How to Play Music During a Riverside or Zencastr Recording on Mac

You are recording a podcast episode on Riverside or Zencastr. You want to play an intro clip, transition music, or a sound effect that your guest and the recording both capture cleanly. You hit play on the audio, and either your guest cannot hear it, the recording does not pick it up, or both.

This is the same macOS audio separation problem that affects Zoom and Discord, but remote podcast recorders have an extra complication: they run in a browser and record locally on each participant’s machine. The routing has to happen before the audio reaches the browser.

Why Music Does Not Make It Into the Recording

Riverside, Zencastr, and similar tools capture audio through your browser’s microphone input. The browser asks macOS for access to your selected microphone. Whatever comes through that microphone goes into the recording track.

Music playing on your Mac goes through your system audio output, which is a completely separate path. The browser has no access to it. Even if you can hear the music in your headphones, the recording microphone sees nothing.

The fix is the same as for video calls: route system audio through a virtual audio driver so it appears as a microphone input.

Setup with Soundshine

Soundshine is a Mac menu bar app that creates a virtual microphone capturing your system audio. When active, “Soundshine Microphone” appears as an input option in any app, including browser-based recorders.

Steps:

1. Download and install Soundshine
2. Toggle Soundshine on from the menu bar
3. In Riverside or Zencastr, open your audio settings (usually before you join a session)
4. Select “Soundshine Microphone” as your microphone input
5. Play music on your Mac. The browser will capture it alongside your voice.

Important: when Soundshine is active, your microphone input is your system audio, not your physical mic. For the cleanest result, configure Soundshine to route both your physical microphone and system audio simultaneously, or assign your voice to a separate track if the platform supports it.

In Riverside specifically, you can use its local track recording option to keep your voice and system audio on separate tracks if you want editing flexibility later.

Using Soundshine for Intro/Outro Clips

A common podcast workflow:

1. Keep Soundshine off while talking normally (your real mic is the input)
2. When you want to play an intro clip or transition, turn Soundshine on
3. Play the audio clip
4. Turn Soundshine off and switch back to your real microphone

This takes a second to toggle, but it keeps your voice clean and your music clean on separate passes.

Noise Suppression Settings

Browser-based podcast tools often have audio processing enabled by default. If Riverside or Zencastr is filtering out your music (treating it as background noise), look for noise suppression or noise cancellation settings in the platform’s audio preferences and disable them for sessions where you are playing music.

Does This Work for Guests?

No. Your guest needs their own setup on their end. You can hear your music in your recording track, but your guest’s local recording captures what their microphone hears, which is your music coming through their speaker or headphone bleed, not a clean signal.

For professional productions, play music clips through the hosting platform’s audio so all participants hear a clean mix, then swap to direct microphone recording for the interview itself.

Which Platforms This Works With

Any browser-based recorder that uses your Mac’s microphone input will pick up Soundshine. This includes:

• Riverside.fm
• Zencastr
• Squadcast
• Cleanfeed
• Podcastle
• Any other browser tool with microphone access

It also works with local recording apps like GarageBand, Audacity, Logic Pro, and Hindenburg.

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Download Soundshine free and test it in a Riverside or Zencastr session before recording a real episode. Confirm the audio levels in your recording track look right before you commit to the setup. Setup takes about 30 seconds. The full version is $7.99 one-time.