Hi all,
Apple dropping on-going development for FireWire devices that were supported with the Core Audio driver standard is a catastrophe for a lot of struggling musicians who need to both keep up to date on security updates that come with new OS releases, and continue to utilise their hard earned investments in very expensive and still pristine audio devices that have been reduced to e-waste by Apple's seemingly tone-deaf ignorance in the cries for on-going support.
I have one of said audio devices, and I'd like to keep using it while keeping my 2019 Intel Mac Book Pro up to date with the latest security updates and OS features.
Probably not the first time you gurus have had someone make the logical leap leading to a request for something like this, but I was wondering if it might be somehow possible of shoe-horning the code used in previous versions of Mac OS that allowed the Mac to speak with the audio features of such devices to run inside the Ventura version of the OS.
Would it possible? Would it involve a lot of work? I don't think I'd be the only person willing to pay for a third party application or utility that restored this functionality.
There has to be 100's of thousands of people who would be happy to spare some cash to stop their multi-thousand dollar investment in gear to be so thoughtlessly resigned to the scrap heap.
Any comments or layman-friendly explanations as to why this couldn’t happen would be gratefully received!
Thanks,
em
Explore the integration of media technologies within your app. Discuss working with audio, video, camera, and other media functionalities.
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Is it possible to find IDR frame (CMSampleBuffer) in AVAsset h264 video file?
Hey Swift community!
I'm exploring building a macOS app that needs to monitor what's currently playing in music apps like Spotify and Apple Music (track info, playback position, play/pause state). I'm trying to figure out the most efficient architecture before diving in.
The Goal:
Monitor playback state across multiple music players to react to changes in real-time, ideally with minimal CPU overhead since this would run continuously in the background.
Approaches I'm Considering
AppleScript / ScriptingBridge
Distributed Notifications
Native Frameworks (Apple Music only)
What's the recommended way to do this on macOS?
Are distributed notifications reliable enough to avoid polling entirely?
Is there a performance difference between AppleScript and ScriptingBridge for IPC?
For Apple Music specifically, should I use MusicKit, MediaPlayer, or stick with AppleScript?
Are there other approaches I'm missing?
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
General
I believe this should work:
CFMutableDictionaryRef attrs = CFDictionaryCreateMutable(kCFAllocatorDefault, 0, &kCFTypeDictionaryKeyCallBacks, &kCFTypeDictionaryValueCallBacks);
CFDictionaryAddValue(attrs, kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey, kCVImageBufferColorPrimaries_ITU_R_709_2);
CFDictionaryAddValue(attrs, kCVImageBufferTransferFunctionKey, kCVImageBufferTransferFunction_ITU_R_709_2);
CFDictionaryAddValue(attrs, kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrixKey, kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrix_ITU_R_709_2);
CVPixelBufferRef pixelBuffer = NULL;
CVPixelBufferCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault, width, height, kCVPixelFormatType_32ARGB, attrs, &pixelBuffer);
assert(CFDictionaryGetCount(CVBufferGetAttachments(pixelBuffer, kCVAttachmentMode_ShouldPropagate)) > 0);
But that last assert fails, so it appears the color info does not get attached.
kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey and the others are not one of the keys listed under BufferAttributeKeys, but I think they're supposed to be allowed because they're listed by CMVideoFormatDescriptionGetExtensionKeysCommonWithImageBuffers().
I'm hoping that putting the color matrix info in there will control how AVAssetWriter converts the RGB to YCbCr.
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Video
My app want Converting iphone12 HDR Video to SDR,to edit。
follow the doc Apple-HDR-Convert.
My code setting the pixBuffAttributes
[pixBuffAttributes setObject:(id)(kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrix_ITU_R_709_2) forKey:(id)kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrixKey];
[pixBuffAttributes setObject:(id)(kCVImageBufferColorPrimaries_ITU_R_709_2) forKey:(id)kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey];
[pixBuffAttributes setObject:(id)kCVImageBufferTransferFunction_ITU_R_709_2 forKey:(id)kCVImageBufferTransferFunctionKey];
playerItemOutput = [[AVPlayerItemVideoOutput alloc] initWithPixelBufferAttributes:pixBuffAttributes];
but I get the playerItemOutput's output buffer
CFTypeRef colorAttachments = CVBufferGetAttachment(pixelBuffer, kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrixKey, NULL);
CFTypeRef colorPrimaries = CVBufferGetAttachment(pixelBuffer, kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey, NULL);
CFTypeRef colorTransFunc = CVBufferGetAttachment(pixelBuffer, kCVImageBufferTransferFunctionKey, NULL);
NSLog(@"colorAttachments = %@", colorAttachments);
NSLog(@"colorPrimaries = %@", colorPrimaries);
NSLog(@"colorTransFunc = %@", colorTransFunc);
log output:
colorAttachments = ITU_R_2020
colorPrimaries = ITU_R_2020
colorTransFunc = ITU_R_2100_HLG
pixBuffAttributes setting output format invalid,please help!
So experimenting with the new SpeechTranscriber, if I do:
let transcriber = SpeechTranscriber(
locale: locale,
transcriptionOptions: [],
reportingOptions: [.volatileResults],
attributeOptions: [.audioTimeRange]
)
only the final result has audio time ranges, not the volatile results.
Is this a performance consideration? If there is no performance problem, it would be nice to have the option to also get speech time ranges for volatile responses.
I'm not presenting the volatile text at all in the UI, I was just trying to keep statistics about the non-speech and the speech noise level, this way I can determine when the noise level falls under the noisefloor for a while.
The goal here was to finalize the recording automatically, when the noise level indicate that the user has finished speaking.
I have an iPadOS M-processor application with two different running configurations.
In config1, the shared AVAudioSession is configured for .videoChat mode using the built-in microphone. The input/output nodes of the AVAudioEngine are configured with voice processing enabled. The built-in mic is formatted for 1 channel at 48KHz.
In config2, the shared AVAudioSession is configured for .measurement mode using an external USB microphone. The input/output nodes of the AVAudioEngine are configured with voice processing disabled. The external mic is formatted for 2 channels at 44.1KHz
I've written a configuration manager designed to safely switch between these two configurations. It works by stopping AVAudioEngine and detaching all but the input and output nodes, updating the shared audio session for the desired mic and sample-rates, and setting the appropriate state for voice processing to either true or false as required by the configuration. Finally the new audio graph is constructed by attaching appropriate nodes, connecting them, and re-starting AVAudioEngine
I'm experiencing what I believe is a race-condition between switching voice processing on or off and then trying to re-build and start the new audio graph. Even though notifications, which are dumped to the console indicate that my requested input and sample-rate settings are in place, I crash when trying to start the audio engine because the sample-rate is wrong. Investigating further it looks like the switch from remote I/O to voice-processing I/O or vice-versa has not yet actually completed. I introduced a 100ms second delay and that seems to help but is obviously not a reliable way to build software that must work consistently.
How can I make sure that what are apparently asynchronous configuration changes to the shared audio session and the input/output nodes have completed before I go on?
I tried using route change notifications from the shared AVAudioSession but these lie. They say my preferred mic input and sample-rate setting is in place but when I dump the AVAudioEngine graph to the debugger console, I still see the wrong sample rate assigned to the input/output nodes. Also these are the wrong AU nodes. That is, VPIO is still in place when RIO should be, or vice-versa.
How can I make the switch reliable without arbitrary time delays?
Is my configuration manager approach appropriate (question for Apple engineers)?
I have a Catalyst app ('container') which hosts an embedded AUv3 Audio Unit extension ('plugin'). This used to work for years and has worked with this project until a few days ago.
it still works on iOS as expected
on MacOS the extension is never registered/installed and won't load
extension won't show up with AUVal
seems to have stopped working with the 26.1 XCode update
I'm fairly certain the problem is not code related (i.e. likely build settings, project settings, entitlements, signing, etc.)
I have compared all settings with another still-working project and can't find any meaningful difference
(I can't request code-level support because even the minimal thing vastly exceeds the 250 lines of code limit.)
How can I debug the issue? I literally don't know where to start to fix this problem, short of rebuilding the entire thing and hope that it magically starts working again.
I’m building a macOS video editor that uses AVComposition and AVVideoComposition.
Initially, my renderer creates a composition with some default video/audio tracks:
@Published var composition: AVComposition?
@Published var videoComposition: AVVideoComposition?
@Published var playerItem: AVPlayerItem?
Then I call a buildComposition() function that inserts all the default video segments.
Later in the editing workflow, the user may choose to add their own custom video clip. For this I have a function like:
private func handlePickedVideo(_ url: URL) {
guard url.startAccessingSecurityScopedResource() else {
print("Failed to access security-scoped resource")
return
}
let asset = AVURLAsset(url: url)
let videoTracks = asset.tracks(withMediaType: .video)
guard let firstVideoTrack = videoTracks.first else {
print("No video track found")
url.stopAccessingSecurityScopedResource()
return
}
renderer.insertUserVideoTrack(from: asset, track: firstVideoTrack)
url.stopAccessingSecurityScopedResource()
}
What I want to achieve is the same behavior professional video editors provide,
after the composition has already been initialized and built, the user should be able to add a new video track and the composition should update live, meaning the preview player should immediately reflect the changes without rebuilding everything from scratch manually.
How can I structure my AVComposition / AVMutableComposition and my rendering pipeline so that adding a new clip later updates the existing composition in real time (similar to Final Cut/Adobe Premiere), instead of needing to rebuild everything from zero?
You can find a playable version of this entire setup at :- https://github.com/zaidbren/SimpleEditor
I've tried SpeechTranscriber with a lot of my devices (from iPhone 12 series ~ iPhone 17 series) without issues. However, SpeechTranscriber.isAvailable value is false for my iPhone 11 Pro.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/speech/speechtranscriber/isavailable
I'am curious why the iPhone 11 Pro device is not supported. Are all iPhone 11 series not supported intentionally? Or is there any problem with my specific device?
I've also checked the supportedLocales, and the value is an empty array.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/speech/speechtranscriber/supportedlocales
I have the new iOS 26 SpeechTranscriber working in my application. The issue I am facing is how to determine if the device I am running on supports SpeechTranscriber. I was able to create code that tests if the device supports transcription but it takes a bit of time to run and thus the results are not available when the app launches. What I am looking for is a list of what iOS 26 devices it doesn't run on. I think its safe to assume any new devices will support it so if we can just have a list of what devices that can run iOS 26 and not able to do transcription it would be much faster for the app. I have determined it doesn't work on a SE 2nd Gen, it works on iPhone 12, SE 3rd Gen, iPhone 14 Pro, 15 Pro. As the SpeechTranscriber doesn't work in the simulator I can't determine that way. I have checked the docs and it doesn't list the devices it doesn't work on.
Playback of any kind of HD H.264 MP4 files (720p, 50fps) could randomly cause a stalled image. Playback does not stop in such a case. Image is frozen/stalled. Audio goes on. Timeline goes on. By tapping play/pause or scrubbing in the timeline, the playback recovers.
It could also happen, if you are scrubbing in the timeline, especially to areas not loaded already (progressive MP4 download). Behaviour is always the same: image is stalled/frozen, audio goes on.
To reproduce: use example project https://developer.apple.com/documentation/AVKit/playing-video-content-in-a-standard-user-interface
Example file: https://www.keepinmind.info/test.mp4
Adding both AVCaptureMovieFileOutput and AVCaptureVideoDataOutput is supported in AVCaptureSession as seen in documentation (copied snippet below) but then when AVCaptureDevice is configured with ProRes422 codec, it fails unless one of the two outputs is removed from the capture session. It is very much reproducible on iPhone 14 pro running iOS 26.0.
Prior to iOS 16, you can add an AVCaptureVideoDataOutput and an AVCaptureMovieFileOutput to the same session, but only one may have its connection active. If you attempt to enable both connections, the system chooses the movie file output as the active connection and disables the video data output’s connection. For apps that link against iOS 16 or later, this restriction no longer exists.
Recently Apple gave us the possibility to upload asset resources in the background. We implemented our background upload extension but when our CI tried to upload the app on TestFlight we got an error that the extension point identifier - in our case com.apple.photos.backgound-upload - is not an official one. Any idea when it will become official and we will be able to release a working background uploading?
Hi, everyone, I downloaded the source code EditingSpatialAudioWithAnAudioMix.zip from https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cinematic/editing-spatial-audio-with-an-audio-mix, when I carried out one of the actions named "process" in command line the program crashed!!
Form the source code, I found that the value of componentType is set to kAudioUnitType_FormatConverter:
// The actual `AudioUnit`.
public var auAudioMix = AVAudioUnitEffect()
init() {
// Generate a component description for the audio unit.
let componentDescription = AudioComponentDescription(
componentType: kAudioUnitType_FormatConverter,
componentSubType: kAudioUnitSubType_AUAudioMix,
componentManufacturer: kAudioUnitManufacturer_Apple,
componentFlags: 0,
componentFlagsMask: 0)
auAudioMix=AVAudioUnitEffect(audioComponentDescription: componentDescription)
}
But in the document from https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfaudio/avaudiouniteffect/init(audiocomponentdescription:), it seems that componentType can not be set to kAudioUnitType_FormatConverter and :
Has everyone encountered this problem?
I’m facing a problem while trying to achieve spatial audio effects in my iOS 18 app. I have tried several approaches to get good 3D audio, but the effect never felt good enough or it didn’t work at all.
Also what mostly troubles me is I noticed that AirPods I have doesn’t recognize my app as one having spatial audio (in audio settings it shows "Spatial Audio Not Playing"). So i guess my app doesn't use spatial audio potential.
First approach uses AVAudioEnviromentNode with AVAudioEngine. Chaining position of player as well as changing listener’s doesn’t seem to change anything in how audio plays.
Here's simple how i initialize AVAudioEngine
import Foundation
import AVFoundation
class AudioManager: ObservableObject {
// important class variables
var audioEngine: AVAudioEngine!
var environmentNode: AVAudioEnvironmentNode!
var playerNode: AVAudioPlayerNode!
var audioFile: AVAudioFile?
...
//Sound set up
func setupAudio() {
do {
let session = AVAudioSession.sharedInstance()
try session.setCategory(.playback, mode: .default, options: [])
try session.setActive(true)
} catch {
print("Failed to configure AVAudioSession: \(error.localizedDescription)")
}
audioEngine = AVAudioEngine()
environmentNode = AVAudioEnvironmentNode()
playerNode = AVAudioPlayerNode()
audioEngine.attach(environmentNode)
audioEngine.attach(playerNode)
audioEngine.connect(playerNode, to: environmentNode, format: nil)
audioEngine.connect(environmentNode, to: audioEngine.mainMixerNode, format: nil)
environmentNode.listenerPosition = AVAudio3DPoint(x: 0, y: 0, z: 0)
environmentNode.listenerAngularOrientation = AVAudio3DAngularOrientation(yaw: 0, pitch: 0, roll: 0)
environmentNode.distanceAttenuationParameters.referenceDistance = 1.0 environmentNode.distanceAttenuationParameters.maximumDistance = 100.0
environmentNode.distanceAttenuationParameters.rolloffFactor = 2.0
// example.mp3 is mono sound
guard let audioURL = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "example", withExtension: "mp3") else {
print("Audio file not found")
return
}
do {
audioFile = try AVAudioFile(forReading: audioURL)
} catch {
print("Failed to load audio file: \(error)")
}
}
...
//Playing sound
func playSpatialAudio(pan: Float ) {
guard let audioFile = audioFile else { return }
// left side
playerNode.position = AVAudio3DPoint(x: pan, y: 0, z: 0)
playerNode.scheduleFile(audioFile, at: nil, completionHandler: nil)
do {
try audioEngine.start()
playerNode.play()
} catch {
print("Failed to start audio engine: \(error)")
}
...
}
Second more complex approach using PHASE did better. I’ve made an exemplary app that allows players to move audio player in 3D space. I have added reverb, and sliders changing audio position up to 10 meters each direction from listener but audio seems to only really change left to right (x axis) - again I think it might be trouble with the app not being recognized as spatial.
//Crucial class Variables:
class PHASEAudioController: ObservableObject{
private var soundSourcePosition: simd_float4x4 = matrix_identity_float4x4
private var audioAsset: PHASESoundAsset!
private let phaseEngine: PHASEEngine
private let params = PHASEMixerParameters()
private var soundSource: PHASESource
private var phaseListener: PHASEListener!
private var soundEventAsset: PHASESoundEventNodeAsset?
// Initialization of PHASE
init{
do {
let session = AVAudioSession.sharedInstance()
try session.setCategory(.playback, mode: .default, options: [])
try session.setActive(true)
} catch {
print("Failed to configure AVAudioSession: \(error.localizedDescription)")
}
// Init PHASE Engine
phaseEngine = PHASEEngine(updateMode: .automatic)
phaseEngine.defaultReverbPreset = .mediumHall
phaseEngine.outputSpatializationMode = .automatic //nothing helps
// Set listener position to (0,0,0) in World space
let origin: simd_float4x4 = matrix_identity_float4x4
phaseListener = PHASEListener(engine: phaseEngine)
phaseListener.transform = origin
phaseListener.automaticHeadTrackingFlags = .orientation
try! self.phaseEngine.rootObject.addChild(self.phaseListener)
do{
try self.phaseEngine.start();
}
catch {
print("Could not start PHASE engine")
}
audioAsset = loadAudioAsset()
// Create sound Source
// Sphere
soundSourcePosition.translate(z:3.0)
let sphere = MDLMesh.newEllipsoid(withRadii: vector_float3(0.1,0.1,0.1), radialSegments: 14, verticalSegments: 14, geometryType: MDLGeometryType.triangles, inwardNormals: false, hemisphere: false, allocator: nil)
let shape = PHASEShape(engine: phaseEngine, mesh: sphere)
soundSource = PHASESource(engine: phaseEngine, shapes: [shape])
soundSource.transform = soundSourcePosition
print(soundSourcePosition)
do {
try phaseEngine.rootObject.addChild(soundSource)
}
catch {
print ("Failed to add a child object to the scene.")
}
let simpleModel = PHASEGeometricSpreadingDistanceModelParameters()
simpleModel.rolloffFactor = rolloffFactor
soundPipeline.distanceModelParameters = simpleModel
let samplerNode = PHASESamplerNodeDefinition(
soundAssetIdentifier: audioAsset.identifier,
mixerDefinition: soundPipeline,
identifier: audioAsset.identifier + "_SamplerNode")
samplerNode.playbackMode = .looping
do {soundEventAsset = try
phaseEngine.assetRegistry.registerSoundEventAsset(
rootNode: samplerNode,
identifier: audioAsset.identifier + "_SoundEventAsset")
} catch {
print("Failed to register a sound event asset.")
soundEventAsset = nil
}
}
//Playing sound
func playSound(){
// Fire new sound event with currently set properties
guard let soundEventAsset else { return }
params.addSpatialMixerParameters(
identifier: soundPipeline.identifier,
source: soundSource,
listener: phaseListener)
let soundEvent = try! PHASESoundEvent(engine: phaseEngine,
assetIdentifier: soundEventAsset.identifier,
mixerParameters: params)
soundEvent.start(completion: nil)
}
...
}
Also worth mentioning might be that I only own personal team account
Not able to record audio in AAC format with 96 kHz sample rate using AVAudioRecorder or Extended Audio File services with 96 kHz input audio from input device. The audio recording settings used are
let settings: [String: Any] = [
AVFormatIDKey: Int(kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC),
AVSampleRateKey: sampleRate
AVNumberOfChannelsKey: 1
AVEncoderAudioQualityKey: AVAudioQuality.high.rawValue
]
When tried using AVAudioEngine using AVAudioFile,
AVAudioFile(forWriting: fileURL, // file extension .m4a settings: fileSettings,
commonFormat: AVAudioCommonFormat.pcmFormatFloat32, interleaved: interleaved) else { return }
got error
CodecConverterFactory.cpp:977 unable to select compatible encoder sample rate
AudioConverter.cpp:1017 Failed to create a new in process converter -> from 1 ch, 96000 Hz, Float32 to 1 ch, 96000 Hz, aac (0x00000000) 0 bits/channel, 0 bytes/packet, 0 frames/packet, 0 bytes/frame, with status 1718449215
I am using the sample app from:
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/277/?time=763
I installed this on an Iphone 15 Pro with iOS 26 beta 1. I was able to get good transcription with it. The app did crash sometimes when transcribing and I was going to post here with the details. I then installed iOS beta 2 and uninstalled the sample app. Now every time I try to run the sample app on the 15 Pro I get this message:
SpeechAnalyzer: Input loop ending with error: Error Domain=SFSpeechErrorDomain Code=10 "Cannot use modules with unallocated locales [en_US (fixed en_US)]" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Cannot use modules with unallocated locales [en_US (fixed en_US)]}
I can't continue our our work towards using SpeechAnalyzer now with this error.
I have set breakpoints on all the catch handlers and it doesn't catch this error. My phone region is "United States"
I am trying to use SpeechTranscriber from Speech framework. Is it possible to use it on Simulator of iOS 26 (Mac OS Tahoe)? Function "supportedLocales" returns an empty array.
Hi there,
I recently launched a dj app to the mac app store, and was wondering how I could access songs for mixing purposes via Apple Music just like how serato, rekordbox, djay, and other DJ apps do?
Thanks,
Gunek