Airfoil Airport Express streaming comes to Windows
By Marc Perton 
posted May 12th 2006 10:19AM
posted May 12th 2006 10:19AM
It's been over a year since Rogue Amoeba came out with Airfoil, a program that lets you stream music from your computer to an Apple Airport Express using any application, rather than just iTunes. Unfortunately for Windows users, Airfoil was Mac-only, leaving the Airport Express as an iTunes-only device on Windows boxes. However, that's now changed, as Rogue Amoeba has launched a beta version of Airfoil for Windows, which the company says will work with most Windows media programs, including Windows Media Player and Real Player. Of course, in the past year, Airport Express has had a lot of competition on the Windows streaming front, with devices like the Linksys Wireless-G Music Bridge undercutting it on price, and offering full compatibility with most Windows programs out of the box. But if you're a Windows user with an Airport Express and you've grown frustrated by its limitations, here's your chance to set it free.
Good programm.. I use it
MAN THE XBOX 360 IS TOTALY GONNA BLOW THIS THING OUT OF THE WATER.. .I MEAN EVEN AT 400 DOLLARS I WOULD STILL RATHER GET THE XBOX.... THIS IS SIMPLE MATH TO ME... WHAT YOU THINK?
My new favorite post about anything. Works every time.
This is great. I am using it right now to listen to Pandora through my stereo. Sounds great and its a lot cheaper than other PC to Stereo streaming options out there.
What is an Airport Express? Never heard of it...
An airport express is a small portable wireless router from apple, that allows you to plug in a set of speakers to stream music wirelessly from your laptop to your stereo.speakers. You can also attach a usb printer. The only problem with this software is that while it does with with media player and any other movie playing software is that the sound is not synched, and this sucks when watching any decent flick.
oh... thanks #5
So it works with music but when using video's there is a delay and the audio doesn't sync with the video...
i think i'll pass then...
Jon,
Yes, the sound on videos is not synched. That is the airport express though. If you notice if you play audio through itunes it still has a gap from when play is started to when you hear it. You can play a video through VLC and manually offset this. I will not take credit for these instructions but they were posted elsewhere for how to do exactly this with the Mac version. Not sure how it works with the PC but worth a try.
"TEUFEL How to synchronize Airport Express, Airfoil and VLC for MOVIE PLAYBACK
Preparation:
In VLC (this relates to version 0.84) set up the "Advanced Options" otherwise you won't see the options described in the following.
Actions:
Go to the VLC preferences>Input/Codecs>access modules>file.
Make sure the advanced checkbox is checked so you can see the "caching value in ms" field. Set this in all modules to something larger than the delay you want (3000 should be ok). After making that adjustment, save your preferences.
Now choose a film out of your library and just hit the "F" key during playback until the delay is set to -2650 (beware: this is a MINUS). For some people -2400 will be better, but you should just get to a dialogue scene and watch the lipsync becoming better.
SAVE the settings. The adjustment is now all synched up!
BTW if you are as lazy as I am, set the Default Delay in the VLC preferences>Audio to -2400 (-2650) so it starts this way."
just out of curiosity,
i don't have airport express but i have server attached to the wifi router that is also attached to the speakers. do you know of any software or drivers that will enable me to do the same trick - send audio from the laptop to the speakers
but without seting a stream server on the laptop and having to go to the server to start listening to the stream please :]
Who cares? What we need is a cheap solution for wirelessly streaming video and audio to an external source. I want to get rid of my 25 foot S-video cable that I have to break out just to watch movies on my big screen tv.
What we really need is a purple unicorn that can just act out the videos for us. Oh yeah, it also has to be cheap.
Why do you say who cares? Perhaps everyone who already has an airport express cares. Perhaps people who don't want to spend $250 on a squeezebox would care. Just because YOU don't care don't assume nobody else does. From now on Engadget should call "Paul" before posting anything so he can tell them if anyone is going to care.
Does this ONLY work with Wireless Routers? I guess I gotta finally take the plunge and do the wireless thing for my desktop.
My music colection has been held hostage by iTune$ for two years. I have 250GB of FLAC encoded music ripped over 4 years. Until this release, I've had to make an additional MP3 or ACC copy of each song to satisfy iTunes before streaming it to my AirportExpress. No longer my friend--As of 4 hours ago, I've been dragging and dropping, screaming and streaming glorious,lossless FLAC to my AirportExpress using my player of choice(Foobar2000). I uninstalled iTunes while listening to James Brown - Pappas Got a Brand New Bag.
If I may. For two years, I've had a dream that one day FLAC, OGG, WMA, MP3 and my media player of choice would be able to join hands with my AirportExpress and sing together in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, my music is free at last!". That day is today.
oAEP over at http://www.ovesens.net has been available for Windows for quite some time; it's free and it includes source code! Not as flashy as Airfoil but I gotta say listening to Pandora on the downstairs home stereo has been pretty sweet. Kudos to oAEP's author ;)
I use Airfoil with Spotify. When it works, its great. Unforunately Airfoil hangs and I'm not able to use it without a "hard" shut down. Also, when streaming other data on my computer the music played on Airfoil is not streaming 100%. For a few seconds up to a minute its no sound, then sound again for a while and so forth. When I emailed the support I got no solution to the problem. Its not serious to have people spend $25 for such a software.