Cycling ‘74, a San Francisco-based music software company, today released Soundflower v. 1.2 which adds Universal Binary support for Intel-based Macs.

Soundflower is a free system extension that allows users to route audio between OS X Core Audio applications. It also lets you monitor any connection with the free Soundflowerbed application.

Cycling ‘74 originally developed Soundflower as a way to allow applications developed with its Max/MSP audio environment to process audio originating from other programs. However, it can be used for more general audio routing tasks patching either 2- or 16-channel data at 32-bit sample depth between any applications that support standard Core Audio driver selection. Soundflower can be selected as a “default device” in the Audio/MIDI Setup utility for programs (such as iTunes) that do not allow the selection of a specific output device. As a result, Soundflower has found widespread use in the advanced podcasting community.

Soundflower and Soundflowerbed are free and can be downloaded from the Cycling site.