Use Airport Express to stream ANY audio source

19Jan07

I received an Apple Airport Express for Christmas, thank you very much!

I was initially delighted with it, what with being able to stream music to my yummy Hi-Fi (separates, no less - non of this midi / micro system bullshit!) wirelessly.
Yay I thought! But what’s this? I can ONLY stream audio from within iTunes, surely not?! Sadly yes, iTunes is the only piece of software that can ‘officially’ stream content to the Airport Express. What about watching videos through iTunes. No, that’s not a option. Crap! Surely there must be another way…

Yes there is, and it it comes in the form of Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba. This marvelous application fixes all the shortcomings, and it only costs about £13 ($25) and is worth EVERY penny. Basically, this program allows you to stream audio from any other application, be it Real Player / Windows Media Player / radio stations from your browser / Widgets on your Dashboard etc etc to your Airport Express flawlessly. It also gives you other options such as balance, volume, graphic equaliser and even a mixer to stream different sources to different speakers.

To get the best out of Airfoil, you’ll need to install the Plug-in ‘Instant Hijack’, this allows you to simply switch between open programs and instantly stream the sound to your Airport Express without having to re-launch the already open program. No need to go hunting for it though, as it comes bundled in the package (you just need to activate it). It also gives you the option to stream your entire system’s audio (becoming your default soundcard), but I found this feature a little annoying.

Another benefit of this software is that you can use Skype for voice calls (headphones plugged in) at the same time as playing music on your stereo. As I said, genius! This is the mane reason that I didn’t like the option to stream your entire system… but that’s up to you.

Right, it’s all very good for music, but when it comes to Video, it’s an entirely different kettle of fish. Play a video while sending the audio to Airfoil and you’ll notice a large sync issue (around 2750 milliseconds to be precise). This is an Apple hardware problem and there is NO way around it. Or is there….

Introducing the brilliant VLC media player, if you haven’t already installed this program, you really really should. It plays pretty much anything you care to throw at it (including DVD’s), and it’s completely free, thanks to the open source community.

With VLC you can adjust the delay of the audio… see where I’m going!

It’s pretty easy to adjust this under OS X (I’m sure it’s just as easy under MS), just hold down the F & G keys to delay the audio by however much you need, the F key increases the delay and the G key decreases it.
To achieve the perfect sync, adjust the delay to somewhere between 2700 ms and 2800 ms.

Airport has a real use again, I really don’t understand why Apple didn’t include this type of functionality out of the box. Oh well, as least there is a work-around. And it’s a simple one, although it does cost. But not a lot.