I needed a way for me to quickly change my audio input/output from the standard “internal speakers” configuration to my USB headset. On a Mac you basically have to manually do this by going into the Sound application in System Preferences and select the appropriate choice. Now – this isn’t much work – but I’m really lazy. I just want to hit a button and have this done. Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource is the tool that solved my issue.
I originally thought I would do some Automator scripting to resolved this. 20 futile minutes later I was able to successfully record an Automator script to change my output sound settings. However, the Automator program never actually did anything when I ran it. It just loaded up on the Dock and sat there.
Okay – Next viable solution has to be AppleScript. I’ve only ran some pre-built scripts for my iTunes collection but this will probably be some quick script I could whip up in no time. I mean, how hard can something called AppleScript be? 10 minutes later (did I mention I was impatient?), and two Google searches later I found out that all I would be doing is pushing keystrokes on the screen. Not too elegant of a solution.
Since I’m new to the OS X world, I really don’t know the way the OS stores its information for System Preferences or how to access and manipulate those settings. This could easily become another programming project for me. To be honest, I had to be over thinking this! This is a very simple function and I can’t believe I have to write code to make this happen!
I decide to do one more Google search before attempting this coding effort. Not surprislying, I did over think this problem and someone had already released some free software that is much more elegant than what I could have done for free.
Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource is the tool that solved my issue. 
The version I downloaded is version 2.0 and was last modified on March 3, 2008. The program installs onto your system bar as a pair of headphones. Once you click on it, you are presented with the ability to not only change your input and output devices, but also change the volume of those devices. It’s a simple program to use and saved me a few mouse clicks. Give it a shot and take a look around Rogue Amoeba – they seem to have some great software.