Using Computer Audio as Microphone on Macintosh

Have you ever wanted to record a file of an online audio stream or something? Perhaps you don't like using youtube-mp3.org but still want to rip music off YouTube. Whatever your motive is, I do frequently record my computer audio. The process was unfortunately quite obscure and involved a lot of internet searches. And now I'm going to tell you how.

Step one: Download and install SoundFlower.

Once done, you should see it as a device in your sound menu.

But you can't stop here; there's one more crucial step for it to work properly. So...

Step Two: Open Audio Midi Setup

Step Three: Press the plus button in the bottom left to create a multi-output device.

In the list in the bottom, select only Soundflower (2ch),
(although I believe 16ch works as well), and Built-in Output.

Step Four: To record computer audio, you will need to do two things. First, go to audio settings, and under Output, select Multi-Output Device.

Then, go to Input and select either Soundflower (2ch) or (16ch), whichever one you chose for your Multi-Output device. If you're using stereo headphones, I don't think it makes a difference.

Note the registering audio input. I was listening to Nixon in China.

This worked very well for me. There doesn't seem to be any loss in audio quality. As a matter of fact, I used this system to obtain the album Naqoyqatsi (which isn't available for purchase online) from some chap who uploaded it to YouTube.

The good thing about this system is that if you use an application such as Audacity, then you can output it in whatever format you wish - for this particular case, I wasn't limited to not very good quality mp3 files - you can do whatever you want this way. FLACs, OGGs, AIFFs... Anything is possible!

WWW

Who invented that acronym, anyway? It's terrible. I mean, try to think of any other acronym where the original is easier to say than the letter. Try comparing "doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou" to "world wide web". Why does there even need to be an acronym. In fact, why does it exist, anyway? Whose idea was it to have "WWW" in front of everything? I mean really, the only people who bother to put useless junk in front of words are french people. And even then, it's just a few letters that determine what gender a particular word is.
But anyway, I got a new microphone. It's known as the "Blue Snowball", and it's very good. I was going to put up an audio recording-ish thing to my YouTube channel just to test it out, but iPhoto decided not to work, so now I'm just sort of going to grump around until it starts working again.

Also, how come I never use indentations when I'm writing in my blog? I do it everywhere else.