A Mac audio setup for video editors: monitors, headphones, and client calls

Most of the audio friction in a video editing day has nothing to do with your cut. It is switching between studio monitors and headphones twenty times, a Slack notification landing mid-scrub, or a client hearing your Mail chime over the program audio you are trying to show them. None of that is an editing problem. It is a device-routing problem, and it sits entirely outside your NLE.

This is about that layer, not the mix inside your timeline. If you are looking for help with levels, EQ, or ducking inside Premiere, Final Cut, or Resolve, this is not that guide, and we say exactly where the line sits further down.

Why editors switch outputs more than almost anyone else

A typical edit session moves between two very different listening modes. Studio monitors or desk speakers for critical listening: mixing a scene, judging whether music sits right under dialogue, reviewing a cut the way a viewer eventually will. Headphones for detail work: catching a clipped word, checking dialogue clarity on a noisy location recording, or editing somewhere you cannot fill a room with sound, a shared office, a late-night session, a client's building.

macOS treats switching between the two as a menu action: open the Sound menu, or System Settings, and pick a different device. Fine once. Twenty times in a session, most editors just stop bothering and leave one device selected for everything, which means doing detail work on speakers or judging a mix on headphones, neither of which is what that device is actually good at.

Switching monitors and headphones without leaving your timeline

Chorus puts every output device you use in the menu bar, with an optional keyboard shortcut attached to each one. Instead of the Sound menu, switching from monitors to headphones is one click on the menu bar icon, or one key press if you have set a shortcut, and you never leave your NLE to do it. The volume keys and the on-screen volume display keep working normally on whichever device is active.

If you use a specific pair for critical listening and a different pair for everything else, Chorus remembers each device's own volume, so jumping between them does not mean re-setting the level every time. Speakers stay at the level you mix at, headphones stay at the level you check dialogue at, and switching between them is instant.

Keeping notifications out of a review, and out of a screen recording

Reviewing audio critically means listening for small things: a room tone shift, a slightly hot line, a music cue coming in too early. A Slack ping or a Mail chime lands at full volume on whatever you are already listening through, and the moment you were listening for is gone. It is worse if you are also recording your screen for a client review, because that same notification is now baked into a file you are about to send someone.

The fix is not muting those apps system-wide, since you still want to see the notification and hear it eventually. It is giving them their own output. In Chorus, open Per-App Audio, find Slack, Mail, and anything else that likes to make noise, and assign them to a separate device, even one that is not actually connected or is turned down low. Your editing software keeps its own output entirely to itself, so nothing else can cut into a review or a recording.

Reviewing a cut with a client without your mic getting in the way

A common workflow is sharing your screen on a call and playing a cut for a client to react to. What the client needs to hear is the program audio, clean, at a sensible level, with your microphone staying on its own separate channel the way any call already keeps it. Where this goes wrong is usually not the mic at all. It is another app, a notification, background music, sharing the same output your call software is capturing, so the client hears it too.

Routing your NLE to a dedicated output for the call, and keeping every other app off that same device, is what keeps the client's side clean. It is the same per-app routing as the notification fix above, aimed at the review call instead. Nothing about your microphone changes, because Chorus works entirely on the output side.

What Chorus is not

Worth saying plainly: Chorus is not an audio editing or mixing tool, and it does not do anything inside your NLE. It has no EQ, no compressor, no fader, and no idea what your timeline's levels are set to. Balancing dialogue against music, ducking a track, or fixing a noisy recording is still entirely your editing software's job, the same as it was before you installed Chorus.

What Chorus does is sit one layer below that: which physical device your Mac is currently sending sound to, and which apps are allowed to use it. Once your audio leaves your NLE, that is where Chorus's job starts and where the mix itself ends.

Setting up an editing workflow in Chorus

1. Open Chorus and assign a keyboard shortcut to your studio monitors and another to your headphones, so you can switch without opening the app.
2. Open Per-App Audio and route Slack, Mail, and any other chat or notification app to a separate output.
3. When you are on a client review call, route your NLE to whichever output the call is capturing, and leave other apps off it.
4. Switch back to your normal setup with the same shortcut once the call ends.

Each app keeps going to its assigned device from then on, so this only needs setting up once. If you also send output to two rooms, say a suite and a client viewing area, Chorus's Groups can combine outputs into one shortcut with a real volume that moves both together.

For every option available on a Mac, see Apple's own guide to sound output settings.

Frequently asked questions