Soundflower & Audacity

Recording from an audio stream in real time is sometimes necessary when files are not available for download. Worse still if there is no direct digital feed ripper for the stream.

With Windows, one only has to switch the recording input to 'Wave' to record whatever is played by the soundcard. With the Mac, it isn't as simple. For the Mac, internet audio goes directly from source to soundcard to output.

So, what I learnt is that you can use Soundflower to act as an output target, bypassing the soundcard, AND as an input source, hence allowing recording from it.

Having installed Soundflower, the Sound Preferences need to be set to use it as Output and Input:



And using a simple audio recorder like Audacity, the recording can then be exported as an mp3.