Just over two weeks ago, we released a major update to Airfoil, the first version built on our new AudioHijackKit2 framework. We’ve been very happy with how well it’s done in the wild, but there were some bugs. Airfoil 3.4.1, immediately available, aims to squash those bugs.

To start, Safari hijacking is much improved when the Instant Hijack component is installed. Users with non-English systems will now be able to properly hijack Safari. As well, if Safari is already running, Airfoil will always grab from it, without needing to relaunch.

As well, hijacking of other apps has also been made more robust. Airfoil will now properly pull audio from Front Row, by simply selecting it in the Source list. Dashboard hijacking has also been improved to fix several bugs that could prevent Airfoil from getting audio.

Pulling audio from VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop has also been updated. To grab their audio you’ll need the Instant Hijack component installed, via the Install Extras… window in the Airfoil menu. Once that’s installed, launch Fusion or Parallels, then hold the option key when clicking the Source pop-up at the bottom of the Airfoil window to show hidden processes. For Fusion, the process you need to select is called vmware-vmx and for Parallels it’s called prl_vm_app. Select that, and Airfoil will pull all audio from the virtual machine.

There are lots of other rare and minor bug fixes, and this is a free update for all licensed owners of Airfoil for Mac, so be sure to update if you’re on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. Just choose Check For Update from the Airfoil menu, or click to download from our site. If you haven’t used Airfoil before, grab the free Airfoil trial.

MyMac Magzine recently took an in-depth look at Audio Hijack Pro. The whole review is certainly worth reading, but the summary?

Audio Hijack Pro by Rogue Amoeba is the best audio recording program for the Mac platform

We’ll certainly take that!

If you haven’t visited our Staff page recently, you may have missed a recent update. As of October 1st, Rogue Amoeba now has two new employees, Dan Wineman and Christa Mrgan!

Dan joins us after doing a programming contract for some backend work that will make its way into the upcoming Radioshift 1.5. He’s continuing to work with Jeff on Radioshift, and we hope to have a final release of version 1.5 out before the end of the year. Dan is a great addition to our team of coders.

Christa, meanwhile, is filling a new position for us, that of designer. For years, we’ve used various contractors to provide artwork, and done a great deal of our design in-house. Eventually, we decided it worthwhile to have a full-time employee handling all the artwork we need, as well as work with us on interface design.

Christa will be filling that role for us. She’s already added artwork to Airfoil (in the Radio Tuner window, seen when using a RadioShark), as well as icons for Instant Hijack and SoundSource, and we’re looking forward to releasing prettier software in the future.

It’s also worth mentioning that we’ve still got one open position, a senior Cocoa User Interface Software Engineer position. We’ve had plenty of great applicants for this position, including some we’re still considering, but no one has been quite perfect yet. You can read more about it here, and apply there as well.

You may already be familiar with our audio broadcasting tool Nicecast. With just a few clicks, you can use Nicecast to create an internet radio station that’s accessible around the globe. College radio stations, amateur DJs, professional musicians, and many other groups have all used Nicecast to provide an internet radio stream to listeners.

Recently, however, we’ve seen an interesting trend: musicians on the road using Nicecast to receive rough mixes of audio from the studio. This audio isn’t yet intended for public consumption – the goal is to listen to a rough cut and hear different edits as quickly as possible. By adding Nicecast to the editing workflow, the editing can be done in one place and the listening in another.

We first took note of this when John Mayer mentioned using Nicecast this way on Twitter, as seen above. Others have since mimicked the idea to good effect. Really, it just makes sense. If you’re not in the studio but want to hear audio, Nicecast helps avoid the tiresome process of saving, editing, and uploading dozens of different MP3 files. Instead, just pull a live feed off a sound board, and share edits on the fly!

We’re always glad to see new uses of our applications, and this is an especially novel one. Whether you want to create a station for the whole world to tune in to, or just ship audio across the internet for a single listener, check out Nicecast.

After many months of development, we’re happy to unveil a major update to Airfoil, our tool for streaming any audio all around the house – to the AirPort Express, Apple TV, other Macs, PCs, and Linux boxes, and even iPhones and iPods Touch. Airfoil 3.4 is now immediately available. You can read on for more information or just download Airfoil right now.

Here’s What’s New
On its face, Airfoil actually looks much the same. The biggest feature is one that won’t be immediately obvious: improved hijacking. Hijacking in Airfoil is now improved for many different applications.

This includes hijacking of apps with sub-processes for audio, such as Google Chrome, as well as other outliers like Dashboard, where audio is now helpfully grouped into one source for simpler hijacking. As well, capturing audio from QuickTime Player, Safari and other WebKit applications now works instantly, with no need to quit and relaunch, if you’ve got the Instant Hijack component installed.

Airfoil 3.4 also includes an update to the Instant Hijack component, one which fixes several rare but serious conflicts on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). If you saw any issues with quicklookd crashing or conflicts with some Kodak printers, grab Airfoil 3.4 and update the Instant Hijack component, and you should be set.

Finally, if you’re using Griffin’s Radioshark USB radio with Airfoil, you’ll see our updated Radio Tuner window. It features improved graphics as well as access to important radio settings for Japanese and European radio bands.

A New Beginning?
This update to Airfoil somewhat akin to Apple’s own Snow Leopard update. There aren’t a lot of flashy new features, but we’ve worked incredibly hard on the backend of Airfoil, particularly the hijacker (the piece that pulls audio from other applications), to make it all work better than ever.

As time passed since its original release, it became more and more difficult for the underlying hijacker to grab all audio. We’ve had struggles with applications with audio-playing sub-processes, background applications like Dashboard and other oddities. The updated hijacker in AudioHijackKit2 works to handle all of this and more.

Earlier this year, we talked about AudioHijackKit2, the next-generation framework that will power our applications. Our XM/Sirius client Pulsar was the first application to make use of this, and now Airfoil is too. We’re confident this update will position Airfoil to work well with nearly every app now and for years to come.

Go on, Download It
Enough reading! Whether you’ve used Airfoil for years, or you want to check out streaming audio all around your house, you should visit the Airfoil page and download Airfoil 3.4!