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Wireless Music for PC and Mac

By Eric LoBue
Date: June, 2005

I bet that you and I are in a similar boat. You’ve got your nice stereo in your living room, and you've spent all kinds of time and hard earned cash trying to perfect it. It’s sweet. Go on, pat yourself on the back. You’re smart enough to be reading this site, you know how to pick good gear.

But you’re not just a gear geek. You’re also a music freak. You’ve got a boatload of music on your computer in your home office. It’s a huge collection; music of all genres, complete collections of all your favorite artists, and all that weird stuff only you listen to. You’ve downloaded some of it (legally, of course), and ripped some more. Many gigabytes worth of great music, easy to organize and right at your finger tips. Now, the inevitable question: how to get this great collection off the computer and onto that your sweet stereo in the living room. You have two caveats: It has to be easy, and more importantly, it has to sound great.

The Airport Express is Apple's solution for getting music off of your computer and into your stereo. Its wireless, so it doesn’t matter where in the house your computer and stereo are located. It runs off the popular 802.11g wireless networking protocol.

The Airport’s music serving abilities are actually kind of a secondary feature. It is also a wireless internet router. For those of you not yet clued into wireless internet (get with it - even my luddite mother knows!), it’s a wireless protocol that allows you to connect your computer to your broadband internet connection – wirelessly. Still another feature is the ability to connect printers to the device, and print from your computer to your printer wirelessly. All very convenient if you have several computers, a laptop, etc that you would like easily set up as network. So if you buy this sucker to stream music, you also get a wireless internet router and wireless print server. All for $129. Not bad, eh?

Setup was not the easiest process in the world, but considering the complexity of the unit, it wasn’t terribly difficult either. There is no interface whatsoever on this unit. Just three plugs for Ethernet, USB, and the audio output. There is also a tiny ‘reset’ button, but that’s it. All setup and maintenance is done via your computer. There are several steps to the setup process:

1. Plug the Airport into wall, and connect it to the Stereo.
2. Install Airport Admin Utility and iTunes onto your computer.
3. Configure the Airport to join your existing a wireless network, or to create a new network.
4. Configure iTunes to talk to the Airport.

Steps 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward. You have two options for connecting the Airport to your stereo. There is a mini analog line-level output, and a mini toslink output in the same jack as the analog out. Nifty. Apple sells a cable package produced by Monster Cable designed specifically for the Airport Express, which consists of an analog mini-to-RCA cable, a digital toslink mini-to-standard sized toslink, and a six foot extension power cable. This package is very handy and should be included with the Airport Express package, but nonetheless it is available on Apple’s website for $39. I connected the Airport to my Panasonic SA-XR50 Dolby Digital receiver via the optical toslink connection. I also listened with the analog output.

Pop in the installation disc and it will perform Step 2 for you. All you need to do is click the mouse a few times. Easy.

Step 3 will be by far the most difficult. If you’ve set up a wireless router before, or have an existing wireless network, then it should be a bit easier for you. Either way, the AirPort Admin Utility (the software application bundled with the package used to administer the Airport) and the Setup Guide do a good enough job of helping you get through the process. Since I already have a wireless network in the house, I simply had to add the Airport to my existing network. Still, I had some issues initially getting the Admin Utility to see the Airport. After moving the Airport around a bit, resetting it once or twice and fooling around with my network settings, the Airport finally appeared in the Admin Utility.

Step 4: Airport Express requires that you use Apple’s iTunes music player. It’s a free download from Apple’s website and it is also included in the install package bundled with the Airport. If you’re new to iTunes, it is a very easy to use and very complete music management system. Once the Airport is installed and working correctly, you will need to enable the “Look for remote speakers connected with Airtunes” option in iTunes’ preferences. Finally, you’ll need some music to play. You can instruct iTunes to find all existing music on your computer, use iTunes to rip your CDs, or you can listen to a wide array of radio stations already populated in the Radio section of iTunes.

Once you’re all set up, just select the Airport Express option at the bottom of the iTunes interface, and play the music you want to hear.

As I stated earlier, I used the digital audio connection from the Airport to my Panasonic receiver, which in turn was feeding the Aperion Audio Compact Home Theater System I reviewed in May. I also used the analog output.

I was quite surprised with the quality of the music this little doo-dad produced. With all the hype in the audio world about cables and the sensitivity of the audio signal, needing to be coddled every inch of its way to your speakers, I was skeptical about how good music could actually sound after being zipped across a wireless home computer network. My skepticism was unfounded. As far as I could hear, the audio quality was flawless, producing very smooth and enjoyable music, with nice detail and no glaring offenses in the sound quality.

Audio quality through the analog output, however, was just OK. The music was still enjoyable, with good bass and detail. But honestly, the sound reminded me of the $99 Sony CD changer I bought in 1991. “Tinny” is the best way that I can describe it. Whenever I switched back to the digital connection, I just thought: “ah, that’s more like it!” The music was much more rich and open, and it just flowed much better.

Despite the generally good to great audio performance of the Airport, the unit was not without flaws. I often experienced frequent dropouts in the stream, resulting in gaps in the music lasting two or three seconds. Sometimes I would hear just one or two in a listening session; but more often, they were quite frequent – like every minute or so. It was beyond annoying. In these instances I could be heard shouting expletives into the air, angry that the great music I had been enjoying while cooking or cleaning kept dropping out. Eventually I would shut the damn thing off. This was extremely frustrating.

A few Google searches later and I was able to sniff out a cause: In the realm of the 802.11 wireless protocols, there are many possible network speeds (the rate of data transfer on your network). Most well known are 802.11b and 802.11g, the latter being the faster and more current protocol. Within these protocols you can configure your wireless device to work at many different network speeds. Apparently, all of your devices must be configured to operate at the same speed or else you will get the show-stopping audio gaps I reported. I set each device - computer's wireless card, the router, and the AE - to a common speed. Performance was much better; the gaps went away, for the most part. I still get the occasional gap here and there, but gone are the swearword inducing string of audio gaps. I can finally listen to the Airport without my girlfriend wondering if I’ve developed Tourrette’s Syndrome.

Besides the audio gaps, there are a few more limitations that you should know about before you consider buying.

This is a fairly minor complaint, but you must use iTunes to use the AE. This means that all of your music must be playable in iTunes. For example, if your digital music collection is coded in Windows Media (.WMA files), then you will either have to convert all of those files to something iTunes (quite a lengthy process) can use, or you just can’t listen to them. The bigger thing for me, however, is Internet radio. There are many great radio stations on the internet that I enjoy listening to, but iTunes doesn’t support very many of them. I suppose you could argue that it is the radio stations that don't support iTunes, in which case, it’s not really Apple’s fault. The point is that you are locked into iTunes and only what iTunes will play. For Mac users, there is a third party program out there that will allow you to port other audio sources on your computer into iTunes so that you can listen via the AE. It’s not the most elegant solution, but apparently it works.

The next glaring omission is the lack of an interface and/or remote control. This is especially surprising considering the nature of this device – playing music on a system located in a room separate from your computer. If you want to change tracks, you have to run to wherever your computer is located to do it. Again, there are third party manufacturers making peripherals to address this, but it would be nice if Apple would offer it themselves. Obviously, it would push the price up, but it seems like a pretty basic feature. Rumblings among the Mac enthusiasts out on the web suggest that we will see this eventually – this Airport Express may just be Version One.

The Airport Express is a very cool, if slightly imperfect device. It gives digital music fans an easy solution for getting music off of their computer without compromising sound quality. Through the digital output, it sounds great. The fact that it is also a high-speed wireless router, enabling you to surf the web and create a fast home network without wires is very nice bonus. For my needs, it was a no-brainer. I’ve got tons of music of music on my computer and love the great variety of internet radio stations available with iTunes. It does have a few shortcomings, but once setup, it’s easy to get the music from my computer to the stereo, and it sounds great.

Apple Airport Express
Compatible with Windows and Mac Operating Systems
$129, available direct from www.Apple.com.
Read Consumer Reviews of the Airport Express