I wanted to pose the following to people here, especially any Ambrosia
people here...
We make music visualization software (G-Force) and in some of the
new stuff
we're writing, it'd be pretty pivotal to gain access to the "system
out"
audio so that we can show our visuals reacting to whatever's being
pumped
out over the system. Currently, via CoreAudio, only the standard
audio
input devices are available for audio input.
Ambrosia's WireTap uses a kernel extension to gain audio access,
but my
concerns of making my own are a serious lack of kext knowledge as
well as,
in principle, the fact that this functionality seems like it should
be made
via CoreAudio. So, my question is, is this functionality
available in any
way in today's CoreAudio? If not, will it ever? Is there any kind of
sample code available?
I was never really sure why Apple didn't put this functionality in
CoreAudio--my only guess was that the basis was either DRM reasons or
developer support liability. If the basis was DRM, then that's
obviously
been thwarted by Ambrosia's 'WireTap' and Rogue Amoeba's 'Audio
Hijack' (if
the name "Audio Hijack" isn't a slap in the face, I don't know what
is).
The motivation here is the following. In our Windows release, we also
bundle a fun little app called the "V-Bar", that draws tickering
tiles of
our music visuals that go along to the side of the screen (and they
react to
whatever audio is paying over the system). Getting the system
audio is
impressively easy and well documented in Win32's "mixercontrol"
API. So as
much as love to beat the drum of how far head Mac OS is often
ahead, this is
an unfortunate and show-stopping discrepancy for our small company.
Any help, pointers, sample code, or comments would be greatly
appreciated
for this humble developer!
Thanks,