Access to System Audio on Mac

Question

For a some-what small (at least hopefully) project, I am hoping to gain access to the current audio being played through the "main line" (i.e. what is heard through the speakers.) Specifically, I'd like to create a visual equalizer of the audio currently being played. I do not wish to capture or "tamper" with the audio in any way, just run a little analysis on it. That being said, I'd imagine access to such information is not handed out nicely in a high-level API.

I noticed a similar question which is concerned with looking at system sound. The accepted answer points to looking into Soundflower's source code. I am not completely adverse to doing this but I'd like to ensure there isn't a simpler way before I got into it (especially because I have no real audio programming experience, especially at the system level.)

Any input is very much appreciated,

--Sam

Answer 1

There is no simple way to do this on OS X. You really have to do this from a kext, unfortunately.