Made a short Windows follow-up to the Mac shortcut video I posted a few days back — recording system audio to a WAV file with a single keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Alt + R).

Feedback welcome!

 

AudioRoute 0.2.1 is out. Feedback Protection got a meaningful pass:
• FP now identifies the running host by name and version. Instead of a generic "DAW detected" you get "Excluding Cubase 15", "Excluding Logic Pro", "Excluding Ableton Live 12" — surfaced in both the menu-bar tray and inside the AudioRoute Capture plug-in window (screenshots attached).

• Detection itself got smarter. In sandboxed AU hosts (Logic 11+, Cubase 12+, etc.) the plug-in's parent process is Apple's sandbox helper, not the DAW — earlier versions hit launchd and gave up. AR now walks the process tree and cross-references running apps via NSWorkspace, so those hosts are correctly identified.
• The FP toggle is global now: one switch covers plug-in, virtual audio device, and direct-to-WAV recorder.
• Turning FP off shows a confirmation explaining the feedback-loop risk, with a "Don't show this again" once you've made an informed choice.

Also in 0.2.1:
• Fix for AudioRoute showing up as a false positive in corporate endpoint-security tools (Jamf, Crowdstrike, SentinelOne). The LaunchAgent plist now writes directly to its final name — earlier versions used a temp-rename pattern that those tools flagged as "Hidden Launch Plist Created" (MITRE T1564.001).
If your IT flagged AudioRoute on a managed Mac, this clears it up.
• Improved diagnostics under the hood — helps me ship fixes faster when something goes wrong.
• Fix for a crash that could happen when toggling FP off in 0.2.0.

 

AudioRoute 0.2.2 — smarter upgrade flow + robustness pass
What's new in 0.2.2:
• Smart upgrade signal — when AudioRoute updates while you've got a DAW open with the plug-in already loaded, the plug-in window now shows a banner ("AudioRoute 0.2.2 is installed — restart your DAW") and the tray names which host needs restarting. Replaces the previous post-install dialog that occasionally false-positived on Steinberg helper processes (the "Cubase running" prompt some saw on Macs without Cubase — apologies, that's fixed).
• Cubase 15 added to recognized hosts (12 and 11 too).
• Windows installer politely warns before replacing the plug-in while a DAW is open, instead of silently scheduling a reboot.
• Improved logging and diagnostics
• Defensive error handling across daemon, tray, and plug-in.

If you have a DAW open when you update, restart it once to load the new plug-in. After 0.2.2 the new version will signal that itself.

 

...

 

Last edited: Jun 26, 2026

AudioRoute 0.2.3 just shipped (Mac + Windows).

What's in it:
- Fixed: garbled audio when capturing from the AudioRoute Input device while an AR Capture plug-in is loaded on a mono track. Symptoms: 2× speed-up, choppy audio, gaps in the waveform. Affected Audacity, OBS, Acoustica — anything reading the virtual device — plus the built-in menubar/tray recorder. The plug-in itself was unaffected.
- macOS 14.2+ support (was 14.5+). Sonoma 14.2 is the actual minimum the Core Audio process-tap API requires; the previous 14.5 was just over-conservative. Installer now refuses sub-14.2 cleanly so nobody ends up with a half-installed product on Ventura.
- Fixed: Windows first-launch crash. Clicking Skip or Get Started on the welcome window could trigger a use-after-free.
- Better error messages for failed recordings. When the menubar recorder can't open the WAV file (folder permissions, iCloud offload, disk full, etc.), you now get a real reason in a dialog instead of a silent failure.

 

OBS is a great tool for screen recording - if it works for your workflow, by all means use it. AudioRoute is a different tool: it routes another app's audio directly into a DAW (Logic, Ableton, Cubase, Reaper) via a plug-in or virtual input device. You record system audio onto a DAW track at the project's native rate, mix it alongside your mic and interface inputs, edit per-track. OBS doesn't do audio-to-DAW routing - it captures to a video file.

Happy we already have hundreds of customers finding this useful.

 

Not trying to throw shade, but you can easily set up Voicemeeter Banana to do this exact same thing. On top of that, you can route the output of different applications and send the input of specific applications into Ableton, which this plugin can't even do.

Once everything is set up, you just select your input and it works like a charm, and it's completely free.

Also, this entire project, including the website screams vibecoded look.
This problem was solved ages ago. Even the Scarlett 4th Gen interfaces ship with this functionality built in.

I've linked a YouTube video below that explains how to set up the routing:

 

You "just" started coding this tool in the greater scheme of things, right? So who knows where you will go with it, ultimately. Every post of yours here is describing new features, fixes, etc. If someone actually using your application offers some feedback, bug report, or whatever; it makes sense to take that information on board and look into it. Hopefully you read between the lines as to what I mean here.

 

AR doesn't do everything at this point - VoiceMeeter, Scarlett Loopback, hardware-routed rigs all solve adjacent problems and work well for the people who use them. What AR covers is one specific workflow: drop a plug-in on a DAW track, or pick a virtual input device, hit record - one click workflow. Cross-platform Mac + Windows, no routing rig to learn. That's the trade.

The website isn't polished, it's not where I'm investing my time right now. The product is.

On "vibecoded" - I've been engineering software for 20 years. The product ships a CoreAudio HAL plug-in running inside coreaudiod on macOS, plus a virtual audio driver for Windows currently going through Microsoft's attestation review. That's not the kind of code you produce by prompting an LLM. The visuals can be improved; the audio plumbing can't be vibecoded, otherwise this thing would be unusable

 

why is this dude getting flamed so hard someone explain

 

For seemingly no reason.
I think it's a fantastic idea.

 

Thanks both, much appreciated. If anyone here actually uses it and has friction worth flagging, drop it - that's the feedback that makes the next release better.

 

It wouldn't matter if it was. People's negative reaction to anything which they think is AI-assisted has gone beyond rational thinking on here. Ironically, people will use DSP plugins which actually change the sound of audio files in their projects, and don't have any idea of what is AI-assisted coding and what isn't. You could take an AI created plugin, slap a crusty looking 90's style GUI on it and people would use it without any second thought about it, if it sounded right.

 

Yeah, you are right, and this is an accurate observation on the irony.
AI assistance is part of how most software gets written these days, including DSP; the question's just whether the dev actually understands what's shipping.

For AR- the visuals are on the list to refresh; the code under it is what gets my time first.

 

Quick 3-min walkthrough of AudioRoute in Ableton — two-track Sends Only setup, with a live record + playback demo:

 

Made a quick video showing how to record your screen with system audio using the built-in Mac screen recorder and AudioRoute:

 

agreed. there are many free alternatives on the WIN side at least. there weren't back then.

as far as the resampling thing in audacity, it will only resample if the record settings don't mesh (exactly) with the incoming data stream. which I think is par for any audio app or daw otherwise I have never had issues with "exactness" when making recordings with audacity.

 

Last edited: Jul 1, 2026 at 9:46 PM

not seeing flames here, where are they exactly It basically comes down to what everything on here comes down to eventually. banter about minutiae. many folks who have been doing audio production for a minute have their own way of doing this type of thing which for the most part these days is perfectly able to be accomplished without the need of a pay-for app. the dev see's fit to criticize those methods, which makes sense - he want's to sell his product. which is fine as well. but as it always goes here, folks stand by their methods because it works (and has worked for years) for them for free. hence the many replies to the criticisms... not flames, at least on my part anyway.

 

You guys said it. I've read the whole thread and, yes, @ar-audio is promoting his product.
But he provides polite, concise and non-nonsense clear explanations to every question.

I have no use currently for this app but seems quite interesting.