Core Audio has a very neat feature, enabling you to create virtual audio input and output devices called aggregate devices, which join together and synchronise the clocks of multiple real devices. You can then use these aggregate devices for audio input and output in the same way as real devices.

No. And yes. In that order. This article gives the full detail behind what that really means. A little while back, I posted an article discussing the possibilities for the Apple TV supporting 5.1 audio playback. It’s well worth reading that article first, as it talks a little bit about what “5.1 playback” actually means. Now that […]

Steve Jobs’s Thoughts on Music article makes for a good read. But I don’t believe that anyone has 22 iTunes Store songs on their iPod, any more than they have 2.4 children. And this is a pretty significant fact. Obviously, Steve isn’t claiming that we all have this magic number of songs on our iPods. What he actually […]

A while back, I wrote a post about detecting iPods connected to your Mac, and finding out their model number in order to deduce information such as the iPod model and colour. Then, in September, Aaron Bockover of the Banshee Project informed me that Apple have changed their approach to storing this information, and no longer store it in an […]

I’ve been investigating 5.1 Dolby Digital playback on the Mac, and I’ve discovered some limitations with using 5.1 audio under QuickTime – especially when trying to output it to the Mac’s S/PDIF optical output. This makes me wonder about some not-yet-mentioned features of the upcoming AppleTV and its support for surround sound, and Apple’s approach […]

I’ve been trying to find a way to detect what kinds of iPods are plugged into a Mac (or PC). Turns out that every iPod (apart from the iPod Shuffle) has a hidden SysInfo file, which contains information about the device. And, with the aid of some friends with iPods, I have managed (I think) […]

I’ve been working on adding support for the Hercules DJ Console (Mac Edition) to my Mac DJ application, DJ-1800. This has proved trickier than I imagined, as I have not been able to find any documentation of the MIDI commands sent by this controller.