Audio Hijack

Broadcast, record, and mix shows together on your Mac.

Jamie Ashbrook avatar
Written by Jamie Ashbrook
Updated over a week ago

NOTE: This help guide was prepared by Radio.co and is for reference only. We advise to check the developer’s help resources for more in depth support with their software.

Audio Hijack is from the creators of Nicecast, Rogue Amoeba. Now in its 4th edition, it's a beautifully simplistic DAW (Digital Audio Workspace) that's designed to make broadcasting, recording, and mixing shows easier than ever on Macs.

How Audio Hijack Works

Audio Hijack uses blocks that you can drag and drop within the app. The blocks let you capture, record, and manipulate audio, as well as mix it together and send it to various places.

For example, you can send audio from your browser by dragging in the "Application" block and connecting it to your browser of choice, e.g. Google Chrome.

A video showing an application block being dragged and dropped in to a session in Audio Hijack.

Once you've added your audio sources, the new mixer block lets you mix together up to 5 of these sources together using its useful faders and volume controls.

Connecting sources.

Using blocks again, you can send your audio to multiple places (or outputs). For example, you can broadcast to your radio station, record your show, and listen through your headphones.

To manipulate your audio further, there are plenty of effect blocks you can use to sandwich between your input and output blocks. Various blocks let you adjust the EQ, balance & ducking.

A list of built-in effects blocks you can use to alter audio in Audio Hijack.

There are also some new blocks such as Magic Boost, which lets you boost just the quieter parts of your audio, and Simple Compressor, which reduces the range between soft and dynamic sounds.

Connecting Audio Hijack to Radio.co

Broadcast to your Radio.co station by setting up Audio Hijack.

Download Audio Hijack, open the application and select New Session.

The Audio Hijack welcome screen.

Then choose Blank from the session templates.

Audio Hijack template chooser.

Rename your new session to something meaningful, like your radio station's name, by clicking on the Info icon in the top right corner of the window.

The session window in Audio Hijack.

From the Sources area in the right-hand side panel, drag in the relevant blocks for the inputs for your broadcast.

i.e. You can add in a microphone with the 'Input Device' block, you can add in an application such as a music player using the 'Application' block, or you can capture all of the audio played on your computer by using the 'System Audio' block.

Adding in a microphone source by using the input device block in Audio Hijack.

From the Outputs drop-down, drag in a Broadcast block. This is the piece that will take your audio sources and broadcast it to your internet radio station.

Adding in a broadcast like within Audio Hijack.

Select the Broadcast block. Under Setup, select Shoutcast v1 & enter in your Host Name, Port, and Password. These details can be found under your Live tab in the Radio.co Dashboard.

A screenshot showing where to paste your Radio.co connection settings in to the Audio Hijack Broadcast block.

Broadcast to your radio station by selecting the button in the bottom left corner in Audio Hijack. It can take a couple of seconds for your stream to reach your station, when it does your connection should show that it's on air.

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