App to hear ambient noise with headphones

Hey guys, I am wondering if anyone knows of an app i can use on my mac to listen to music with my headphones at work, but i need to hear the phone ring or hear if someone needs to talk to me? but my colleagues don't want to listen to my music.

Thanks for you help!

Unless you were using a type of phone system at work that had some sort of hookup to the computer so that it could notify you it's ringing, not sure how you'd do this..

I always have my headphones on during work hours and the way I deal with this is to ensure that the phone is in your visible range so that you can see the blinking/flashing when it's ringing. Also, ensure that you don't crank up the music so loud so that you can't hear ambient noises.

It also helps if you can position your view such that you can see people approaching. If you have your back to people, then a mirror on your monitor or something else might help..

ok, i thought that maybe there was something similar to the Awareness app but for the mac instead!

You might give a program called LineIn a try. It enables a feature called soft play thru that allows you to monitor sound coming through a microphone as it is happening. I haven't used it for this exact situation but have used it to monitor mic levels when recording. It may take a bit of fiddling to get the levels right but it is dead simple to use.

Again, the reason this works on phone is that you are using the features it already has. A lot of companies are switching over to SIP/VoIP systems for the phone and this provides some control over the computer or to even use the computer microphone/headphone as the conduit for communication..

In this situation, your computer IS a phone, so apps like these would work great to interrupt your music for the phone to ring through and so on..

Otherwise, you are dealing with disjoint systems that don't interact..

As far as coworkers go, no easy solution there short of them knocking loudly or someone attracting your attention as to not frighten you..

Just buy some regular old earbuds for listening at work instead of the in-ear (ones that actually go in your ear canal and block exterior sound or the noise cancelling) buds.

Thanks guys! i have Shure 425 earbuds that i use, real nice ones, and i dont like leaving one out... i like the stereo sound!