I’ve used a couple of Rogue Amoeba’s products for seven years now, and when they reached out for me to have a look at their whole lineup, I jumped at the chance. They’re a small company (approaching their 25th anniversary!) that creates solutions for any audio routing needs you may have on an Apple computer.
After a bit of hands-on time with their entire product lineup, I’ll give overviews of each product, and I want to give my thoughts on each one from an audio production perspective—how useful I would consider them for different elements of studio work.
A Company That Still Believes You Should Own What You Buy
Right off the bat, it’s worth mentioning that this is a company that truly values its customers. I say this as someone who’s been a user for years: NO SUBSCRIPTIONS! You buy once, and you own it outright. In this current world of subscription hell, I really value companies that take this route. As in the olden times, if there’s a significant version upgrade (v1 to v2, for example), there is a small upgrade fee. Between the initial cost and the minimal upgrade fee compared to the value of the products, it’s a total no-brainer.
I’ll start with the two I use consistently:
Audio Hijack: Record Anything from Anywhere, Anytime
Audio Hijack is Rogue Amoeba’s flagship product, and for good reason. I use this weekly for many different applications. This is a professional audio capture and recording application that essentially acts as a mixer with routing capabilities, enabling you to record audio from literally anything that outputs sound on your Mac. If you want to record the whole system, done. If you want to record your video meeting to save you taking notes, no problem. I will often find audio that I want to use as a reference from YouTube or Spotify, and record 30 seconds of it to drop straight into my mixing session.
The UI is simple and brilliant. It’s a graphics-based modular setup: you click and drag whatever module you want from the list on the right into the chain to record the audio. As you drag the module in, it automatically ‘wires’ to the modules on its left and right. Moving it around breaks those wires, and it reconnects to other modules as you move nearer to them.
If this feels a little complicated, there are several templates to start you off with different routing chains—whether it’s a simple chain to record a VOIP app or the system audio, through to more complicated chains like filtering out a voice, transcribing it to text, and recording it at the same time (it uses a model from Whisper to transcribe).
Once you’re happy with the layout, you can start creating and customizing your own templates. If you’re often recording from a particular source, you can create a template with that source, save it, and load it up with a single click next time.
There are over 20 built-in effects ranging from basics like EQ and compression through to utilities like a mixer for routing up to five signals, plus advanced spectral effects like a de-clicker, de-hum, and de-noise. They’re all great quality. On top of that, your own effects are automatically added—all your AUs are in a big list at the bottom, and you can drag them as a module into the graphic chain and process them as per usual.
Note: Audio Hijack is AU-only; it does not support VSTs at this point.
Another app from Rogue Amoeba, Piezo, is the little brother of Audio Hijack. If you just want to record system audio or a specific app with no real granular control, this will do it for you. At its price point, it’s an easy recommendation.
Loopback: The Invisible Cabling Inside Your Mac
Loopback creates invisible audio cables inside your Mac. This is invaluable for routing audio in specific ways between different applications. This one took me a bit longer to get my head around, but the UI consists of a list of ‘devices’ on the left that you create and assign to software or hardware audio ins or outs. You can then connect ‘wires,’ mixing and mingling signals or sending them in specific ways to other apps.
In my workflow, Loopback shines when I need to route and control several signals into one during remote client meetings. As a producer, I work with artists to create the sound they’re looking for in their music. Often, when I’m talking with them, I want to refer to a section of a track I’m working on in the DAW or a reference track online. With Loopback, I have a template set up where I can route the audio from the DAW, from Safari, and from my webcam mic into one single signal that I can then send to the client in real time. When I play a bit of the track, they hear it coming from the same source as my voice. It’s extremely useful, as I don’t know any other seamless way of merging all these audio signals natively.
Loopback is purely a routing tool with no DSP capabilities, so it doesn’t process the audio itself. But it can be used in highly creative ways to send signals in and out of your software environments with ease.
As a music producer, I can highly recommend these two applications as absolutely essential for working with clients and routing/recording audio around your computer. Rogue Amoeba has been iterating on this software since their inception, and it shows. They’re super solid, stable utilities that just work.
Fission: Fast Audio Editing, No Bloat Required
Fission is a very straightforward audio file editor, with core operations centered on cutting, trimming, fading, and joining. You can also batch-convert audio files from one format to another, with total control over the parameters.
If you just need a super quick audio edit—cutting a section of audio with smooth fades and clipping it out to save for the project—Fission is excellent. I can see this being incredibly useful for podcasters wanting to edit their audio rapidly. Like their other software, it is super clean, stable, and efficient.
As a producer, I’ve always kept an eye out for something akin to the old BIAS Peak or Sound Forge—powerful stereo editors where I can get down to the sample layer and destructively edit with AU effects along the way to generate new material. That kind of editing is almost obsolete now given the power of modern DAWs, but still, I search. Unfortunately, Fission doesn’t scratch that particular itch. It’s just not a granular enough editor (you can’t zoom into individual samples or host effects plugins). Which is a shame, because it’s a great piece of software. But that’s not Fission’s focus, so I can’t fault it for what it is.
If you’re a podcast editor or just want simple, lossless audio editing for media, Fission is something you should definitely check out.
SoundSource and Airfoil: Swiss Army Knives for Your Outputs
While they might seem similar at a glance, these two system-level utilities serve distinct purposes for managing your outputs.
SoundSource is all about granular local control. It sits in your menu bar and lets you adjust volume and output destinations on a per-app basis. You can route Spotify to your main monitors while sending your browser audio to your laptop speakers, and even apply AU effects (like a dedicated EQ or Magic Hiss reduction) directly to an application’s output before it hits your ears.
Airfoil, on the other hand, is your network broadcasting tool. It routes any audio on the Mac to external receivers—whether Bluetooth or AirPlay-enabled. Once you download the software, it finds any connected speakers on your network and adds them to a list. From there, you can route audio from any source on your computer to any destination with literally zero configuration. I immediately sent Spotify tracks to my Sonos speakers around the house, an Alexa Echo, and my computer speakers. One click and they were all playing.
At home, Airfoil is truly fantastic for linking up all my AirPlay devices. I can have monitors from lots of different manufacturers syncing perfectly. I did have some initial issues with sync delay between AirPlay and Bluetooth speakers, but you can manually adjust the sync within Airfoil until everything is tight. Once you’ve got those delays set, Airfoil remembers them. I had the whole house playing some banging drum and bass, and it sounded like one huge system.
In the studio, Airfoil provides an unexpected benefit: checking mixes. I have a couple of small Bluetooth consumer speakers to hear how my mixes will translate out there in the real world. Flicking between them via Airfoil was an absolute piece of cake, allowing me to quickly A/B my mix against my main monitors with the click of a button.
Farrago: Not Built for Music Production (But Great at What It Does)
Farrago is a powerful soundboard tool designed for podcasters, streamers, and content creators who need rapid-fire audio playback triggered by keyboard shortcuts or MIDI controls. You organize audio files into banks and trigger playback instantly.
This is the one piece of software in the lineup that isn’t really tailored for music producers. It’s aimed squarely at live broadcasting and streaming. And for that, once again, it’s brilliant.
You load several banks of sounds into a grid and trigger them however you want (it defaults to your computer keyboard, so hitting ‘Q’ triggers the top-left sound, and so on). Banks can be swapped instantly with keyboard commands. In the initial setup, you might have music soundbeds on Bank 1 and sound effects on Bank 2. There’s also a clever list mode that auto-triggers samples sequentially with smooth crossfading. The demo bank features Foley of footsteps, a door opening, and people shouting ‘surprise!’—perfect for lining up a sequence of events on a single trigger button.
There are extensive options for playback behavior: you can pause, hold, or retrigger each sound effect, and adjust individual volumes to normalize your entire board. I can see this being an absolute lifesaver for live streaming.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- No subscriptions — buy once, own forever
- Audio Hijack and Loopback together are genuinely essential for Mac-based producers working with remote clients
- Modular, graphics-based UI in Audio Hijack is intuitive and highly flexible
- Airfoil’s zero-configuration network audio routing is remarkable
- Free trials available for every application
- Generous bundle pricing reduces the cost of entry significantly
- Responsive email support and a thorough knowledge base
Cons:
- macOS-exclusive — a hard stop for any cross-platform producer
- Loopback has no DSP capabilities — always needs a companion tool for signal processing
- Fission lacks sample-level editing and plugin hosting, limiting its appeal for producers
- Farrago has limited relevance for music production workflows
Alternatives
For virtual audio routing on Mac, BlackHole by Existential Audio is a free open-source alternative to Loopback (not be confused with the classic Eventide Blackhole effect!), though it lacks the graphical interface and template system. For Windows-based producers locked out of Rogue Amoeba entirely, VB-Audio Voicemeeter covers similar routing territory, albeit with a steeper learning curve. For quick audio capture on Mac, QuickTime Player handles basic system recording but offers none of Audio Hijack’s modular routing depth.
Pricing and Availability
All Rogue Amoeba products are macOS-exclusive and available directly from rogueamoeba.com with free trials for every application.
Individual pricing (USD):
- Piezo: $29
- Fission: $35
- Airfoil: $35
- SoundSource: $49
- Farrago: $55
- Audio Hijack: $69
- Loopback: $99
For music producers, the recommended pairing of Audio Hijack + Loopback is available for $134. The Everything Bundle — all six apps — is $299, which represents strong value if you plan to use the full ecosystem. Upgrade pricing (for major version jumps) is available but unspecified on the site; historically Rogue Amoeba keeps these fees modest.
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Final Thoughts
Rogue Amoeba has quietly built what amounts to a complete audio-routing operating system that runs underneath your DAW. If you’re a Mac-based producer doing remote client sessions, Audio Hijack and Loopback together are not optional extras — they’re infrastructure. The no-subscription model is increasingly rare and genuinely worth supporting.
The rest of the lineup is excellent within its lane: Fission for podcasters and quick editors, SoundSource for per-app output control, Airfoil for whole-home audio with studio A/B benefits, Farrago for streamers and broadcasters. None of them are wrong turns. Some just won’t apply to you.
The critical caveat — and it’s a big one — is the macOS wall. If you’re on Windows, this conversation is over before it starts. And if you’re a VST-heavy producer on Mac, Audio Hijack’s AU-only stance is worth knowing upfront.
Do yourself a favour and download the trials. Every app has one. For more info, head over to RogueAmoeba.com.
