AirTunes: Heard of It?

Almost three years ago in a place called California, Apple released a product we call the Airport Express. This Apple product is viewed by many as the little brother to the Airport Base Station, but there is one crucial feature to the Airport Express that has remained unique, even to this day with the advent of the new Airport Extreme Base Station. The Airport Express’ exclusive feature in Apple’s Airport line is also it’s most obvious at first glance, it’s got what appears to be a standard 1/8th stereo audio jack. If you are not familiar with this name, you may know it as ‘the headphones plug’ as you would find on an iPod, CD or Cassette player. Though it may look like a plain jane stereo audio jack, it also accepts mini-toslink cables like many of Apple’s recent Macs.

With this port you connect the Airport Express to any stereo you may have. This could be a portable boom-box with aux-in, an Apple iPod HiFi, or perhaps a stereo receiver with multiple inputs for use. Once connected and setup, any iTunes-capable computer on your network can stream music to the connected speakers.

AirTunes

I was interested in this feature of the Airport Express from the very start. I had an extra long (about 50ft) 1/8th stereo cable going across my living room floor from my stereo to my laptop. This worked great, aside from not being aesthetically pleasing, and should you ever have a crowded living room, someone tripping over your extra long 1/8th stereo cable could cause serious damage to your computer. Using an Airport Express you don’t need the cable going across the floor, just select the speakers you want from a menu in iTunes, the songs you play in iTunes magically (not magic) play on the remote speakers, it’s awesome, simple, and works really well.

It gets better. Apple eventually released Firmware Update 6.3 for the Airport Express (link for windows users) that vastly improved reliability when streaming audio, and brought a new feature to make things even more interesting. Streaming to multiple audio sources at once, including multiple Airport Expresses.

The Airport Express with Firmware 6.3 allows you to send audio to multiple sources at once. If you own a single Airport Express, this means you have two sources available: your remote source where your Airport Express is plugged in and the computer’s speakers you are directly connected to.

I’ve successfully played music to 3 remote wirelessly connected Airport Expresses at once, more than that and it seems the wireless network cannot keep up with the amount of data that needs to get passed around the network in synch. That’s an important detail to think about, the audio data that is being sent to the multiple Airport Express’ have to be received and played in synch with the music playing on the directly connected speakers in iTunes. I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who regularly uses more than 3 Airport Expresses to play music in their home or office.

The Bad News

When Apple released new Macs that included an IR remote and a 10-foot UI called FrontRow, I got excited, I thought I would be able to use this FrontRow UI to select the music playing throughout the house thanks to my pre-existing Apple Airport Expresses. These assumptions were incorrect, even more than a year after it’s introduction, FrontRow really doesn’t care if I have an Airport Express, let alone three of them that I want to play to together.

This past January when Steve Jobs announced the Apple TV, I got my hopes up again, I thought that maybe this time because it was a dedicated product on it’s own, that maybe Apple TV’s 10-foot UI would be a bit more advanced, perhaps supporting recent Apple technologies such as AirTunes. As it turns out, one of the things the Apple TV and FrontRow have in common is their complete lack of support for AirTunes.

This is especially disappointing because these are Apple’s first consumer electronics products post-1998, and there is really very little interoperability between them. It’s a shame, when the rumors of the Apple TV first came around, AppleInsider imagined it as an Airport Express but with video streaming abilities, as we know now the Apple TV and the Airport Express do not have that much in common. The Apple TV looks to start a new product category for Apple, not join the Airport family. Apple computers for your TV, if this first product proves successful than surely we will see multiple Apple TV models.

Is the Airport Express a poor seller? Is that the explanation for Apple’s apparent lack of interest in AirTunes? No, right? I hope not. I hope we see a change for the better with AirTunes, some surprise updates that add AirTunes support to FrontRow and the Apple TV, maybe we’ll even see an iPod with Airport built-in that streams music wirelessly. I’m not gonna hold my breath.

Additional Notes

• There seems to be a fairly common misconception that if you use a non-Apple router than you will not be able to benefit from the Airport Express on your network, which is simply not true. The AirTunes and USB Printer Sharing features can be used on any WiFi network.

• A single Airport Express will consume roughly 130KB/sec while streaming audio.

• An Airport Express can join your WiFi network as a client and provides AirTunes and USB Printer Sharing. If your router supports WDS than the Airport Express can act as a Relay or Remote station and broaden the range of your WiFi network.

• Adam Knight wrote a very informative piece on optimizing Airport connectivity on MacGeekery. It’s useful reading for any WiFi router admin, but especially those with an Apple WDS network.

• I’m also a big fan of Airfoil which is a software product that allows you to stream audio from any application, not just iTunes, to an Airport Express. Also, unlike every other Rogue Amoeba software product, Airfoil is available for both Mac and Windows.

• Also, in case it needs to be said, the main feature of the Airport Express that I have not mentioned is it’s ethernet port, the Express can be your router as well, so long as you only need to have WiFi clients on your network.