Posted By Paul Kafasis on December 7th, 2016

At the beginning of the year, we shipped the first version of Loopback, our audio routing app designed to make it easy to pass audio between applications on your Mac. Loopback immediately drew rave reviews from critics, and users have been similarly thrilled to have a powerful new tool for their audio workflows. We’ve been tremendously gratified to hear how podcasters, screencasters, audio techs, and more are making use of our newest app. Now, just before the year ends, we’re shipping Loopback version 1.1.

What’s New?

The biggest new feature in Loopback 1.1 is nested devices. With nested devices, it’s now possible to embed one Loopback virtual audio device right inside another. This allows for some incredibly powerful (and complex) setups. For instance, we’ve seen podcasters looking to use both Skype and FaceTime together for one show, configuring things to ensure all audio is heard by all parties.

Nested devices provide tremendous power

With the setup seen above, all parties can hear each other’s voices in their respective VoIP apps, as well as music the host is playing via iTunes. With the “Final Output” device, all the audio is joined together for recording of the final product with Audio Hijack.

Version 1.1 makes a slew of improvements to Loopback’s interface as well. We’re now providing useful visual warnings when physical devices aren’t present, to help understand why audio may not behave as expected. We’ve also improved full-screen support, added a helpful Type column in the Audio Sources table, made it possible to drag applications directly to that table, and much more.

We also made some small improvements to virtual audio devices themselves. Loopback’s virtual audio devices now support the 176.4 kHz sample rate. You can also now duplicate devices, to quickly create similar devices, and there’s support for undo/redo when making device changes. Devices even each have an automatically generated custom icon, visible in apps like Audio MIDI Setup.

A helpful custom icon, as seen in Audio MIDI Setup

In addition to new features and improvements, we took the time to squash some nasty bugs. Changes made by Apple briefly prevented Loopback from capturing audio from FaceTime, but we’ve worked around that issue, so FaceTime and Loopback again work together as expected. We’ve also fixed several related issues where audio monitoring could fail, leading to missing audio. While we were at it, we managed to solve a few very rare crashes too.

We’re also making good use of Notification Center to help you as you use Loopback. Rather than the app popping itself open, you’ll now receive a notification when a new update to Loopback is available. We’re also using notifications to display critical errors when the Loopback app itself isn’t open. For instance, you’ll get a notification if a monitoring device is missing, so you don’t wonder why you’re not hearing audio!

A notification from Loopback

Finally, Loopback 1.1 offers complete support for MacOS 10.12 (Sierra). While Loopback 1.0.3 offered preliminary support for the new OS, the latest version is now fully vetted and updated for Sierra, so you can use it with confidence.

With Loopback 1.1, we set out to smooth out the rough edges that snagged early adopters of Loopback. The app should now be easier and clearer to use, in addition to being more feature-filled than ever. There’s always more to do, including some major feature additions planned for 2017, but this is a great update to our newest app. We hope you like it!

Get It Now

If you’re looking for the power of a high-end studio mixing board in a much more affordable software package, Loopback is for you. Learn more via the Loopback page, then download the free trial. If you’re already using Loopback, open it up and select “Check for Update” from the Loopback menu to get the free update to version 1.1.