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Wireless (Apple) Media Music Hardware

AirPort Express Streaming Audio From Any Program 261

Posted by Zonk from the showing-off-my-tmbg-collection dept.
Foobaz writes "Until now, the only application that can play audio on Apple's AirPort Express has been Apple's own iTunes. But Rogue Amoeba, makers of Audio Hijack, just released Airfoil, a program that lets you redirect anything to your AirPort Express, like streaming audio from mplayer, RealPlayer, or VLC."
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AirPort Express Streaming Audio From Any Program More

AirPort Express Streaming Audio From Any Program

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  • Tinfoil hats (Score:3, Funny)

    by boingyzain ( 739759 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:02PM (#11814760)
    Do I need an airfoil hat to use this?

  • Sync issues (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KoopaTroopa ( 549540 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:03PM (#11814769) Homepage
    Has anyone used this? Are there any sync issues if running audio from (as an example) VLC from a video file?

  • Crippleware (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:04PM (#11814778)
    It emits noise after using for ten minutes, unless you purchase the "pro" version

  • Still not the only feature I want (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:04PM (#11814780) Journal
    I want to be able to use my computer as an AirTunes sink, not a source. I'm not about to buy an Airport Express, but I'd like to be able to pipe audio from my girlfriend's iBook to my desktop's speakers.

    Then yeah, I'd like to be able to do it with DVD Player.app as well as iTunes.

    • Re:Still not the only feature I want (Score:5, Informative)

      by humuhumunukunukuapu' ( 678704 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:11PM (#11814879)
      why not turn on sharing in both of your itunes? then you can access one another's libraries.
      • Because my girlfriend prefers to use her computer, not mine. When we're just listening that's fine, but not when she's stealing & compiling tracks from the internet.
        • Shared Library actually works better than AirTunes in this regard - a shared library works irrespective of what each person is doing, unlike AirTunes where iTunes needs to do the work on one machine.

          So, with shared library you can both listen to different things!
          • Shared Library actually works better than AirTunes in this regard

            About the only "work" I got out of Shared Library was... nothing.

            It would be nice if I could get it to work, but it just doesn't. Apple's instructions and trouble shooting guides are worthless, and nothing seems to show on Google. Even if I turn off the firewalls on both computers, I have yet to see iTunes sharing to work. This is one reason I won't buy the Airport Express. I'd love to get one, really, but I have no confidence that it
    • not sure about dvd player.app or itunes, but if your desktop is a linux machine you could do something like enable ESD and then use xmms or other open source programs to play your music with the destination as you desktop. Alternately you could use something like mpd to do a simillar thing.
    • I want that, too, in a similar situation with a Windows laptop/desktop. Movie audio over the speakers of a 12" isn't exactly hi-fi. Ideally, there would be an audio driver that reroutes the audio via (wireless) ethernet to some server. And ideally, the laptop would automagically switch to the desktop speakers when they are "in range". As far as I am aware, there is no easy way to do this on Windows. The only thing that comes close is playing the same movie on both systems, ignoring the desktops image and mu

  • Will the foil fly? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:04PM (#11814783)
    Airfoil looks like a great product,however, I can't quite tell if it is something that Apple will dislike given how proprietary Apple can be.

  • Okay... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Delta2.0 ( 846278 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:04PM (#11814786)
    That will work nice for those who have airport express, but when will other hardware makers put the ability to stream music to a stereo on their routers so the price won't be such a factor?

    • Re:Okay... (Score:2, Informative)

      by 3nuff ( 824173 )

      When they realize that everyone is buying an AirPort Express.

      Fortunately the AP Express is not a single purpose device, like other streaming audio solutions. The printing and network extending capabilities make it well worth the $125.

      A great addition to the AirPort would be a remote control with TV display. I'm visualizing being able to see my track info on my TV screen and control the tracks with a remote. I know that there is a TiVO solution (that I won't link to, use google) that works like this, bu

  • Damn... still waiting to be able to stream from launchcast.
    • Damn... still waiting to be able to stream from launchcast.

      From the LAUNCHcast [yahoo.com] website :

      LAUNCHcast is currently compatible only with Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x for Windows based PCs and Netscape 4.5 to 4.79 on the Macintosh OS.

      Seriously?!? Ha-ha!!

      There are a thousand and one different sources for music. Pick one that doesn't require you to use an outdated browser, then buy a Mac mini.

      What, you're saying there isn't a Windows-based solution to do this kind of thing ?

      And what the heck is up with those L

      • Launchcast has got some really cool features in it, and I enjoy using it at home. But now that we've been slowly getting macs at work, it've been slowly forgetting about it and started to surf around itunes and shoutcast. It's not as convenient as launchcast, but at least I can listen to something over my macs.

        Launchcast has some great ideas going and it's genre selecting features are pretty awesome, but if I can't even use it simply because I'm on a different platform, then it'll get no support from me an

        • Launchcast has some great ideas going and it's genre selecting features are pretty awesome, but if I can't even use it simply because I'm on a different platform, then it'll get no support from me anymore. It's a shame such a good idea will go to waste.

          I actually absolutely agree. It just seems that Yahoo hasn't put one ounce of development effort into it since they bought it, and it's a bit of a shame, because it did have some promise... the whole idea of being able to rate ( and especially, block ) song

          • I wonder if going to the launchcast feedback page and telling them they're screwing up by not recognizing 10 million potential users in OS X would get them to actually do something...

            It might, seeing as how they've got a "new media focus" according to press releases, and they've recently posted job openings for that division.

  • Audio Hijack (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mailman-zero ( 730254 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:06PM (#11814803) Homepage
    How do they accomplish this? Is there any sort of conversion on the fly being done to the audio? Are they piping it through iTunes somehow or implementing this on their own? Does this involve encryption algorithms?
  • They don't like to share their toys with outsiders.

    Don't flame me. I'm an Apple user. So I know what I speak of.

    • Re:Apple's not going to like this. (Score:5, Informative)

      by SpamJunkie ( 557825 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:12PM (#11814895)
      It probably won't be a problem, for two reasons:

      1. It's been in beta for a while, Apple could have easily done something about it earlier.

      2. It still uses iTunes. The backend uses the iTunes API to add a local stream to the library and send it to the Airport Express.

      What would really make Apple upset is if someone had discovered the key being used to encrypt the audio, but that hasn't happened here.
    • The next firmware upgrade from Apple will break this; you can count on it.
    • Apple never had a problem with Audio Hijack. I really see no reason that they're going to think anything other than "Oh, now we'll sell more Airport Expresses."

      This is much different than, say, cracking their DRM. I really can't think of a single reason they would disapprove of Airfoil.

  • RealPlayer!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tibor the Hun ( 143056 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:06PM (#11814811)
    I think I speak for all of us when I say AWESOME!

    Kudos to the hackers though..
  • Or is the output the same as plugging a cable into the audio out of the computer?

  • Dishonest marketing (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:11PM (#11814883)
    Until now, the only application that can play audio on Apple's Airport Express has been Apple's own iTunes.

    That is dishonest marketing. JustePort [theregister.co.uk] has been doing that for quite some time. It's even more dishonest when Rogue Amoeba probably relied on JustePort to write the AirFoil.
    • Did you try to check your claim before making the accusation? If Rogue Amoeba uses an iTunes API to add the audio output as a stream to iTunes then iTunes may be doing all the heavy lifting of conversion to lossless audio, the RSA and AES cryptography, etc. It seems entirely possible that they are just doing audio capture as they always have with their main product and letting Apple do the rest of the work.

      Checking facts seems like it would be the right thing to do before casting aspersions. Now pardon me
  • And also routers that can do this? Its a cool feature that i'd like to have but dont want to switch to macs
    • And also routers that can do this? Its a cool feature that i'd like to have but dont want to switch to macs

      I don't know about routers, but you can do what I and a lot of others do and have a media server hooked up to your home theater setup through either wireless or (preferably) wired ethernet (still better than wireless for speed and stability). I'm sure there are probably some NAS devices that can act similarly at a lower cost than a full-fledged PC. I admit that I don't quite "get" what's so specia

      • No need for VNC (Score:3, Informative)

        by aclarke ( 307017 )
        Hey. In case anybody cares, there really isn't a need for VNC, as long as you're not using Windows 98 on your media server. Or maybe XP Home too. Windows NT-based operating systems (i.e. 2000 & XP Pro) allow you to use Terminal Services as you're doing to get into them. There's a Remote Desktop client available for both Linux and Mac OS X (www.rdesktop.org [rdesktop.org]).

        If you're using Linux as your media server, just connect to it using a remote X-Server. It might be a little less intuitive for a Windows us
    • Well you could always get a real networked music player, like a Squeezebox [slimdevices.com].

  • Or.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MattHaffner ( 101554 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:18PM (#11814973)
    mplayer, RealPlayer, or VLC...

    Or... Doom3. Wonder how long it will take for the neighbors to call the cops.

  • I've been hoping for a while that Tiger would include a more advanced sound control panel that would allow the user to direct sound streams and adjust volumes for any combination of sound inputs, outputs, and for each application. It would also be very nice if they would include a maximum volume damping feature on an application by application basis. This is really something that should be handled by the OS. Unfortunately I have not heard of any of these features making it into any of the Tiger betas. May

  • Rogue Rawks (Score:4, Informative)

    by mushupork ( 819735 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:24PM (#11815050)
    I purchased Audio Hijack to rip AAR to my iPod (you know... before the election) It was crashing on my iBook however. Rogue's support was great, we went back and forth with emails of things to try for a few days. The conclusion was me getting a new build that cured the problem. YMMV of course, but I'd buy from them again.

    This is a completely unsolicited endorsement (a /. rarity)

  • VLC streaming to AirPort Express (Score:5, Informative)

    by divinemac ( 863847 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:25PM (#11815059)
    There is an excellent article on (the excellent site) http://www.macosxhints.com/ [macosxhints.com] regarding how to stream from VLC http://www.videolan.org/ [videolan.org] to iTunes here without any additional 3rd parts apps:
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041 023154910602&query=VLC [macosxhints.com]

    I've been using this solution for playing DIVX files from my laptop (which is connected to my projector, while the audio is routed to AirPort Express) for some time, and works well, thanks to the author's knowledge, and the power of VLC !

  • This is totally wrong. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is totally wrong. No one should EVER modify Apple products without express consent from Apple. We all know that Apple makes the best products out of the box and that no modifications could ever be necessary.

    You think you own the product, so you should be able to do what you want with it? Sorry, but no, it's an Apple product and such notions do not apply to Apple products. Unless Steve Jobs gives the go ahead and gives it his blessing.

    I would like to be the first to say that this is unethical, im

  • From any program?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @03:57PM (#11815426) Homepage
    Exactly why would I want to stream audio from Notepad.exe?!

  • This looks like a pretty good solution for AirPort users... but I'm looking for the whole enchilada. I want to be able to set up speakers in every room, then have a remote control that controls everything, from any room, and I want it all to be wireless (because I live in an apartment and can't run wires everywhere). And here's the real kicker: I want to be able to have anything and everything as an input -- FM/AM, CD, MP3, Shoutcast, Sirius, even the audio from the TV, or whatever. I know there are lo
    • Put it together yourself! If it IS out there, it'll be expensive or shit. If you make it yourself, it'll be cheaper, and more suited to your own needs. This sort of technology is classed as luxury in the AV world, so they charge accordingly.
    • I highly doubt there's a single solution that'll do all that, but it can't be too hard to slap something together something like what you're talking about. Basicaly, you need a remote control audio switcher - to take a series of rca inputs and switch them onto a single output. You said you want wireless, however, even radioshack sells some pretty cheap wired A/V switchers that'd work for the job. If you love streaming on the AirPort (why wouldn't you?) you could use the audio in on your computer to facilita
  • How bizarre... my brother just asked me about another of their products (Detour [rogueamoeba.com]) yesterday.

    Anyone know if there is an equivalent product for Windows? I know I can reroute audio as a whole under Control Panel, but I haven't seen anything to give this level of per-program control.

  • System sound (Score:2, Redundant)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 )
    I'm suprised nobody has managed to get system sound (all programs) working through AirTunes.

    Would be fantastic. I'd love to remotely use my stereo speakers without ugly cables dragged across the room.

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