Routr Studio

Context

Streaming has gone from a niche hobby to something millions of people do — for work, for community, for income. The tools to do it well are mostly free. OBS is free. The games are free. The one thing that isn't: routing audio from one app to another on a Mac. Loopback does it perfectly and costs $99. For a lot of people just getting started, that's a full month of streaming revenue.

The Problem

macOS doesn't let apps share audio natively. If you want your Discord voice to go into OBS, or your Spotify to play under your stream audio, you need a virtual audio device in between. Loopback solves this — but it's $99. For a new streamer, that's a hard ask.

I needed it myself. I looked at the alternatives — most were abandoned, confusing, or required a computer science degree to configure. So I built one.

What I Built

Routr Studio is a free Mac app for audio routing. It creates virtual audio devices and lets you pass audio between apps — Discord into OBS, Spotify into a stream, a game into a recording — without touching a config file or opening Terminal.

I vibecoded it — designed the interface and built it with AI assistance. The goal was to make something that felt as polished as a paid app, not a hobbyist utility. Clean UI, clear labels, does one thing well.

It ships as a DMG. Free to download, free to use.

How It Works

Open Routr, create a virtual device, set it as your input or output in any app. That's it. No audio engineering background required. The interface is designed around how streamers actually think — "I want Discord to go into OBS" — not around how virtual audio routing actually works under the hood.

The same pattern that runs through everything I build: find where people are stitching together too many things, and make the one thing that replaces them. Loopback is great. Routr is free.