Piezo
There’s a certain thing about applications that are designed with attention to detail, and overall, just designed well- they seem to make you enjoy the experience, and enjoy what you’re doing that much more. Take Mint, which I reviewed a little while back. Because of how well and minimally designed Mint is, I now enjoy my web statistics. It performs the same task as something like Google Analytics, but the reason why I enjoy Mint so much is the design. Since buying a Mac, I seem to have a ridiculous passion for anything really well-designed that can help me complete the tasks I need to get done. I might be going into podcasting work soon, so I set out in search of something that is designed attractively, simple, and somewhat functional at the same time.
I stumbled upon a beautiful creation called Piezo, by the cool people at Rogue Amoeba. If Rogue Amoeba isn’t a cool name for a company, I have no idea what is. Anyways, Piezo, with its insanely cool name, is an app designed to capture and record audio from various Mac applications. Skype call? It can record it. iTunes? Recording right now. Straight from any mic you plug in? Yep, it’s recording. You can choose your audio quality, set your descriptions, your locations, names, and whatnot, all tied into a really simple, easy to use and fun application. And it looks like this:
As you can see… wow. It’s so vintage, and according to Piezo, the a great part of the design was inspired by Braun radios, by the great Dieter Rams. In here you have everything you need to record some great audio, your VU meters, your audio source, your counters, some settings… and one big beautiful record button just waiting for you to push it. Simple, yet amazing.
Is the functionality as great as the design? Rather than write another paragraph on it, I recorded myself using my internal mic, at Piezo’s best distribution quality.
You can grab that recording here, by the way. It’s cool.
Some people like to think of it as a lighter version of Audio Hijack Pro, something cool that Rogue Amoeba also makes. In a nutshell: Piezo is for users who want a more attractive design, and don’t need all the bells and whistles of Audio Hijack Pro- whereas Audio Hijack Pro is for people who seriously need the features. One isn’t better than the other.
If you’re looking to record audio, I would recommend grabbing Piezo. It’s only $10, and is available directly from their site, or on the Mac App Store.