Filed under: Audio, Software, Freeware
LineIn Audio Play-Through Utility
The positive reaction that greeted our recent post on Rogue Amoeba's free SoundSource menubar selector leads me to think that some of you might also be interested in another cool freebie from the same company. LineIn is a simple little utility, but if you need what it does, it's wonderful. It allows soft playthough for any device hooked up to an input on your Mac. That is, if you have a source hooked up to your line-in or mic jack, and you run LineIn, whatever is coming in on that jack will be played out through your standard output. Here's how I use it: my main monitor is a nice Dell widescreen with multiple inputs, which allows for picture-in-picture. I have a TV tuner hooked up to a spare input so that I can watch live TV in a small window in the corner of the main display. I hooked the audio out from the tuner to my Mac's line-in jack, and with a click of the "Pass Thru" button LineIn lets me hear the TV audio. Like I said, what it does is simple, but it does it very well.
Like SoundSource, LineIn is a free download from Rogue Amoeba's Freebies Page.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jxn said 7:49PM on 2-24-2007
very very old news
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Mark D. said 12:49AM on 2-25-2007
I've been heavily using this along with Synergy to access my desktop (XP box) with my MBP. It helps eliminate the only other redundant part of the desk area, and it works well for my tv-tuner in the desktop box, also. The ability to delay it was handy for times when I was messing with seamlessrdp/rDesktop and winamp, where the audio and video would often be on a slight delay (before VLC/MPlayer had support for the streams, of course.)
jxn:
He's just pointing it out, he didn't say it was new.
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Gary said 2:57AM on 2-27-2007
I use LineIn as I have my turntable hooked up to my Mac - it's great. However, this function used to be a standard feature on Macs (pre-OSX I think). Why not now?
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michael reilly said 8:12AM on 2-26-2007
I have a similar setup in my upstairs. But I often remote-control my mac from an old dell laptop downstairs running VNC. VNC doesn't bring the mac's sound to the laptop, however. Is there a way I can make VNC transfer sounds also?
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somedude said 4:17PM on 2-26-2007
Can I just say, this is RIDICULOUSLY difficult in Windows. I wanted to listen to an XM receiver via my work PC's line-in...but I have an A2DP bluetooth dongle and bluetooth headphones. Due to the nature of Windows, you can't route the line-in of the hardware sound card to the dongle's software sound card. I was able to find one piece of software that sort of did the trick via, but the load on the cpu and the clicks, pops, and stutters were so bad that it was useless. I hate Windows.
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Joel said 6:43PM on 2-26-2007
This app is really fun when you've got your headphones on at work, you can still listen to everyone clearly!
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Summerlin LV said 7:42PM on 2-27-2007
I actually use CD Spin Doctor (comes with toast titanium), when playing on my decks. And if I like I just hit the record button for playback. (to see how off im on my beats).
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Woody Sabran said 4:39PM on 5-21-2007
This post really made my day, thanks a bunch!
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