A bug saved the company

I love Audio Hijack, and I do use Loopback and SoundSource as well. Windows users love to complain about the fact that we have to pay for this stuff, but forget to mention that no amount of money can give you half of the same functionality on their preferred platform.

I guess you can do some of it using a Windows port of JACK Audio or something, but this isn't trivial to get working - and would still pale in comparison. Why it still is so difficult to route audio in Windows is beyond me.

To give a bit of context; I can sit in a Teams meeting using compressors and saturators and whatnot to make the audio better and put any amount of VST plugins in the chain on my own microphone. At the same time I can mix the output from an ambient track from Spotify with audio from liveatc.net and stream the whole thing to an Icecast server while ripping everything to a file.

Trying to do the same thing on Windows will just drive you insane.

Just last week I wanted to add some VST Effects to my microphone input on Windows like I do on my Mac. Basically just an EQ and Compressor. With SoundSource this is - as you said - pretty easy. On Windows I've tried Virtual Audio Cable and was initially confused by the Banana and Potato version. Also it required a separate VST Host, something that SoundSource has implemented. In the end my setup worked by using Virtual Audio Cable, routed my microphone into FL Studio into my effect chain and then from FL Studio back into the system so each application gets the microphone with effects. I also tried Minihost Modular as a VST Host but that does not support VST3 and in the end I just gave up because sometimes it was far too complicated

you might want to check out carla[0], it's difficult to find when looking up vst hosts, you have to get past a couple "unbiased" top 5 list sites & outdated ones without vst3 support still being recommended, but it's the one that's brought me the least issues (expect one or two crashes setting it up anyway). seems it's made for linux first but i've had no (big) issues running it on windows so far. you will need to download third party vsts for every effect fl studio usually implements out of the box

[0] https://github.com/falkTX/Carla/

This was the case when there was only MME. With something like a Voicemeter and Audacity you can have similar setup. I was able to have voice call on Messenger and simultanously stream it to the Facebook using OBS.

But it's very clunky, that's true.

Perhaps not in the same vein, as it's been quite some years, however, I recall using kX Audio A LOT in my Windows days to fiddle with audio/DSP on my SB/Audigy hardware.

>I can sit in a Teams meeting using compressors and saturators and whatnot to make the audio better and put any amount of VST plugins in the chain on my own microphone.

trivial and free with https://equalizerapo.com

Make sure to check for potential problems while using the SoundSource trial if you have any "professional" audio system extensions installed. I have Dante Virtual Soundcard and a few others (I do live keyboard performance with my M1 Pro macbook), and SoundSource yields intermittently glitchy audio for me when using it casually to multiplex a few simple sources/destinations (Music, browser, bluetooth speakers). Core Audio is a very complicated piece of technology, so it's also very possible the issue is on Apple's side, or in the "pro" extensions themselves.

(That's as of now -- August 2025 -- so it's possible in the future this issue will be resolved. Don't take this as necessarily true if you're reading this in 2026 or beyond.)

> To give a bit of context; I can sit in a Teams meeting using compressors and saturators and whatnot to make the audio better and put any amount of VST plugins in the chain on my own microphone.

DJ Screw has joined the meeting

XD

You know what I really love about MacOS? Every time I pair my bluetooth headphones it defaults the microphone to that sound input. Can you disable that microphone like in Windows? Nope.

I use SoundSource because without it digital audio has audio levels locked, which is also asinine. We have to admit, audio control on Macs is straight up garbage, and having to buy third party tools to do something the other major OS does out of the box is not a good look.

What’s your setup for adding VSTs to inputs with SoundSource? I’ve looked into doing this before but came to the conclusion I’d need an extra step but now thinking I must have missed something.

> You know what I really love about MacOS? Every time I pair my bluetooth headphones it defaults the microphone to that sound input. Can you disable that microphone like in Windows? Nope.

Can you mark your microphone's headphone jack (which is only intended to be used to listen to yourself while recording) as not a thing you want to ever use? Nope.

macOS is great. Can you have a different scroll direction between scroll wheel on a mouse and the touchpad? Of course not, don't be silly.