AirTunes Speaker System

Life gets complicated when you have several speakers that you want to hook up together to put the sound in more areas, or handle more power. You have this problem in a large haunted house, businesses with background music, and even at home if you want to enjoy music throughout the house.

The most common solution at home is to simply crank it up! But that means you have an earthquake in the living room and soft music in the bedroom.

Wouldn't it be nice to add some speakers here and there, allowing you to fill the house (or haunt) with a unified sound track - without running wires all over the place?

You can do it with your computer and Apple's AirTunes.

What Is This And Why Do It?
What you need
Going Further
Related Pages

What Is This And Why Do It?

Apple's AirTunes is a system that uses wireless computer networking (WiFi) to distribute a stereo sound track anywhere that the the network can reach.

Place an AirTunes receiver anywhere that you want to hear the sound. Local volume control lets you turn it up or down so that room has the ideal volume.

What you need

My setup uses Apple's iTunes running on a computer, sending the sound track over my standard home WiFi setup, to Apple Airport Express modules, each of which feeds a set of powered speakers.

Let's take a closer look...

WiFi Network

AirTunes is distributed via your wireless network (WiFi), so that's a must-have.

The network can be 802.11a, b, g, or n. Since you don't want your music to drop out while other network activity is going on, I suggest 802.11g or n.

Computer

You need a computer to send out the music, acting as a digital jukebox. Apple iTunes Software is available for Apple computers (duh!) as well as Windows platforms. I use Windows XP.

Modern computers will probably have sufficient horsepower to do useful work at the same time as driving AirTunes. Older machines with slower CPU and disk may drop out the sound track during peak usage.

Apple iTunes Software

iTunes is the Apple-created software that manages your music collection, plays music and video, feeds your iPod, and hooks you up to the Apple store. It can also play existing music CDs or even "rip" them to disk for later playback.

iTunes is available for Apple computers as well as Windows platforms.

Once you have your favorite Favorite Soundtrack living on disk, iTunes can play one track, an album, or even your whole collection as a digital jukebox.

You do not necessarily have to rip CDs to disk. iTunes can directly play a music or audio CD, and even stream that to your AirTunes speakers. But both of these activities take a lot of computer resources. You may find places where the AirTunes drop out. In order to prevent this, it's safer to have your sound track on disk.

In order for iTunes to send your music via AirTunes, you have to enable this feature. In the options, check "Look for remote speakers connected with AirTunes".
[photo] This is iTunes 7. Other versions may look different.

[photo] You will notice a choice of speakers at the bottom of the window. Clicking on this bring up a dialog.

[photo] Then you can select which speakers will be used to play music - you can mix and match. I think there is a limit of 5 sets of stereo speakers at a time.

Favorite Soundtrack

You need music, sound effects, or other sounds if you are going to play them throughout the area.

iTunes can play existing music CDs or even "rip" them to disk for later playback. By using the rip facility, you can build up a collection of music on your computer's hard disk.

Once you have your music, iTunes can play one track, an album, or even your whole collection as a digital jukebox.

Airport Express

Apple's Airport Express is a handy little box. It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes, plugs into the wall for power, and can do a lot of things! It's a bargain, too - Apple sells it for $99 [Sept 2008], and I have picked up several on eBay for a lot cheaper.

What does it do?

Acts as wireless print server. Hook it to your USB printer, tuck it in a corner, and all the computers on the network can wirelessly chare the printer.

Serves as a wireless base station. Don't have a WiFi network? Create one by using AirPort Express as the base. SUpports up to 10 users at a time.

Acts as a WiFi network range extender.

Receives AirTunes signals and sends them to your amplified speakers of stereo. It literally has a 1/8 Inch (3.5mm)socket

Obviously, it's the last capability that interests us here.

Amplified Speakers

The audio signal coming out of the Airport Express isn't meant to run straight into big honking speakers. It's closer to line-level audio. It needs to be amplified.

The simplest and cheapest way to do this is to plug in a set of Amplified Speakers. These vary in price and quality. The cheesie ones can go for as little as $10, with unimpressive sound quality. Really nice powered speakers can sell for hundreds of dollars.

But why stop there? In the living room, take the Airport Express output and pump it into your stereo system.

For high-end sound, that same little Airport Express jack supports digital optical output!