Soundflower on M1 chip Big Sur

soundflower is a kernel extension. apple has said that support for kernel extension will soon be at end of life. (if it hasn't arrived already) and, as Luis has explained, the last update to it is a few years old. and AFAICT there will not be anything upcoming to add support for M1 machines. i know you don't want to hear "try blackhole" because of your employers wishes, but it may be time to discuss that with the employer. it is not a kernel extension but it works in the same fashion as you are familiar with from soundflower. and it does support M1 machines and intel machines on big sur.

From the github page:

M1 chip-based Macs are NOT YET SUPPORTED

I suspect system extensions have to be M1 native.

Unless there is some new development of which I am not aware, the last version is 2.0b2, which is several years old already.

I was able to install it in Big Sur, but on an Intel mac. There was some "trick" involved, that I don't recall. As Keith said, it is quite likely that it won't work in an M1 mac.

I don't understand the insistence on using what is essentially abandoned software, when a viable alternative, which is functionally identical, is freely available.

(I only went to the trouble of installing Soundflower myself because I've used it for over a decade and was not aware of BlackHole at the time.)