What is Reddit's opinion of Background Music?

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This is literally requested every other day smh

Pasting a comment I made from another thread:

> You’re right. I’m not sure if iOS handles this the same way as OS X but it probably does and an Apple engineer chimed in on this exact same request for OS X by basically saying that it’d require a complete rewrite of the way audio is handled which wasn’t a priority of Apple at the time and it probably isn’t now either since it works just fine. There are a number of apps that do this on OS X but because of the hacky nature even the paid ones are very finicky and can mess up stuff. There’s an open source project called BackGround Music for OS X that’s been worked on for years but still has a number of glaring issues and in my experience didn’t work reliably at all. So that should give you an idea of how something like this is way way beyond the scope of a normal tweak and would require a talented dev or team lots of time and effort.

You can try the app "Background Music."

Its a really dumb name for the app, given what it does. But it enables the options to adjust individual app volume (like Windows does by default.)

It doesn’t have a built in way to do that, but there are several apps that can do this. I’ve used one called Background Music and it worked pretty well, but I haven’t tried it on Monterey yet

Here’s a link if you want to check it out: https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

It looks like you probably installed: https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

There are uninstall instructions on that page, or you can follow the manual uninstall instructions (where deleting the plugin is probably the most important part, and most of the sudo stuff there can be accomplished by rebooting).

You’re right. I’m not sure if iOS handles this the same way as OS X but it probably does and an Apple engineer chimed in on this exact same request for OS X by basically saying that it’d require a complete rewrite of the way audio is handled which wasn’t a priority of Apple at the time and it probably isn’t now either since it works just fine.

There are a number of apps that do this on OS X but because of the hacky nature even the paid ones are very finicky and can mess up stuff.

There’s an open source project called BackGround Music for OS X that’s been worked on for years but still has a number of glaring issues and in my experience didn’t work reliably at all. So that should give you an idea of how something like this is way way beyond the scope of a normal tweak and would require a talented dev or team lots of time and effort.

Background Music: https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

Background Music, a macOS audio utility: automatically pause your music, set individual apps' volumes and record system audio.

I tried BgM a few years ago, it was a bit buggy so I never went too deep into that. Do you have the snapshot version included that -- presumably -- supports Big Sur and later? (I am not sure it is compatible with M1s however.) There is a guide how to do it with brew if you are unsure.

Alternatively you can check Soundsource. It is a pricey but quite professional solution. (Does way more than that.) If your app does not have a volume control I guess thats it as there is no centralized volume control in MacOS AFAIK.

https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/

It’s $39, but you can try before you buy.

There’s also a free alternative:

https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

However, I’ve seen some reports about it not being particularly stable. That’s to be expected because:

> Note: Background Music is still in alpha.

> Version 0.3.2 doesn't work on macOS Big Sur. Try this snapshot version: 0.4.0-SNAPSHOT-b38f6dd

(Free) BackgroundMusic it's open source and free. I don't know if it has issue on Monterey. Try the latest build to see if it works on Monterey.

That’s the audio driver for Background Music. There are manual uninstall instructions here.

Here you go!

https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

Will take some finagling to get it to work (don't test in class! I did it and almost had a heart attack).

I never realised there were bots like this, thank you for sharing!

There are also alternatives that can record system-wide audio as well, such as Soundflower and Background Music (plus app sound level customisation, too!), but u/Beeps619's suggestion here sounds awesome.

I'm not aware of any native apps, but I use a free utility called Background Music. It's gives you the ability to change the volume of each individual app directly from the menu bar.

BackgroundMusic is what you're looking for.

Plus you can auto-pause, boost and record.

As said on the project page, you need Xcode to build but it's easy.

I downloaded background music to modulate audio for specific apps so i can multitask but recently I can't avoid the clipping that occurs every time I try to use it. I did try

>Set your volume to its maximum level and lower the volumes of other applications.

but it didn't work... I was wondering if I could get some help here

Found this post while searching for this problem on Monterey. If you're okay with installing a third-party app, as a workaround, you can install https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic, select your headphones or external speakers as your output device, and the volume indicator should return.

As a bonus, Background Music has a lot of other cool features as well!

Yeah, it's crazy that's not added. Luckily there seems to be some apps people have made that do this.

A free one that I've found is called BackgroundMusic. Currently their snapshot version seems to be the only one that works on Big Sur and above, so be sure to follow the installation instructions that match your system.

To install the snapshot version:

brew tap homebrew/cask-versions

brew install --cask background-music-pre

There is no way to get a gui or any ui for controlling audio from Apple’s operating system. You’ll have to install 3rd party applications unfortunately.

I don’t know what windows style sound mixer look like but try out “Background Music” if yu are not on Big Sur or Monterey.

https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

The developer has uninstall instructions.

https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic/blob/master/MANUAL-UNINSTALL.md#manual-uninstall You need to delete the sound driver from /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL.

It's a good project for future consideration, hope it gain momentum and support but as current state, is still too much alpha IMO. App-routing sometimes not work, there's no AU implementation (yet) and... still alpha.

(Free) BackgroundMusic: open source per-app volume mixer for Mac. If you're on Big Sur get the latest version of the app here for it to work.

Yeah, I heard about this application but it wasn't free. So I tried BackgroundMusic, which is free, but the audio was clipping when I used it along with MS Teams. And now I'm back to looking for alternatives -_-

Ive had the same issue on the last few operating systems, currently on Big Sur MacBook pro 2013, tried several apps. Background music works best for enabling the media keys and also adjusting volumes from separate sources, such as music or safari or other apps

https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

Either adjust the volume levels in the settings for the app itself, or you can use something like BackgroundMusic to have a Volume Mixer-like option overall.

I’m not sure if it’s because my MacBook is older and I never update it, but I had to download a separate application that lets me change the volume of specific windows. The one I use is called BackgroundMusic, it’s free and I find it easy to navigate but there’s all sorts of other options I found on Google!

If you’re on Mac you might have to download a separate program to do this. Not sure what you’re working with but I have a 2013 MacBook Air that I always procrastinate on updating and I needed to download something separate. I use something called BackgroundMusic, it’s free and lets me change the volume of any of my apps, just like the Volume Mixer on Windows does

The OS definitely could do it, but they haven't spent a lot of time on that sort of tech.

Windows has an audio mixer app built in, where you can change the levels of audio per app. macOS lacks this, but there is BackgroundMusic.

OS should be able to detect and "level out" the audio to some degree (much like home theater receivers), there just hasn't been invested time in it.

I have the same problem and could not solve the issue. I tried installing Background Music (https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic) to see if muting the sound from Zoom would change this behaviour, but it doesn't work on Zoom...

I'd appreciate any other idea regarding the issue !

Have you reported the crashes to the app developer of Background Music? Things are just gonna be broken sometimes in betas and major OS upgrades.

Edit: share your experiences here https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic/issues/357

Paid options are:

SoundBunny & Sound Control

I've used Background Music in the past which is free/open and very good. Can be installed with homebrew.

Go to Contents /App-Resources/Misc/Metronome/Samples where you will find the files Metronome.wav and MetronomeUp.wav. change those to the same woodhit sample.

Edit: just record the metronome with background audio by feeding ableton signal into its self and recording that and using hah file

I use Manjaro KDE and can confim per-application volume control is installed by default. If it isn't for other distributions then it shouldn't be hard to install yourself.

you can install BackgroundMusic for macOS and for windows it's built into the OS.

In general, I like the fact that they made away with one UI control and delegated it to the system because that means less clutter on the app and it makes it sexier.

That said, I understand your specific problem and maybe you can use an app like this https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic which makes the volume control similar to the windows panel and let's you control volumes for each app running.

There are other, more sophisticated, apps that do the same thing. I linked this once because it's free.

Try if this: install "Background Music" and once that is open (it will only appear in the top bar as a small icon) you should be able to select that as an input for Zoom. Now if you have logic open and play something through there, it will come through Background Music, since its function is to capture your internal desktop audio. Should work. Let me know if it does!

Example: You watching some workout video in software A and when you pause the software B sounds is back on automatic.

for macOS there is software called Background Music https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

This is most likely a limitation in Core Audio. Probably extremely difficult to accomplish in iOS.

Someone managed to create a workaround for macOS but it looks like it required using their own driver.

https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

Apparently BackgroundMusic does what you want. I found it while researching the issue. The biggest problem is that it makes volume control more complex – and in a way people tend to forget about. Although this might be easier on macOS if they added sliders to the existing menu similar to BackgroundMusic. Also, web browsers for example can have many audio sources all at once. A per-app setting just doesn’t cut it there.

For Mac users you can use this: https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

Just make sure you change Premiere's Audio Output to "Background Music" instead of your existing audio output. It needs to run through that output before it can pause music.

Hm. Maybe I've been using just Linux too long to really notice. If I ever get a Linux distro installed on this MacBook Pro, I'll have to do a comparison. I guess my experience is just one that the author of that blog post rejects, as well: I had some issues with PulseAudio in 2008, when Ubuntu started shipping it, but I learned how to configure it, resolved those issues. Nowadays, I don't have to configure it at all on any of my systems, and it just does what I expect it to. My experience is probably improved by the fact that I don't use proprietary software anymore, as well-- most application issues I've had with PulseAudio come down to certain proprietary apps not supporting it well (like Skype and Flash).

I guess some third-party apps can give you per-app mixers ( https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic ), so there must be some underlying capacity for it in CoreAudio. I guess Apple doesn't think their users can handle it, or they'd put the frontend pieces into macOS themselves.

Despite the un-Googleable title, Background Music seems decent. I doubt it will let you do the cooler things PulseAudio does, like individually redirect running audio streams to arbitrary output devices, but that's a much less essential feature than the per-app volume controls.

So what my problem was caused by was the app Background Music. If you look in the discussions they're having the same exact problem. If you don't have the app installed I have no idea, but for me I just uninstalled it and now everything works fine. For some reason it doesn't work with Sierra.

If you're talking about being able to control the volume of each individual application, I use Background Music personally (https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic)

If it's something completely different, I have no idea.