Hi David and Scott,
Scott wrote:
Would anything happen if I firstly didn't connect an audio cable to
the stereo and the airport express and told airport express I just
wanted to use the airport express to stream music on my iTunes to a
stereo and then after the setup went and connected the cable?
Does it actually make a big difference having the audio cable
connected first?
I understand your instructions just wondered if anything bad would
have happened if just configuring the express first then connect the
audio cable once set up and updated if this would work or if I
should take the airport express to the other room, connect the audio
cable to the 3.5 mm jack and then walk back to the mac and run
airport utility?
Any thoughts?
I could of coursse do all this on my macbook right near the stereo
as well couldn't I seen's both iTunes libraries are both synced on
both macs.
David's reply mentioned that you should set up the AirPort Express and
check that it is connected to and recognized by your existing wireless
network first. If you're using WPA or WPA2 security on your existing
wireless network, then the setup is pretty much automatic. I'm not
even sure that you really do have to connect up your audio beforehand,
since as soon as your AE is recognized by the network and you assign
it a name it will show up as one of the optional locations when you
start up iTunes whether or not any audio devices are attached. Having
something plugged into the audio out of the AirPort Express -- whether
this is your stereo system or just headphones -- simply makes it
easier to test that the streaming is working. It makes more sense
that you'd want to have a shared printer plugged in before running
AirPort Utility so that you can proceed immediately with that network
setup.
The problems David had turned out to arise from his connection to a
WEP-only wireless network. I found that the new "Take Control of Your
AirPort 802.11n Network" guide does describe these issues:
<begin quote>
WEP (Transitional Security Network)
The Extreme N supports WEP Transitional, a rare and interesting
security mode that I and colleagues have found to be problematic and
buggy in actual usage. WEP Transitional lets you mix older WEP-only
Wi-Fi connections with newer WPA/WPA2 connections.
The problematic part is conceptual: the network encryption is as
weak as the weakest link. Using WEP Transitional leaves you vulner-
able to the same cracks that affect plain WEP. The buggy part is that
it’s seemingly erratic whether computers can connect via WEP, WPA,
or WPA2 in this mode.
<end quote>
The Take Control guide goes on to suggest different ways to tackle
this addition. There's actually quite a lot of device and brand
specific information in this guide about wireless features, but some
issues boil down to specific configurations.
HTH. I've left David's reply appended, but deleted the earlier emails
to keep this post from being too long.
Cheers,
Esther
On Dec 22, 2008, at 5:49 AM, David Poehlman wrote:
Hi scott,
Once the ae is setup, you can unplug it and move it. You should
test it first though with a headset to make sure it is connecting to
ITunes. To do this, connect it to the router you are using, which
is what? then start the airport utility and go through the setup as
described in the document following the instructions on the screen
to join a wireless network. when it is done, it will restart and if
successfull, it will show up in the airport utility. close airport
utility, start ITunes and make sure that in ITunes prefs, you are
set to look for remote speakers with airtunes. It is checked by
default but if you have unchecked it for some reason, you will want
to make sure it is checked.
Close the prefs window, find with vo and arrow keys where it says
computer. press space on this and youwill have three choices,
computer, multiple speakers and if it was successful, you will see
the name you gave the ae. if it is not successful, you won't even
see the computer icon. Choose your ae and press enter. It should
then begin streaming as soon as you start a song. If all is well,
move it to the stereo area and hook it up and test it again as above.
I've tried this with and without a password. ifyou choose to use a
password, if there is a connection interruption, you'll have to type
the password in to restart the connection. If not, all you have to
do is choose the ae again. My ae is named meowing but by default,
it will probably be scott's airport express or something, shorter is
better <g> It should work fine with your router, but I had to
fiddle with router settings to get it to work for me. It did not
matter what I did on the ae side, nothing worked till I got the
router set up right and I had little guidance that worked toward a
solution although there was a lot of info provided by esther an tim
kilburn. I finally just had to look and puzzle it out. My router
is a netgear and I had to change a setting I have not seen on any
other router to get it to work. Let me know if you run into
essoteric issues and I'll try to help f I can because I did a lot of
trial and error before mine worked. If when you are told the router
will restart, you get a message that airport utility could not find
your airport express and to close and restart and restarting does
not find the ae, you'll have to reset the ae and start over. You
should not have this problem when using the eternet for setup
though. the other issue tha will cause you to need to restart will
be an error writing the configuration. Reset and try again. I
often used the manual setup to trouble shoot before I finally got it
right.
Enjoy and let us know if we can help further.
On Dec 22, 2008, at 10:01 AM,
