Routing Audio from Your Apps Directly Into Your Zoom Call (Or Other Voice Chat App) with Loopback

UPDATE: Learn more about Loopback from my interview with CEO Paul Kafasis on my podcast. Listen and subscribe below…

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Loopback is an app that creates custom audio ins and outs for the Mac using the audio of other apps.

Have you been teaching a class in Google Meet or Zoom and wanted to play a song from iTunes for your digital classroom? Or perhaps a YouTube video or any other application with audio?

Sure, you can play it right on your computer and let the audio from your speakers go straight back into the microphone input of your computer. This works ok in my opinion. But it isn't going to produce a pure representation of the audio I am trying to send. And in some cases, it creates issues with echo, delay, or a nasty feedback loop.

So what do you do? Rogue Amoeba makes excellent Mac apps that, for lack of better explanation, hack into the audio system of your Mac. I have written about Audio Hijack here before, their app that allows you to record audio from other applications (and that's just the start of all the powerful things it can do). Rogue Amoeba also makes an excellent utility called Loopback.

What does Loopback do? Think about your computer's audio settings. You have an Input and an Output. The Input is, by default, your computer microphone, and the Output is the speakers. If you connect an audio interface that has higher quality microphone and speakers plugged in, you would need to set the Input and Output to that interface to get the input and out put the be the microphone and speakers, respectively.

Usually my computer microphone is a Device that can be set to the computer’s Input. In the scenario above, Loopback has allowed me to combine the audio from my microphone and the Music app into a new audio Device called “Music+Mic” that can be selected as the input of my Mac or any individual app.

Your Inputs and Outputs can be controlled from the Sound settings of your computer. Some audio apps also let you control how, specifically, they behave. For example, I have manually set up GarageBand and Skype to use my audio interface as the Device I use for input so that whether I am recording for my podcast, or simply catching up with a relative, they hear me through the microphone, no matter what Device my Mac’s audio Output is set to in the System Preferences.

Loopback allows you to create Inputs and Outputs that are accessible to your Mac's Sound settings as well as your apps. In the example above, I have created an Input that combines my Mac's microphone (the usual Input) with the output of the Apple Music app, something I might want to use to play a recording example for my students in a Google Meet.

Selecting my new audio Device from the System Preferences.

Look now as I go to my computer's Sound settings, and I can select this new custom Input to be used across the entire operating system! This way, when I am in a Google Meet, students are hearing both me speaking through the mic and all of the output of the Music app.

Now I can route my band warm up tracks, reference recordings, or any other audio I desire, into my Google Meet classrooms.

🔗 Choir Creator: All-in-One Virtual Ensemble Maker App, Shipping Next Month on iOS

New app for creating virtual ensembles coming next month. Click the link to read more information directly from the developer’s website and sign up to be notified when it is released.

Choir Creator: The All-in-One Virtual Choir Builder:

Choir Creator is the easiest way to organize and produce a virtual choir video. Releasing to the United States and Canada in August 2020 for iPhone and iPad running iOS 12.4 or later.

From the YouTube demo on the developer’s website, it looks like the workflow solves nearly all of the friction of this process. The business model of charging the teacher a considerable (but reasonable) amount of money and nothing to the student is solid.

That said, this process does not leave a lot of room for control. I would like to be able to, for example, turn up the tuba if it isn’t loud enough. I can think of numerous other ways that I would want to exercise more control than the output of this app would allow. That said, there is a strong market for software that makes it this easy. I think it may do well.

It’s iOS only at launch, which is not a surprise, but will limit school systems where students are using Chromebooks.

Edit: I have spoken with the developers of this app. They informed me that Choir Creator will support basic audio editing features at launch, like changing the volume and panning of each track. They said they have more audio editing features to come. Good to know!

🔗 Business Chat Now Available to All Zendesk Customers

From MacRumors:

Apple Business Chat Now Available to All Zendesk Customers:

Apple and Zendesk today made Business Chat generally available for all businesses that use Zendesk Support, over two years since the service first went into beta.

Business chat is a really useful feature that lets you connect with customer support right in the Apple Messages app.

The feature takes email out of the equation and improves the entire user experience to where contacting support feels as simple as texting a friend.

I have used it to get a hold of Apple and Home Depot and it's a dream. By Zendesk integrating it, it will become easy for the numerous large and small companies to take advantage of it. The more widespread this becomes, the less often you will need to search Google for the exact page of a companies website you are looking for, fill out a web form, get tons of confirmation responses, and wait forever.

🎙 #13 - Exploring Noteflight Learn, with John Mlynczak

John Mlynczak returns to the show to discuss Noteflight's new integration with Sound Check and offers advice to educators about teaching online this fall, and what we can learn from it.

Show Notes:

• Could not find the exact article I read on Zoom fatigue but there are plenty. Here’s one.
• Noteflight
• Noteflight Learn
• SoundCheck Integrates with Noteflight
• Match My Sound Partnership
• PracticeFirst
• MusicFirst
• School of Rock
• My Choral Coach
• Dorico
• Music Ed Tech Talk Episode 10 - Designing Curriculum and Assessing Students with FileMaker, with Ben Denne
• FileMaker
• Virtual Tuning Disk | EMMSmusic.com
• Tonal Energy Tuner
• Soundtrap
• The Rest is Noise | Alex Ross
• Igor Levit is Like No Other Pianist - The New Yorker | Alex Ross
• Igor Levit and Franz Welser-Möst | Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in Bb Major, op. 19

App of the Week: Robby - Kindle/Audible | John - TikTok

Album of the Week: Robby - Igor Levit - Beethoven Piano Sonatas | John - Hamilton on Disney+

Where to Find Us: Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book | John - Twitter

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Creating a Focused Home Lesson Planning Environment with Dark Noise and a Siri Shortcut

There's a new update to my favorite noise app, Dark Noise. I learned about this app from Craig McClellan during the App of the Week segment on episode 9 of the Music Ed Tech Talk Podcast.

Now that many teachers are working from home, I have found that managing my environment is key to my sanity. Dark Noise elevates the idea of a noise machine to a premium level, offering a superior user experience and all sorts of power user tools like Siri Shortcuts integrations.

One of my favorite Shortcuts is called Lesson Planning. The shortcut puts my phone in Do Not Disturb mode, starts a time tracker, takes a predetermined sound in Dark Noise, and plays it in a particular AirPlay 2 speaker in my house. For me, that's a Sonos Move speaker in the sun room.

You can download that Shortcut here: Lesson Planning

That version of the Shortcut is intended for public use. My personal version of it adds a step to set the hue of the lights in that same room.

The shortcut can be set to go off when I ask Siri, by launching it from a widget, or by even installing it as an app icon on the homescreen. Its never beyond a tap away. My custom phrase is "Hey Siri, I'm working in the sun room."

The new update includes some nice new features. Read this MacStories article for the details:

Dark Noise 2 Review: Sound Mixing, New Noises, iPad Cursor Support, and More - MacStories:

In Dark Noise 2 not only can you mix different sounds to create custom noises, but there are also eight new sound options to choose from, iCloud sync has been added for syncing your favorite sounds and custom mixes, and there’s optimized support for the iPadOS cursor. It’s a big release that retains the design elegance Dark Noise has had from day one, but expands the app’s usefulness in key ways.

🔗 Best Logic Pro Launchpad grid controllers for Live Loops - 9to5Mac

This article from 9to5Mac might be helpful for someone who is looking to get started with a Launchpad controller and the new Live Loops feature of Logic Pro.

I used to do a lot of this non-linear beat triggering in Ableton Live when I had a church job it was relevant to. Since then, I don't do a ton of this kind of work in my DAW anymore (except for fun) but I am excited to try it in my workstation of choice, Logic Pro. Now to go find my Launchpad...

Best Logic Pro Launchpad grid controllers for Live Loops - 9to5Mac:

It’s time to take full control of Apple’s latest production technologies with Novation’s Live Loops and Logic Pro Launchpad grid controllers. The Live Loops grid-based environment is a wonderful experience with a connected iPad, allowing for a more immersive approach to your cells via the Logic Remote app. But Live Loops also brings with it official support for a wide range of those colorful and affordable grid controllers from Novation. For compatible models, functionality details, and more, hit the jump.

🔗 MuseScore Announces Version 4, and Transition from Notation Software to Composition Software

In case you didn’t see it, MuseScore made a big announcement last month.

MuseScore 4. Moving from notation software to composition software. | MuseScore:

Although notation is always of paramount importance to MuseScore, we want to expand our capabilities to include other areas of modern composition: experimentation, sharing & collaboration, working with mixed media, sophisticated organisation and being able to produce high-quality audio. MuseScore 4 is the first step in achieving this expanded focus.

However, this does not mean that we are going to start adding new features at the expense of existing ones. In order to achieve our goals, we need to look ‘inwards’ first. Armed with two years of user feedback on MuseScore 3, we have begun the process of making significant improvements to almost all aspects of the application: improved engraving defaults, simplification of the interface, more powerful functionality and an overhaul of its appearance, to name a few.

I don’t use MuseScore often, but I know it is widely respected as a lightweight and accessible notation editor. It really resonates with a lot of the teachers in my district, particularly those who are comfortable with using apps over web browsers to compose, and who don’t want something over the top and expensive like Sibelius or Finale.

This is exciting news for MuseScore and I am curious to see where their development goes.

Some of the folks from MuseScore appeared on a recently released episode of the Scoring Notes podcast, which I haven’t listened to yet, but suspect they go into more detail about the transition to version 4.

iOS Music Plugins on the Mac

At WWDC, Apple’s software developer conference last month, they announced that the Mac will be moving to the same chip architecture as iOS devices. One of the many benefits of this move will be that iOS apps will run on the Mac natively.

CDM had an interesting immediate reaction to this news.

The Mac will now have the same chip architecture as an iPad, so what does that mean for us? - CDM Create Digital Music:

Apple’s announcement of moving the Mac from Intel to ARM is no surprise. But here are the details most relevant to your tools – and why we’re in a new era on both the PC and the Mac.

And TL:DR – the change on the Mac platform has a lot to do with Apple’s App Store ecosystem and blending the iPad and Mac platforms. But looking at the big picture, we aren’t so much post-PC as post-Intel. All vendors, not just Apple, are starting to eye chips other than Intel’s even on the x64 architecture.

I am really excited about this possibility for a number of reasons. There are a ton of iOS apps I would love to use the Mac (I am looking at you Tonal Energy and forScore). But then I got thinking about how big and diverse the iOS App Store is, and what some of the edge-case effects of iOS apps on the Mac could be.

Let’s think about audio plugins for a moment. iOS doesn’t have a robust architecture for integrating third party audio apps into larger ones like GarageBand. But it does has a lot of these audio apps. My understanding is that iOS plugins are Audio Units with the .AU extension, just like ones you would install in a DAW on MacOS.

So my assumption is that that an audio app for iOS like Brusfri could run inside of Logic alongside all of your other plugins. This may be a bad example considering Brusfri has a Mac version already but you get the idea.

I think this will only help the Mac. It could be mildly disruptive to the audio plugin market because iOS plugins are so much cheaper than things like, for example, Waves but ultimately, people who want Waves will still buy Waves. I am optimistic that this change will simply mean more apps for everyone, more variety of apps, and more variety of price.

Apple Updates iWork Apps with YouTube and Vimeo Embed Feature

Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac for iBooks Author Transition, YouTube and Vimeo Embeds - MacRumors:

The Pages app now supports importing books from iBooks Author, which Apple discontinued and removed from the App Store on July 1. The update app also allows videos from YouTube and Vimeo to be played right in documents, with release notes below.

• Play YouTube and Vimeo videos right in your documents.

I have been wishing for this feature for years. Embedding web videos is so useful in the classroom, where adding something like a YouTube video to your class presentation is as easy as pasting a URL to it in a slide.

I have been jealous of Google Slides for this feature (and pretty much only for this feature) and had just assumed that it was easier for Google to implement because both services are web-based. Apple doesn’t have a strong history of going out of their way to cooperate with the web, or Google services for that matter. So I am happy to see this feature here.

I have worked around this problem in the past by using two apps that are incredible utilities. Downie, on the Mac, which strips videos from the web and downloads them to your hard drive, and iCab Mobile, which is a web browser for the iPad that can download web videos to the Files app.

Both these apps, on their respective operating systems, have allowed me the control to download web videos and put them in slides. But this new iWork feature will eliminate several steps and make my files much lighter.

🔗 Noteflight Announces Soundcheck, Bringing New Pitch and Rhythm Analysis Features You Can Add to Your Assignments

Web based music notation editor, Noteflight, recently launched a new feature called SoundCheck. It works with Noteflight Learn to add the same pitch and rhythm analysis to your assignments that services like Smartmusic and PracticeFirst are capable of.

My understanding is that it works like this: Noteflight is still a standalone service for writing notation, publishing it, and sharing it within the Noteflight community. Noteflight Learn is the service that can be added to your Noteflight subscription which gives you access to content libraries and some LMS features like managing students and assigning work. SoundCheck is a third offering that can be added to your existing Noteflight Learn subscription, that adds the practice and analysis tools to your assignments.

It seems like it should be very easy to make assignments out of your Noteflight scores, which can be imported via the XML format.

John Mlynczak, Managing Director of Noteflight, is coming on the podcast this week to discuss more. Stay tuned.

SoundCheck Check One Two - Noteflight Notes:

We are so excited to announce our partnership with MatchMySound™ technology to bring SoundCheck™ to Noteflight! This proven solution for performance assessment will be available for use with any Noteflight score, and provide ratings and feedback for pitch, rhythm, and intonation – which can be used for assessment. All Noteflight scores will be available in SoundCheck with just the click of a button. All current Noteflight Learn integrations with Google Classroom and LTI tools such as Canvas, Schoology, Moodle, etc, will still be supported for creating and turning in SoundCheck assignments. We are actively integrating this feature now and are committed to having the first version available for use in June.