Product Reviews

With the release of Audio Hijack Pro 2, developer Rogue Amoeba has raised the bar in terms of features, but has kept the price appealingly low - that's the kind of double-whammy we can live with. With over 35 new features, compelling reasons not to buy or upgrade are thin on the ground.

Crucially, the core function of the program is still a winner. It allows you not only to capture and save any audio output by your Mac's system, it also to enables you to enhance the listening experience using either the included plug-ins or your preferred third-party VST or AU solutions.

The most visible update is the interface itself. There was nothing especially hideous or clumsy about its predecessor, but this version is much cleaner and introduces the Recording Bin, which stores the recordings and provides quick-access buttons for commonly used functions. Preview will play back files; Reveal launches a Finder window and locates the file; the iTunes button launches and plays the file back via iTunes; Burn sends it straight to a CD or DVD burner; Process includes AppleScripts for routine tasks (such as encode to AAC); and Remove and Trash are self-explanatory. These are only small changes, but they add a great deal to the overall experience.

Another notable new feature is the ability to record to AAC and Apple Lossless (ALAC) formats, as well as the more universal MP3 and AIFF (both 16- and 24-bit). With AAC and ALAC files, you can also create bookmarked recordings, whereby iTunes playback will resume from the point you left off, which is very handy when listening to long sessions.

To start recording in Audio Hijack Pro 2, you can either select a New Session or simply hit the Quick Record button. In fact, you can also specify Hijack and Record hotkeys for instant action. As far as the audio source goes, you can record from external audio devices as well as applications and your Mac's internal microphone.

Prior to hijacking, you need to tell Audio Hijack Pro what audio source to collar. If you haven't installed the

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Instant Hijack enhancement provided, you need to launch Audio Hijack Pro, and then hijack the required application. This means you can't hijack audio on the fly without first tweaking the program. Nevertheless, having Instant Hijack as an option is preferable to the automatic APE installment of the first release.

Using Audio Hijack Pro is simple (press the Hijack button, press the Record button), although it could be clearer how to stop hijacking and recording (press the buttons again). You can also set up presets for iTunes, DVD playback, RealOne streams and so on, and also add tags to a recording - for example, title, artist and album - avoiding the rather obtuse names attributed to them in the Bin (iTunes 20040810 1905, for instance).

Two more very useful new features are the Split button and Silence Monitor, which are ideal for archiving from vinyl LPs or cassettes. Pressing Split stops the current recording and starts a new one, while Silence Monitor attempts the same job automatically.

The timer-recording side of Audio Hijack Pro has also been beefed up with support for both one-shot and recurring timers. In Mac OS X 10.3, automatic timers can wake your Mac from sleep, launch Audio Hijack Pro, and then start a recording, providing Audio Hijack Pro has been launched at least once since you last logged in.

Audio Hijack Pro also extends its support for plug-in FX, introducing parallel effects processing and offering a 10x10 grid for VST or AU products. Rogue Amoeba supplies 10 of its own 4FX plug-ins, plus support and some interesting examples from the Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plug-in API (LADSPA) format. Support for VSTi and AU synths, driven by Midi events, is new, as is routing the output of Audio Hijack Pro 2 to more than one device, courtesy of the Auxiliary Device Output plug-in.

Everything is detailed in the entertaining manual, which reveals certain hidden functions, such as the ability to hijack multiple applications and create separate files for each. The developers aren't shy of alerting users to certain known issues, either, such as the fact that Audio Hijack Pro 2 won't work with Classic applications or that while you can hijack iChat's output, you only receive the other side of the conversation.

However, these are no more than minor inconveniences or issues beyond this excellent application's remit. Rogue Amoeba states that Audio Hijack Pro will run fine on any four-year-old Mac, and it certainly performed flawlessly on a 2001-model 600MHz G3 iBook. A Mac without Audio Hijack Pro is frankly lacking an essential audio utility. At this price, it's a must-have.