Hi Scott,
I'll append a few comments to Woody's reply
On Dec 13, 2008, at 8:24 AM, Woody Jackson wrote:
On Dec 13, 2008, at 10:06 AM, Scott Rutkowski wrote:
Firstly does the airport express recieve it's power via a plugg
pack which you plugg in to the wall outlet near your stereo to
recieve power?
It is the power brick itself, the express is about 4 inch by 4 inch
and about an inch thick.
Esther: The AirPort Express is just slightly larger than the power
adapters for the MacBook and MacBook Pro. It has the same kind of
plug attachment that you can insert directly into an outlet. You also
used to be able to get a small desktop stand like the Griffin AirBase,
which basically allowed you to pull the plug off and slide the AirPort
Express into a holder that supported it at a 45 degree angle, so that
it just socketed into a regular mains power connector at the base. I
think these have been recently discontinued, because I picked up a few
of these at $4.95 a while ago. These just make it easier to access
the AE and its ports, and also, since the wireless signal broadcasts
from the side away from the plug, gives better signal strength than
plugging it into a plug at ground level.
Secondly once you have used the airport utility to configure the
device, I assume you simply use the remote speakers option in
iTunes and the music you select in iTunes simply streams over your
network to the airport express which is located near your stereo?
Yes. once the express is on the network when you launch itunes there
will be a new pop up menu in the lower right area of the itunes
browser that you could select as many "airtunes" express connected
speakers you desire. With the addition of a software called Air Foil
you could stream any audio from your computer
Esther: Yes, you can assign a name for each location that you have an
AirPort Express. It's also possible to extend the range of your
AirPort network by adding on additional AirPort Express units.
Actually, I've read that in the new AirPort Express with Draft N
connectivity there's a new option for extending any wireless network.
(This isn't the case with the older model AirPort Express that I have;
in order to extend wireless networks through WDS, you had to use
compatible wireless network hardware, which generally meant another
AirPort device). Excerpt from "Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort
Network", section on AirPort Express extras:
<begin quote>
CONNECT TO ANY BASE STATION
The AirPort Express with Draft N contains a special, lightly docu-
mented mode that allows it to connect wirelessly to any Wi-Fi network,
not just other Apple base stations, and share the connection it creates
via Ethernet. This mode, called ProxySTA by Apple but
not mentioned under that name in Apple’s documentation, is handy
for using the Express N in circumstances where you can’t control how
the network works.
Music streaming and printer sharing: These functions work
no differently with ProxySTA than they do when you use them with
Wireless Distribution System (WDS) or connect the base station via
Ethernet to the rest of a network.
With ProxySTA, Ethernet clients—computers connected directly or
multiple computers connected via an Ethernet switch—must obtain a
DHCP address through a passthrough connection on the network that
the Express has joined.
<snip> instructions for setting up ProxySTA mode
<end quote>
Also there's no way to somehow use the iMac remote to control
iTunes out near the stereo is there?
You could not control the speakers beyond volume issues.
Esther: You could control iTunes using a Keyspan Express Remote at
the AirPort Express (AE) location. The AE has a USB port so you could
connect up remote printer sharing. (This is actually somewhat
limited, because while you get the printer functions shared through
the wireless network, you typically don't get the additional features
supported in shared mode if you have an all-in-one printer that also
does scanning, copying, or faxing). If you're just using this for
music streaming you can plug in the receiver for an Infrared Remote,
like the Keyspan unit.
The stereo is about 20 metres away in another room.
There would be no way of using a macbook to control the iTunes
library on the iMac to which the airport express is connected would
there?
The airport express is connected to the network not a computer.
iTunes allows the sharing of libraries on other computers, all
computers can take turns using airtunes.
Esther: Actually, there should probably be other ways to control this
wirelessly, apart from the Keyspan Remote solution. Apple's App Store
made available a free "Remote" app that allows any iPod Touch or
iPhone to control iTunes wirelessly through any playlists in your
library. So it should be possible to get other devices that will
similarly control iTunes through the wireless network.
I am thinking the macbook could be near the airport express and the
music would stream via the macbook and this would also work.
Is there any kind of lag or any brake up while the music is being
streamed via airport express?
All computers should be on your local area network. All computers
should have access to airtunes. Connected is connected. Streaming of
audio should be fine if your network is healthy.
Esther: I've heard this works really well. The cases where there may
be some audio dropouts all seem to be instances where people are using
external drives hooked up for PC sharing as well, and where the music
has been added to the iTunes library, but where iTunes is not allowed
to manage or organize the library, or to keep it in the default area,
so that the music can be easily controlled by other music player
applications. Even then, skips or dropouts only seem to occur when
the music libraries get large.
Also, as previously mentioned, AirFoil ($25 from Rogue Amoeba), allows
you stream other types of audio through your AirPort Express network,
and even some video streaming. I don't know how this affects iTunes
streaming performance.
Woody
Cheers,
Esther
