9/08/2005 10:54:00 AM|||Joe|||Ok, I think I got this puppy working. I'll have to test it out tonight.

What I've got (off the top of my head; I'm not at my mac) is Audio Hijack Pro with 3 sessions. #1 is for my mic. It just takes that and pipes it to a virtual audio device. That device is set as the audio input for Skype. So when I talk in the mic, it gets routed to Skype. This is important. The reason why will become clear.

#2 is for iTunes. This hijacks iTunes and routes its audio to two virtual channels. One is the one that is being picked up by Skype. So far, I think, a caller and I can hear each other and the music, since iTunes is also outputing on my main audio out (my headphones).

Here's where it gets tricky. Because if I record the 1st session, I'll only record my audio. If I record the second, I'll just get the music.

So, #3 has for its input the other virtual audio device that iTunes is going on (but not the one from #1). The output is silence. In the effects area, I have a line of effects set up. It consists of a voiceover (with the input being from my mic), followed by an effect to duplicate the left channel to the right, since for a complicated reason the voiceover only outputs to the left. That's followed by an effect that hijacks skype (which only has the other peoples' voices, that's why the voiceover is necessary). Then I have it running through the SoundSoap effect to clean up excess noise. Soundsoap isn't necessary, but it's nice. It's also "cleaning" the audio from iTunes, but the podcast will be converted to a 64kbps mono MP3 with a low sample rate anyway, so that's not a big deal.

I record #3 in Apple Lossless, which has decent compression but won't damage the audio at all.

In theory, this should work. I'll test it tonight.

The only downside is that I can't crossfade between iTunes and all the other audio. But that's not a big deal. Basically it just means that when there's sound playing, you will always hear me and whoever is on Skype with me. But that's fine.

I realize I've probably completely lost most people who normally read this weblog.

Also, I downloaded a beta version of Skype for OS X. It does support conference calls. Rock.|||112620333933643263|||Podcasting Part 2