Audio Hijack Pro: Record Audio from Almost Any App

I've been thinking about recording podcasts which are discussions between me and a friend/co-worker. I wanted to find a tool that is (1) inexpensive and (2) so simple even I can use it without a lot of configuration fuss. So, I asked editors David Battino and Derrick Story for advice.

Derrick said he has been using Audio Hijack Pro ($32) with great success. David said his tool of choice is Call Recorder ($14.95). You can find David's review of this tool at...

Simple Skype Recording Utility

The two tools have a lot of overlap at first glance. But, I keyed on these differences to decide which on to try first.

1. Audio Hijack Pro can route audio from almost any source. Call Recorder seems mostly focused on Skype. I'm not much of a Skype user. So, I wanted to be able to try other Voice over IP (VoIP) services. So, Audio Hijack Pro had the edge there.

2. Call Recorder can record each side of the conversation on separate tracks. That seems like a good feature for post-production audio adjustments. Score one for Call Recorder.

3. The Audio Hijack Pro single-user license says it can be used by a single user on more than one Mac. This would let me use it on both my iMac and MacBook. And, it sort of makes up for the price difference ($32 for Audio Hijack Pro and $14.95 for Call Recorder). Call it a tie price-wise. Both have demo versions available that provide full functionality but limits recording time.

Since I read David's review and felt pretty comfortable that the current version could do the job, I decided to try Audio Hijack Pro first to get an idea of how it worked compared to what I read about Call Recorder.

Audio Hijack Pro's trial version lets you hijack an audio stream and record it for up to 10 minutes. It says it will start to add noise to the recording after that point.

I ran Skype 2.7 on my iMac and MacBook. I installed Audio Hijack Pro on the iMac. My first attempt, though, was to try it with the recently updated Google Talk plugin for Gmail. Unfortunately, in my keep-it-simple-mode, I decided it would take more time than it was worth to figure out which plug-in to try to hijack. So, I switched to Skype right away.

The trick with a base-install is to hijack Skype's audio before starting Skype itself. Audio Hijack Pro has an optional installation called Instant Hijack that lets you grab Skype's audio stream if it is started before Audio Hijack Pro is started. However, despite the apparently simple installation and uninstallation, I decided to test with the base-install (no extras) to keep things as simple as possible.

After familiarizing myself with the basics of the interface, I had Skype on the iMac call my other Skype account on my MacBook. I said a few words on both Macs and then stopped the recording to look at the resulting file.

Recordings are saved by default to MP3 files. However, if you plan on using The Levelator to auto-adjust volume levels for each speaker, you should change the recording format from For internet distribution (high) to For burning to CD (AIFF). The Levelator only accepts AIFF and WAV audio files for processing. I took the AIFF output file from The Levelator and brought it into the Open Source Audacity audio editor which I used to create a smaller MP3 file that could be used to upload for a podcast.

I'm pretty comfortable that Audio Hijack Pro is a good solution for my needs. And, I'll probably buy a copy. But, I also plan to take a look at Call Recorder too. Fortunately, both products are priced reasonably enough that purchasing both is not out of the question.