy for a third party program to turn this on as well as provide mixing capabilities however. Something with a little unobtrusive control in the menu bar would probably work very well for you.

Have you taken a look at the products of Rogue Amoeba to see if anything fits the bill?

And one does: Line-In will do Play-through.

Thanks Bruno

For some reason I just couldn't find anything. It would be perfect if I could get it to run hidden from start up, but at least it works much better than the Quicktime method.

When my new speakers turn up I will post a picture of my new set up.

Cheers

Cris.

If I have the chance I'll give the software a test run this afternoon to see what it looks like. Then I can recommend how you can run it hidden (it's a small edit to a plist within the app)

EDIT: Ok, it's easy to hide the program's dock icon and prevent it from showing a menu. This is done by editing its info.plist to tell the OS that the program is a background process.

However, there isn't a way to hide the program's UI as easily. I'm going to look into something for that in a second though, just after I reinstall the Apple Developer Tools (new system).

How to hide the application from the Dock and prevent it from having a menu:

Quit the application
Right-click the application icon and select "Show Package Contents"
Open the Contents folder
Open the Info.plist file in a text editor
Add the following within the <dict> block:

Save the file

To test, restart the application. You'll notice it no longer shows up in the dock nor does it have a menu. You can make the settings you wish and then manually hide the UI by pressing CMD-H on your keyboard.

Don't hide it just yet.

To make it start up hidden when you log in do the following:

Open System Preferences
Select the Accounts pref item
Select the Login Items tab
Drag the application to that tab's list
Turn ON the check-box next to that app in the list
Close System Preferences

Now, in the application, make the settings you want, test that it does what you need (you'll need to turn on the PASS-THROUGH button) and then log out and back in again to test the whole thing.

To quit the application you'll need to use either Activity Monitor or Terminal (kill process#) to quit the process, since you won't be able to get back to its UI to issue a CMD-Q.

If you don't mind it appearing in the dock, then just skip the editing of the plist and at least you'll have the UI hidden at startup.

If you want to freak the hell out of someone with a notebook, such as MacBook Pro, install Line-In without their knowledge. Then set it up as I've described above. In its settings, pick MIC for the input and the built-in speakers for the output. Adjust the Sound prefs so that you don't get immediate and painful feedback. Adjust it so that the Mic can just pick up the sound of your typing and quietly echo back the pops and clicks through the speakers.

I can almost guarantee that if someone doesn't know it's been done they're going to freak right out.

They'll also get a nice surprise when playing back audio through their speakers -that concert hall effect.

Awesome, Thanks Bruno

Works a charm!

Cheers

Cris.

I'm wondering... Instead of setting up a third party program for line-in and then hiding it, shouldn't there be a simpler way to enable this functionality from a shell prompt, even though there's no checkbox for it in the UI? (I know nothing about Macs in this regard, it just seems logical to me.)

I'm pretty sure if there is any other way to do it (other than programmatically) then it isn't being discussed on the internets. Line-In gets recommended a lot.

The funny thing is that I didn't even have to Google for it the first time. As soon as I saw Cris asking about audio on Mac OS, Rogue Amoeba came instantly to mind and I immediately went to their site to see if they had any software to accomplish that task.

As I said originally, some versions of Mac OS (definitely in the 9.x days) had a check-box in the sound properties to enable this. I suppose Apple felt it was an application-level preference rather than something you'd set up as a system default and have subsequently retired that property.

Some people have also recommended Mac OS X's "Audio Midi Setup" utility. But reports seem to indicate that the required "Through" check-boxes are now disabled for most people, which I've verified on my own machine.

That was first thing I thought of, in fact I once had this inadvertently set and wondered why my iBook was howling round.

Audio MIDI Setup worked on my MBP in the Tiger days however I'm now running Leopard and that 'Thru' checkbox is now disabled too.

I have found after a few hours use that I was getting audio break ups. Turning passthru off then back on cleared them.

This lead to experimentation and I have found using the analogue inputs gives me a much better sound, the DAC in the squeezebox is much better than the one in the Mac Pro, having said that the sound coming out of iTunes via the line out is also pretty good, so it's just the conversion from digital in to line out that sucks the big one.

I have bagged myself a little set of Bose powered speakers from eBay (I know I know Bose are over priced and rubbish). They are quite old, about 10 years I think, but the sound is really good, maybe a little too good

Cheers

Cris.