Why do we need a paid app to record audio from the system? Surely it's a small enough job for a small utility/script? This seems very Mac ecosystem to me.
It's very "Mac ecosystem" from multiple directions: a paid-for tool that is often free on other platforms, but also a paid-for tool that provides a very nice UX with easier customizability and features than a "small utility/script".
(I don't use Audio Hijack, nor am I in the market for anything like it. But it's obvious from the product page[1] that it's a nice piece of software. I also know that several podcasters I listen to rave about it.)
That's not to say free options don't exist. BlackHole[2] is FOSS.
Audio Hijack isn't a recording app. It's an app that allows you to selectively route audio from individual apps to different destinations - audio interfaces and otherwise.
Its built-in recorder is a small part of what the overall app does.
It drives me nuts how quickly people jump on the criticism bandwagon without bothering to look up what the thing they're criticising actually does first.
Doesn't change the fact that when you try to find out "how do I record desktop audio on my Mac?", the answer is very often "use Audio Hijack", because macOS has no built-in way to record desktop audio. (Not even QuickTime's screen recorder can record desktop audio, only microphones! It's wild.)
These days, OBS is probably a decent alternative, but it's very video focused and very streaming focused, so it's not exactly great for that purpose.
My experience as a musician and huge linux nerd is: sure, it was all free, and very powerful, on linux, but I never actually made music because of the setup times, learning, hacking, and refining the systems.
Since getting a mac and paying for tools like this, the immediacy of being productive has caused me to actually make music.
it's the same with OBS - wow, what a piece of software. I spent a week going through and configuring it. They really thought of everything. Audio Hijack solved my problem in 30 seconds and made sense for my use case while doing it.
Don't get me wrong, OBS is great! It's just clearly not made for this particular purpose, and therefore not great for that purpose. If you wanted to make an app whose main purpose is to record desktop audio, it would look a hell of a lot different than OBS.
For the past like 30 years I feel there's never been a time some commercial Mac program hasn't filled a simple niche. I remember someone last year posting a Show HN for an ffmpeg wrapper for Mac with a limited feature that focused on transcoding and made $9k in the first 4 months.
Or in the late 90s when there was a commercial program that allowed OS 9 to show real-time window previews while dragging rather than merely showing the window border outline.
Indeed. Windows has had a Sound Recorder since 3.1, and it's possible to record the currently playing audio if you select the right input (usually named "Stereo Mix" or similar.)
Support for the "Stereo Mix" audio source is a relatively recent thing - and my understanding is that, even now, it's driver-dependent. It most certainly wasn't available in Windows 3.1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Sound_System already had the ability to record from the mixer input (look in the datasheet of the AD1848 codec it uses) and I don't have the DDK to look at currently but I believe it also has an API for the mixer functionality
I'd say that this a missing feature from macOS that windows has had for 30 years already. I believe apple prohibits it for "security" reasons. But there are a number of open source solutions as well, I mainly use BlackHole:
