⚠️ Archived Post
This is an archived post from my previous blog (2007-2014). It may contain outdated information, broken links, or deprecated technical content. For current writing, please see the main Writing section.

Fun with AU Lab

Originally published on September 28, 2009

The speech synthesizer and the AU Lab application might be hidden gems on your Mac! Why not have some fun with them?



Here we go:
  1. Download a long text file, for example this one.
  2. Open Terminal.app and run
    say -n : -f 28500-8.txt
    The "-n" option will redirect the speech output through AUNetSend.
  3. Open /Developer/Applications/Audio/AU Lab
  4. Click Next, Next, Done.
  5. Select "Edit" > "Add AudioUnit Generator..."
  6. Select "AUNetReceive" from the Generator drop down and click OK.
  7. Click Connect. You should hear the book being read.
  8. Now play with the different effects in the "Effects" drop down in the "Output 1" section. AUBandpass, AUDistortion and AUMatrixReverb are fun.
Have fun!