Per-app audio output on Mac without Loopback or virtual cables

You don't need Loopback or a virtual audio cable to send one app to its own output on a Mac. Those tools route audio by making you wire up virtual devices; a per-app routing app skips all of that and lets you pick an output device for each app directly, no rig to build. Here's what genuinely needs a virtual cable, what doesn't, and the fastest no-cable route in 2026.

The reason this question comes up at all is that macOS sends every app to a single output device. There's no native "play this app on AirPods, everything else on the speakers." Search for a fix and the first answers you'll hit are BlackHole and Loopback — virtual-cable tools. They work, but they're the heavy end of the toolbox, and most people reaching for them only want one app on a different output.

What "virtual cables" actually are — and why you were told to use them

A virtual audio cable is a fake output device. Apps play into it as if it were a real speaker, and you re-route what comes out the other side to actual hardware. BlackHole is the free, open-source one; you install it, then open Audio MIDI Setup and build a Multi-Output or Aggregate device that ties BlackHole to your real output. Loopback ($99 one-time from Rogue Amoeba) is the polished paid version of the same idea: a visual patchbay where you create virtual devices and wire sources into them.

This approach is powerful, and for genuinely complex signal chains it's the right tool. But for "send this one app somewhere else," it's a lot of moving parts. You're maintaining virtual devices, remembering which app points where, and hoping an app update doesn't reset its output picker. Plenty of apps don't even expose an output picker, which is the whole reason the cable rig exists.

You don't have to wire cables to route one app

A per-app routing app does the interception for you. Instead of building a virtual device and pointing an app at it, you open a list of running apps and choose an output device per app — the routing happens at the system layer, invisibly. No Audio MIDI Setup, no aggregate devices, no patchbay. Three tools cover this ground honestly:

• Background Music — free and open source. It does per-app volume and basic per-app output. It relies on its own virtual device under the hood, but you never touch Audio MIDI Setup to set it up.
• SoundSource — $49 one-time, also from Rogue Amoeba. A menu-bar panel with per-app volume, per-app output routing, and EQ. It installs a small background audio component the first time, then you route per app from one place.
• Fader — $19.99 one-time. Per-app volume and per-app output routing, driven from the keyboard. It uses the output-routing path Apple opened up in macOS 14.4, so there's no virtual device to create at all.

The genuinely no-cable way: routing built on macOS 14.4

Here's the honest technical picture. Any tool that routes one app's audio somewhere else has to intercept that app's sound. The old way exposed that plumbing to you as virtual cables. Rogue Amoeba's apps (SoundSource, Loopback) hide it behind their own audio component that you install once. Fader takes the newest path: the audio process-tap API Apple shipped in macOS 14.4. That's why Fader's floor is 14.4 — it leans on system routing that simply didn't exist before, so there's no virtual device, no aggregate setup, and nothing in Audio MIDI Setup to babysit.

In practice you open Fader's Routing tab, pick an output device per app from a dropdown — music to AirPods, calls to your headset, alerts to the desk speakers — and it sticks across restarts. There's no reboot to approve a system extension and nothing to rebuild when an app updates; the routing lives in Fader, not in a stack of virtual devices you have to remember. Because Fader also does per-app volume from the keyboard, the same app covers both halves of the problem: how loud each app is and where it comes out. If you want the deeper comparison of the DIY route against a dedicated app, see BlackHole vs a per-app routing app, and for the general how-to there's sending an app's audio to a different output on Mac.

When Loopback is actually the right call

To be fair to it: Loopback earns its $99 when you need real routing power. Combining several apps and inputs into one virtual device, feeding a clean audio stream into a recorder or streaming tool, splitting and monitoring signal chains — that's Loopback's home turf, and BlackHole plus Audio MIDI Setup is the free (fiddlier) equivalent. If your work is building audio pipelines, a virtual-cable tool isn't overkill; it's the correct instrument.

The mismatch is using that instrument for a one-line job. "Send Spotify to AirPods while calls stay on the headset" doesn't need a patchbay. It needs a per-app output rule, and that's exactly the thing a routing app sets in a click.

Bottom line

Virtual cables aren't the price of admission for per-app audio output on a Mac — they're just the oldest way in. If you're wiring complex signal chains or recording, Loopback and BlackHole are worth the setup. If you only want each app pointed at its own output and set once, a per-app routing app does it without a single virtual device. Fader is the fastest of those to reach: keyboard-driven, one-time $19.99, and built on the macOS 14.4 routing path so there's nothing to cable up.