How to stream mp3 to an airport express using only open source

[bzzzzz]

Got it working. Very choppy though.

In the pulseaudio settings you can tell it to look for the airport express by ticking a couple of boxes.

[Takkat]

In the pulseaudio settings you can tell it to look for the airport express by ticking a couple of boxes.

Hi,

after months of instable connections I found out, that it is much better to connect the AirPort Express directly via it's IP, not using Avahi/Zeroconfig but still streaming through pulseaudio-module-raop. You'll find my little GUI stream2ip to ease this at LP ready for testing.

Have fun! Tak

[raffraffraff]

I haven't had a single minute of uninterrupted audio out of this thing. I've tried the configuration every which way, from full auto IPs and 'discovery' to full manually configuring everything. I have always been able to send sound to the device, but it's always horribly choppy.

I haven't yet tried the suggested /etc/pulse/daemon.conf settings:
default-fragments=4
default-fragment-size-msec=25

...but I've spend hours with this piece of crap, so I'm sick of it.

Designing hardware and software to function well together is one thing, but Apple spends way too much effort on forcing their customers to buy more Apple products to work with their existing Apple products. Microsoft used to be a bastion of ruthless anti-competitiveness, and I'm not suggesting that they've gone soft, but Apple have taken the crown from them. They go out of their way to build proprietary interfaces and weird protocols instead of using industry standards. They continually reinvent new wheels that only work on their wheelbarrow, then they patent that wheel so that nobody else can make it. As you can see, they'll sue your as5 if you try...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/h...ctive-apple-l/

This type of anti-competitive crap sums up all that's wrong with Apple. The "PC Vs Mac" debate isn't about fashion or usability. It boils down to this: if you want to use one Apple product, you HAVE TO become a fanboy and go all-in to the Apple game to get the most out of it. You have to stop choosing the 'best product' and start going for the 'best apple product'.

Technically, the AirPort Express is able to accept a stream of audio from any source over WiFi, but in reality you can only stream music from iTunes. You can't even direct your Mac audio to it. (I have a Mac - so I can confirm this). So, I have a laptop, two PCs and a Mac and I can only stream sound from one app one the Mac to this $99 piece of crap.

The only reason it's (barely) usable on Linux is that some guy reverse-engineered the RAOP protocol and DVD Jon extracted the RSA key from iTunes. But it's not worth the effort. I'm throwing this into the trash and buying an FM transmitter for the devices I want to stream from. No lag, no horrible setup.

And Apple: Go f*ck yourselves.

[TKoorn]

I cound't get the alsa driver to compile but I could get Raop Play to compile.

Since "Raop Play" can stream to the airport device I looked for a way to get it to accept a stream.

I found I can do this:
$ mkfifo /tmp/foo

and then run

raop_play 192.168.1.112 /tmp/foo

raop_play is now sending any info written to /tmp/foo to the airport device

I can then run mplayer and send its output to /tmp/foo like this:

mplayer -ao pcm:file=/tmp/foo [name_of_file_to_play]

[Takkat]

It's admittedly not easy to get the AirportExpress playing smoothly but it's possible. I did not remember if changed my pulsaudio daemon.conf. Now it looks like this (everything else commented out):

resample-method = speex-float-1
[...]
flat-volumes = no
[...]
default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 10
[...]

I do not run PulseAudio in system mode either. Depending on the player I use, and of course a very good WLAN signal strength is needed, but then sound played via PulseAudio to the IP (using stream2ip) of the AEX is playing smoothly for hours. You definitely need to test this with several players, this was my main frustration with choppy playback. There is no good advice on what player to use as it seems to depend on other system factors as well. People complain on players where others are happy and vice versa.

If this all does not help it may also be some router or WLAN-stick/card setting that breaks audio playback. I have a D-Link WLAN router wired to my Ubuntu box and to transmit WLAN signals to the AEX and to another machine 2 rooms away. This router comes with some "Quality of Service" traffic shaping, but I did not recognize much difference when switching this feature off.

One thing in addition: PulseAudio is an implementation of JustePort RAOP play for better integration in your sound system but it's using the same code. Only with PulseAudio you are able to stream in the sense of AirTunes using the AEX as audio output device for your favourite music player. Only drawback is a 6 seconds delay.

It'd interest me if raffraffraff had any luck with FM-transmitters (I always believed they had a limited sound quality)