One thing you get used to when using a Mac is the weird little warts in its otherwise beautiful design. Like when Quicktime uses one key sequence to go into full-screen mode and the DVD player uses another one. Or when the space key allows you to click on the default button in some dialogs but not all.

One peculiarity of the Macintosh platform is that there’s no way built-into the system to route the audio input to the audio output. Windows has been able to do this ever since the first sound cards for PCs. It’s a pretty obvious thing to want to do; hook up an audio source to your computer, mix the audio with whatever your computer is generating and send the whole thing to your stereo which can then blast your head off with it. Mac users are denied this simple pleasure.

Rogue Amoeba, makers of Airfoil, Audio Hijack and Nicecast have come to the rescue with LineIn which allows you to choose an audio input and an audio output and shuffles the bits from one to the other. It works great and, at least on my Mac Pro, allows me to route analog in to digital out with no problem.

I have an old XM Radio PCR, which hooks up to the USB port on my Mac and allows me to control it via software. I like to listen to the music mixed in with the sound of me dying in World of Warcraft.

LineIn is a free download from Rogue Amoeba, available at the link above.
[tags]macintosh, audio, free, linein, rogue amoeba[/tags]

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