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

[niyam]

I've left everything else alone, no need to touch multicast/rtp

just for interest i've got mine with both box left unchecked
simultaneous output also unchecked.


It's probably irrelevant but

i also have on notifications show notifications for discovered sinks but none of the other notifications boxes checked.

i also have the start applet on session login checked

check that your version is the same as mine, click pulseaudio manager and then look at the server information

running server version 0.9.15
compiled with library version 0.9.14



Have you tried restarting your computer.

thanks bzzzzz for the suggestions.
ditto on my machine and several reboots too.
interestingly, am connected to the internet through the airport express, so the machine does recognize it.
just that pulse-audio is clueless about its existence and the speakers connected to it.

to troubleshoot further, have also installed 'avahi zeroconf browser' from 'add/remove...'
it shows my local macbookpro, and nothing else.

frustrating, this pulseaudio...

regards
niyam

[niyam]

yesterday, my system recommended some updates. noticed some were for pulseaudio and other audio related components, so confirmed installing the updates.
at first nothing much happened. however, today, on booting in, the avahia zeroconf browser showed my macbookpro and the aex speakers. wow! on clicking the speakers i noticed the browser showed the IP address on a different class compared to my laptop. however, initially the pulse volumecontrol showed nothing but soon it did! i made it default, and this macbookpro with ubuntu 9.04 did actually stream music to the airport express! however within a few minutes it died. a quit and restart of pulse did not work. not even a reboot of the macbookpro and the airport express. i check the avahi zeroconf browser also could not sense my speakers or the aex. where earlier it displayed the net details of my macbookpro, the avahi zeroconf browser now only shows:
Error: org.freedesktop.Avahi.TimeoutError: Timeout reached

i think the problems are more with avahi and 'bonjour' style zeroconf than anything else?

regards
niyam

[fbugnon]

According to this post:

The best way I've found to stream to my airport express was using el tunes.

Just go to this website www.el-tunes.com

For me I downloaded GSTransmit 1.0 -i386 DEB

I'm running Hardy Heron 8.04.

Then followed prompts to install the program.

I then started Rhythmbox.

I then opened a terminal and typed gstransmit-toggle

You should then be informed in the terminal that your computer is Enabling airport device

Then play any tune you like and it should come blaring out of your speakers.

GSTransmit works right away with 8.10, but apparently it doesn't for 9.04.
At least for me, I can only hear some noises from the speakers when playing music with Rhythmbox and Totem.

Has anyone managed to do it under Jaunty?

[niyam]

According to this post:



GSTransmit works right away with 8.10, but apparently it doesn't for 9.04.
At least for me, I can only hear some noises from the speakers when playing music with Rhythmbox and Totem.

Has anyone managed to do it under Jaunty?

tried this route last week. got gstransmit to finally install, yet everytime i toggle it on to output to aex, rhythmbox often crashes, or gives no sound output even to the built in speakers. just once, i heard some initial noise from the built-in speakers before it descended into silence.
totem worked normally, but strangely enough has stopped working right now. maybe a reboot might solve this (why do i sound like a windows user here ?)

regards
niyam

[bzzzzz]

Which install of ubuntu are you using.

Just to test it out try installing jaunty (lts) and then use the el-tunes method. that will at least give an indication that it can work on your system.

keep trying

[niyam]

Which install of ubuntu are you using.

Just to test it out try installing jaunty (lts) and then use the el-tunes method. that will at least give an indication that it can work on your system.

keep trying

am using ubuntu 9.04:
Linux 2.6.28-13-generic #45-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 30 19:49:51 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

totem works normally with pulseaudio. however, the moment i try that gstransmit-toggle, it stops working (outputting sound atleast to my laptop's built in speakers). when i quit totem, do a gstransmit-toggle to de-activte aex, relaunch totem, it no longer outputs to the internal speakers. only a reboot gets everything back to normal.

am really tantalized by the fact that my airport express speakers did work *once* under 9.04 using totem and pulseaudio, while having the speakers sensed by avahi zeroconf browser as well.
i wonder why it did work, and why it did not anymore?
complete mystery, and am just waiting for all these things to be resolved so i may consistently use airport express to stream any audio from my mackbook pro over ubuntu 9.04

regards
niyam

[bzzzzz]

So you have had it working in the past.

Rather annoyingly my Jaunty version has stopped working (or stopped working properly). If I place the arrow over the file the song will play and through the speakers.

If I open Rhythmbox then I cannot get an output to the speakers.

However I also have on the same laptop a distribution of linux mint (which is heavily based on 9.04) on which I can stream to the stereo. The thing which I have been most impressed by with linux mint is the sheer number of times things have worked first time.

I'll probably find lots of bugs soon, but up till now I have to say that this is the best linux distro I've used.

[niyam]

it worked only once, for a few minutes.
why? how? i don't know.
my guess: some pulseaudio and other components got updated in the auto-update manager.
however, it has not worked again so far.

[bzzzzz]

I'm getting the music a bit choppy in linux mint now.

Jaunty works again. It seems at best temperamental.

[niyam]

I'm getting the music a bit choppy in linux mint now.

Jaunty works again. It seems at best temperamental.

funny thing is, it worked today on my macbook pro as well. i reckoned this could be a firewall problem, even though i had switched off firestarter. as root, iptables -L showed some settings, so i reset with iptables --flush.
avahi zeroconf browser showed the airport speakers, where i promptly copied down the 'service name' which is actually understood by pulseaudio as the 'sink' name.
in the volume-control i also set playback to HDA NVIDIA PulseAudio Mixer.
the volume control of pulse showed the speakers! i set them as default and it worked.
on a reboot it did not work. not even avahi's browser showed the speakers.
a third reboot everything worked again, with heavily choppy audio.

so i guess, not only is this temperamental and buggy, but there is perhaps a mysterious design at work. am trying to decipher the pattern here: does pulseaudio work on even days of the month; or is it on days of the week that do not start with the letter 'T'; with a second condition of working on odd-numbered reboots; or is there some other divine madness at work? [just joking]

this thing is buggy and idiosyncratic.
opening users and groups, have added my user and root to pulse-rt, to try to cut out the choppiness. no help.

my feeling: the avahi daemon issues timeout errors, so the problem starts from some conflict or precdence of daemons. when my aex is auto-sensed as the first wifi connection and the machine establishes a connection with it, more chances of it working, pulse-audio needs settings for NICE to get preference for streaming and buffering without choppy sounds, and i guess there are a whole bunch of bugs lying underneath i can't fathom but needs an expert to make shallow and disappear.
until then, loved the hacking around, and hope to soon see an update on components which may eventually fix these bugs. back to a wired connection to speakers from the headphones port for me until then.

thanks bzzzzz for your prompt responses.

regards
niyam