# Recommended tools

SuperCollider is nice but you are likely to want to interface it with the
outside world.
It is nice to be able to send / receive audio signals from other applications
and to record SuperCollider in a DAW or any other audio software you'd like to
use. On this small website, I'll assume that you have some tools ready to use like:

**A good Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)**:

- [Reaper](https://reaper.fm): a DAW that is free to try and cheap to buy. It is
  very powerful and well done, works cross-platform. It is equivalent if not
better to other commercial DAWs and can cover any need you might have.

**A good audio routing tool**:

- [Blackhole](https://existential.audio/blackhole/) (**MacOS**): audio routing tool for
  MacOS. It is free and open-source. It creates virtual audio devices that you can use to route audio between applications.
- [Loopback](https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/) (**MacOS**): a commercial audio routing tool for MacOS. Expensive and powerful. 
- [Jack](https://jackaudio.org/) (**Linux** / **Windows**): audio routing tool and audio server. It is free and open-source. It creates virtual audio devices that you can use to route audio between applications.
- [Vb-Audio Voice Meeter](https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/) (**Windows**): a
popular audio routing tool for Windows. Never used, but seems to be very
popular.

**Some other suggestions**:

- [VCVRack](https://vcvrack.com): a free and open-source modular synthesizer that can be used as another tool to have fun with audio. It is very powerful and can be used as a standalone application or as a plugin in a DAW. It is cross-platform.
