Mac Audio for Podcasting: Control What You Hear

You're recording a podcast on your Mac. You need to hear your guest clearly in Zoom, Riverside or SquadCast. You want to monitor your own recording in your DAW. And you need every notification silent, because a Slack ping or a macOS alert in the middle of an interview is unusable audio.

macOS gives you one volume slider for all of it. Here's how to get a cleaner setup.

What competes for your ears during a recording

A typical session has:

• A call app (Zoom, Riverside, SquadCast): your guest, who needs to be clear
• A DAW or recorder (Logic Pro, GarageBand, Audacity, Hindenburg): monitoring your own audio
• Notification sources (Slack, Mail, Calendar, Messages): must stay silent
• A browser: show notes, research tabs, maybe a timer

When all of them share one volume, raising the guest also raises everything else, and any stray alert lands in your headphones (and possibly in your recording).

Step 1: Turn on Do Not Disturb before you record

Focus is the most important native step. Open Control Center in the menu bar, click Focus and choose Do Not Disturb. Notifications stop showing and stop making sound while it's on.

For a recording-specific Focus, go to System Settings > Focus, add a new Focus, and choose which people and apps (if any) are allowed through. Turn it on before every session and off afterwards.

Step 2: Silence notification sounds per app

Some apps still make noise on their own, and you may forget the Focus. As a second layer:

• Go to System Settings > Notifications, pick an app such as Slack or Mail, and turn off Play sound for notifications.
• In Slack itself, look for the notification sound options in its preferences and set them to none, or pause notifications for the length of the recording.
• Quit apps you don't need during the session. It's the most reliable way to make sure they stay quiet.

Step 3: Turn down macOS alert sounds

Go to System Settings > Sound and lower the Alert volume slider, or turn off sound effects you don't need. This keeps the system 'dings' out of your monitoring.

Step 4: Set the guest's level inside the call app

Most call apps have their own speaker volume in their audio settings. Set your guest to a comfortable level there instead of cranking the Mac's master volume. For tips on keeping the DAW separate, see how to control DAW and system volume separately.

Where the native approach falls short

This works, but it's easy to miss a step. Forget the Focus and a notification interrupts your take. Forget to quit Slack and a huddle rings through. And the master slider still moves your guest and your DAW monitoring together, so you can't make one louder without the other.

Per-app volume for podcasting with SoundDial

SoundDial, a per-app volume mixer for Mac lives in your menu bar and gives each running app its own slider, from 0% to 200%, plus a one-click mute. You set it before you hit record (or save the mix as a profile and apply it to the running apps with one click):

• Zoom / Riverside: high, so your guest is clear (boost above 100% if a guest's mic is quiet)
• Logic / GarageBand: lower, for comfortable monitoring
• Slack, Mail, Messages, Calendar: muted with one click each
• Browser: muted, so no tab starts playing mid-take

Muting an app in SoundDial silences only that app; everything else keeps playing. It works per app, not per browser tab, so all tabs of a browser share one slider. Use it together with Do Not Disturb rather than instead of it. More on muting single apps on the mute one app on Mac page, and on Slack specifically in mute Slack notifications without muting everything.

SoundDial changes playback volume only. It does not record anything and does not touch what your DAW captures.

One setting to check: auto-ducking is on by default. While Zoom, or a browser running Riverside or SquadCast, uses the microphone, SoundDial lowers every other app, your DAW monitoring included, to 30% of its level. For recording sessions you'll usually want to turn auto-ducking off or raise the duck level in SoundDial's settings.

It needs macOS 14.2 or later and costs €14.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store, no subscription.

Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.