Home / Guides / AudioRoute vs BlackHole
BlackHole has been the go-to free virtual audio device on macOS for years, and for good reason — it's open source, dependable, and Apple-Silicon-native. So why does AudioRoute exist? Because the setup ritual around BlackHole is the part that hasn't aged well. This is an honest side-by-side: where AudioRoute is better, where BlackHole still wins, and how to migrate if you decide to switch.
Use BlackHole if you're already comfortable with macOS audio routing, you don't mind setting up an aggregate device once, you only need the virtual-device path (no DAW plugin), and you're on Mac only. It's free, open source, well-maintained.
Use AudioRoute if you want a working capture path the moment you finish installing — no aggregate device, no Audio MIDI Setup — or you need a VST3 / AU plugin you can drop on a track, or you need the same workflow on Windows. €29 lifetime, 14-day free trial.
| BlackHole | AudioRoute | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, open source | €29 lifetime, 14-day free trial |
| Platforms | macOS only | macOS and Windows |
| Aggregate device required to hear what you're capturing? | Yes — build one in Audio MIDI Setup | No — your normal output keeps working |
| VST3 / AU plugin | No — virtual device only | Yes — "AudioRoute Capture" on macOS and Windows |
| Standalone WAV recorder | No — you supply the recording app | Yes — built into the menu-bar / tray app |
| Breaks when you change your output device? | Often — aggregate device has to be rebuilt | No — not coupled to your output device |
| Updates | Community releases, irregular | Auto-updates via Sparkle, lifetime included |
| Sample rates | Up to 768 kHz (configurable channel count) | Up to 192 kHz, 32-bit float |
| License model | GPL-3.0 | Proprietary, one-time purchase, lifetime updates |
BlackHole as a piece of software is solid. What's painful is the workflow around it. Three things that come up over and over in forum posts and Reddit threads:
BlackHole only routes audio — it doesn't let you hear what you're routing. To do both at once you build an aggregate device (or a multi-output device) in macOS's Audio MIDI Setup app that combines BlackHole and your real speakers (or audio interface). Then you switch your Mac's output to that aggregate. The first time you do this, you also fight clock drift, sample-rate mismatches, and "which device is the master." If you only do it once, fine. If you swap headphones, plug in an interface, or change setups regularly, you'll re-do it more than you'd like.
AudioRoute side-steps this by not touching your output at all. Your output device stays whatever you had it set to — built-in speakers, headphones, an audio interface, AirPlay — and AudioRoute gets a parallel copy of whatever your Mac is playing. There's no aggregate device because there's nothing to aggregate; the original output path keeps working unchanged.
BlackHole is a virtual audio device. To get audio into Ableton, Logic, Reaper, or any DAW, you have to select BlackHole (or your aggregate device) as the recording input and arm an audio track. That works, but it ties the recording flow to a system-wide device assignment.
AudioRoute ships an actual VST3 / Audio Unit plugin called "AudioRoute Capture" that you drop onto a track inside your DAW. The plugin reads from the AudioRoute daemon's audio buffer and presents the system audio as if it were any other input. Same effect from the DAW's point of view, no input-device juggling.
BlackHole is a CoreAudio HAL plugin, which means it's macOS-only by design. If your workflow ever spans both platforms — you're collaborating on Windows, you teach on a PC, you bounce sessions between machines — you need a separate tool on the other side (and Windows's equivalents tend to be far less polished).
AudioRoute ships on both macOS (CoreAudio process taps) and Windows (WASAPI process loopback) with the same VST3 plugin and the same tray-app recorder on both. Your license covers both platforms with the same key. The Windows virtual input device is still going through Microsoft's driver attestation review, but the plugin and tray recorder already work on Windows today.
It would be dishonest to write this comparison without acknowledging where BlackHole is genuinely the better fit:
In short: if your workflow is stable, single-platform, and you've already paid the one-time cost of building an aggregate device, the case for switching is weaker. The case is strongest when any of those three things isn't true.
Both tools solve the same surface-level problem — "let me capture what my computer is playing" — but they take different paths.
BlackHole creates a virtual device. Your Mac's audio engine routes output through it (when you select it). To monitor what's flowing, you build the aggregate-device combination. Anything sent to that device is also recordable from it by any app that can record from an input.
AudioRoute observes the system audio output without redirecting it. A small user-space daemon taps into whatever your Mac is already playing and writes the captured frames into a shared-memory buffer. The VST plugin, the virtual input device, and the tray-app recorder all read from that same buffer. Your existing output device keeps working because nothing is rerouted.
If you want the deeper technical version — CoreAudio process taps, shared-memory layout, why this avoids the aggregate-device problem entirely — the architecture page covers it.
If you've been running BlackHole and want to switch, this takes about five minutes.
AudioRoute costs €29 as a one-time purchase, with a 14-day free trial and a 14-day money-back guarantee. There's no subscription, and updates are included for life. BlackHole costs nothing.
That price-to-free comparison sounds bad on paper, but for the audience that's googling "BlackHole alternative" specifically, the math usually pencils out the other way: an hour of debugging aggregate devices, lost monitor signal during a recording, or the friction of explaining the setup to a collaborator is worth more than €29 once. The trial is there precisely so you can decide that for yourself before paying anything.
Free 14-day trial, no credit card. €29 lifetime license, all future updates included, macOS and Windows.
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