Friday, June 6, 2008

How to Sample off DVDs or the Internet


One of the most frequent questions I see posted on online musician forums these days has to do with using your computer to sample sounds or dialog off of DVDs or from Internet services like YouTube. Of course, if you are still using a hardware sampler, this is as easy as plugging the audio outs from your computer into the sampling input on your sampler. It's a little bit more complicated, however, if, like most of us, you are using software samplers these days. How can you record the audio output of one program to the audio input of another program? If you happen to be a Mac user like myself, the answer comes in the form of a nifty little $32 program from Rogue Amoeba software called Audio Hijack Pro. As the name of the software suggests, this program lets you 'hijack' the audio outputs from any program on your computer and make a recording of it in any of a variety of file formats. You can grab sounds or dialog from DVD, record Skype conversations, record Internet radio shows or podcasts, etc. Still not convinced? There is a full-featured demo available whose only restriction is that if overlays noise over any recording over ten minutes long. Give it a try, and by all means, if you use it, BUY it. It's very important, especially in the Mac community that software developers get our support.

1 comment:

R said...

this comment is basically off topic, but as a non-Mac user, I often wonder why so many musicians and graphic designers like Macs so much. What makes a Mac easier or more convenient for you? To me it seems like everything you can do on a Mac, you could also do on a Windows machine.
If you have the time to respond to this, I would appreciate it. Thanks.