Modern computing is a pretty noisy affair and from time to time it's useful to be able to record what you're hearing, whether it's a podcast, an Internet radio station, Skype conversation, voice-over, YouTube soundtrack or whatever. There are various ways to do this using different programs, but Audio Hijack Pro does the lot - add effects, ID3 tag editing and automated, timed recording - and the result is a flexible, inexpensive digital recorder.

At first, Audio Hijack's way of working seems a little unorthodox. First you have to hijack something, either an individual program, an audio device (for example, an external mic) an external FM radio, or any sound played by the system.

Having chosen where the sound's coming from, you then set up a profile for the recording by specifying the format (this is usefully explained in English, i.e. 'for recording spoken word' or 'burning to CD' rather than in kilobits per second), selecting where to save it, what to do when the recording finishes (for example add it straight to iTunes) and how to handle silences (ignore them, split the recording when they occur and so on).

Then and only then are you ready to record. Of course, most of the time recording profiles like this will only have to be set up the once, so that saves time with future recordings, but it still feels overly complicated.

In use we were able to capture streaming audio easily, then rename the file, add ID3 tags and drop it into iTunes. Setting up timed recordings was equally straightforward and really useful for capturing Internet radio broadcasts. There's a good choice of audio formats (including AAC, MP3 and the space-gobbling AIFF) and throughout our tests the quality of the recordings was excellent. There's a decent help section on pops, crackles and dropouts if you get afflicted.

There's some weirdness elsewhere though. We had to re-set Safari to only run in 32-bit mode because Audio Hijack doesn't support Snow Leopard's 64-bit flavour, and key components like Instant Hijack, which lets you start recording from applications that are already running instead of having to re-load them, and Soundflower which allows system wide recording, come as extras that you have to install separately.

Quick record doesn't seem very quick to us and still requires too much setting up. Indeed, the whole program could do with a bit of interface love: how about an always-on-top panel or menu bar item that let you record what was playing with a single mouse click? Or if hijacking and recording must both have meters why can't they be different colours so you don't think you're recording something when you're not? And surely there's a better name than ‘Recording Bin' to describe where recordings are stored (and yes, we know that's what Logic calls them too: it still doesn't make it a good idea).

Verdict
Although effective, Audio Hijack Pro has a nerdy feel to it. Splitting the process into hijacking and recording seems unnecessary, as does offering important features - like system wide recording - as extras that aren't installed by default. That said, it's the most complete recording software of its kind we've seen for the Mac and, used in conjunction with a good audio editor - for example Audacity - is clever enough to handle most common recording tasks.

Company: Rogue Amoeba

Tags: itunes skype soundflower youtube internet radio rogue amoeba fm broadcasting audio interchange file format