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

[niyam]

just discovered this interesting snippet at the pulse-audio's blog site. scroll down to the airport express section

http://0pointer.de/blog/

n

[heluani]

Can anyone point me to the sources for the raop modules for Pulseaudio? I can only find the binary packages on the web.

R.

[heluani]

Nevermind I guess I should've looked in the sources for pulseaudio

R.

[bzzzzz]

just discovered this interesting snippet at the pulse-audio's blog site. scroll down to the airport express section

http://0pointer.de/blog/

n

I read the article which sounds a little defeatist, however I am not a hacker or programmer so I don't really know how hard the task is.

The thing that strikes me as odd is that airfoil (which runs on windows and mac) allows lots of different applications to stream to the aex. How come this is possible. As far as I know the people that write airfoil have nothing to do with mac or windows.

[heluani]

running pulseaudio 0.9.15 with the raop module loaded I can stream to airport express with no problems.

For those who are stuck with older versions or want to use still the gstransmit option, I would take a look at the last two lines of /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

to have something like

default-fragments=4
default-fragment-size-msec=25

instead of (for example) 8,5. These latter numbers are better for applications like Skype, but certainly kill my streaming to Airport express.

R.

[ballardhd]

I am able to make my Apple TV my default sink in the volume control UI for pulseaudio. However, once I try and move the volume control, pulseaudio crashes and I get the error:


"Connection Failed. Connection Terminated."

Has anyone had any success in playing any actual music after connecting to their Airport Express / AppleTV device? I running Jaunty and Pulseaudio 0.9.15...

[heluani]

running pulseaudio 0.9.15 with the raop module loaded I can stream to airport express with no problems.

Although I am not running Jaunty.

Edit: if the daemon is crashing, why don't you get a stacktrace and contact upstream (or even irc), those guys are really nice.

R.

[yomyom]

Hi there,

Has anybody heard about this Gstreamer plugin called "gstapexsink" (in the bad-plugins branch)? According to the developer (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=542510#c0), with only a small edit in your gconf editor...

/system/gstreamer/0.10/default/musicaudiosink "apexsink host=YOUR_AIRPORT_IP volume=100"

... it should allow defining your Airport Express as an audio sink and, from there, stream any sound from your computer to your AE.
I have tried it without major successes so far...

After setting my AE as audio sink with the following command...

gconftool-2 -t string --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/default/musicaudiosink "apexsink host=YOUR_AIRPORT_IP volume=100"

... Rythmbox crashes each time I try to play some sound. Amarok keeps using the computer speakers. Only the sound preview in Nautilus seems to engender some communication with the AE (local network activity) but no sound.
Using the plugin with the gst-launch command in debug mode...

for an ogg vorbis file:
gst-launch --gst-debug=apexsink:5 filesrc location=YOUR_FILE.ogg ! vorbisfile ! audioresample ! apexsink host=YOUR_AIRPORT_IP volume=100

for a mp3 file:
gst-launch --gst-debug=apexsink:5 filesrc location=YOUR_FILE.mp3 ! mad ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! apexsink host=YOUR_AIRPORT_IP volume=100

...produces better results. Some bits and pieces of my music file actually reach the speaker system connected to my AE, but nothing really listenable...

Any clues? Successful experiences?

My config: Ubuntu Jaunty + Airport Express firmware v.7.4.2 (also tested with v.7.3.2)

[gianni1977]

Hi!

I have ubuntu 9.10 and my problem is the same as Ballardhd.

I can see the Airport, but can't stream anything to it.

If I touch the volume slide, pulseaudio crashes, giving this error message:

"pa_context_set_sink_volume_by_index()

Connection Failed. Connection Terminated"

Anyone got any solution so far?

Thanks!

[bzzzzz]

Anyone had any joy with 10.04.

I'm still drawing blanks.

I can find my airport express with avahi browser (search for avahi discover in the synaptic)

For some reason pulseaudio can't see it.