February 21st, 2008 : AirTunes drop out solution?
UPDATE: I tried it out and it still doesn’t solve the problem. Read about it here: http://apatheticthursday.net/2008/02/23/the-verdict-is-nay/
I think I have just discovered a possible solution for my ever cutting out AirTunes from my Airport Express.
My setup is ideal (mostly.) My Airport Express is sitting not 8 inches behind my laptop on my desk. I am never more than a foot away from my Airport Express. Signal is always great, but for some reason iTunes usually tells me that it can’t find any speakers on the network after only a few minutes of streaming music via AirTunes.
Today, I think I may have a solution, but sadly it is not free. I have not had ample time to test this, but if anyone else is having problems I thought I would throw this out there and see if anyone has given this a shot yet.
I (re)-discovered Airfoil today while reading through some RSS feeds.
After thinking for a bit I decided that I needed to give this a try. Instead of having iTunes look for the Airport Express I would have a different program, namely Airfoil do it. I have a feeling iTunes is the program that keeps looking the Airport Express anyway.
I haven’t bought a license yet but for several 10 minute stretches I was able to play iTunes without having any major glitches. (I did notice one small cut out, but I think it might have been my computer slowing down for a second or so.)
I don’t know if this stops all drop outs, because every 10 minutes I had to hit turn the remote speaker off and turn it back on again to get rid of the major static that comes in, but if I have some free time tomorrow I’ll purchase a copy and see if it solves my problems. If it does, it will be well worth the $25 purchase fee.
If anyone has had some experience with this already, let me know. Otherwise check back in for an update tomorrow.
[...] I decided to purchase Airfoil, from Rogue Amoeba, which did nothing to solve the problem, but it does allow me to have a small little window that constantly shows me the status of my AirTunes speakers. I have looked for a pattern, and I can’t find one. It happens at different times of the day, for different lengths, at different intervals, with different programs running, etc. [...]
I’ve been experiencing constant drop outs while listening music with itunes connected to my Airport Express. I’ve seen that it’s a common issue, a lot of desperate people is experiencing the same problem and searching for help in internet forums. I have two computers connected to Airport Express (to the same unit, I only have one). One of them, running Itunes8. The other, running Itunes7. Both connected to the same wireless router, and exactly the same configuration. The first (with Itunes8) is the one that suffers constant drops. The other works fine. So I installed itunes 7 again on the problematic computer, instead of the 8 version, and solved the problem. So I think it’s clear that the problem is caused by itunes8. There’s people who has drops with previous itunes versions too. But in any case, it seems that some versions of the program, including the last one, are causing the problem (and not router or airport configuration, neither wifi interferences). I hope my experience can help.
When I lived in the dorms, I had problems with constant dropouts. When I moved home for the summer, I don’t think I had any problems, and for a good month I was using two Airport Expresses at the same time.
Since then I have moved, but I haven’t tried to see if AirTunes is working again. I would assume it probably is, but we have higher network traffic at my new house so I don’t even feel like it’s worth trying.
iTunes 8 might be a problem, but it can’t be the only problem. I am under the belief that there are multiple issues that may be causing the drop outs for people, (wifi interference, network traffic, iTunes bugs, Airport bugs, etc…) and it could be several issues at once.
I’m glad you got it working again, I hear a lot of stories where people can’t seem to get it fixed. Thank you for sharing your experience, it’s good to know that there are some fixes out there.
Hi,
I’ve been using my airport and and older version of itunes for months and though I sometimes have an issue where itunes couldn’t find the speakers, trying again would sort the issue out.
I updated to itunes 8 by accident last week and first of all, I couldn’t connect at all to the airport. This issue was sorted out by allowing itunes to have incoming connections on my apple firewall.
But since then I have had numerous issues with the music dropping out, being garbled, and static coming through. I tried turning off the apple firewall(in case it was causing the problem). I have a hardware firewall as well so this wasn’t dangerous but this didn’t fix the problem either.
It seems to me it has to be related to itunes 8. I’ve switched back to the computer speakers, as I can’t stand fallouts.
If anyone finds a solution, or knows how to safely go back to an earlier to an older version of itunes, please let me know.