Pulseaudio and Apple Airport Express AirTunes client mode

[bzzzzz]

I get very choppy sound.

All I did using ubuntu 10.04 was to configure local sound server from pulseaudio menu, then tick the two boxes in the network access menu.

You can then see your express in the output of the volume control menu.

Problem is its very choppy (unlistenable at the moment)

[Takkat]

Hi all,

for me streaming to an AEX works smoothly but with a 6s delay having pulseaudio-module-raop and paprefs installed on Lucid. However Avahi/Zeroconfig does not reliably resolve names . Streaming directly to the IP overcomes this issue (see also pulseaudio ticket #770).

[potrick]

I got it working with the packages mentioned above, but there's one hiccup: disconnecting from AirTunes doesn't tell the Airport Express to disconnect, meaning no one else can connect to the device after I leave work. Is there some way to achieve this, or should I just be happy to have it working at all?

[Takkat]

Hmm. That's a very good point I was not aware of. I always power off the AE together with my stereo - that of course resets everything. At the moment I don't have an idea of how to perform a remote reset but I'm in good hope to figure that out and implent this. Seems quite important to me. Thanks for pointing at this

Tak

[dshrek]

If you have choppy sound you should try different players. For me, amarok, xine and mplayer are not working properly. Finally, I found totem and rhythmbox to play perfectly, whithout any interruptions.

I hope the amarok guys will fix that soon. I want to have my amarok back!!!

[Takkat]

For me, amarok, xine and mplayer are not working properly. Finally, I found totem and rhythmbox to play perfectly, whithout any interruptions.

very interesting to hear. For me it's just the other way round: mplayer, audacious, exaile, gmusicplayer and guayadeque are playing smoothly whereas totem and rhythmbox are choppy. Did not figure out why, though.

[Takkat]

disconnecting from AirTunes doesn't tell the Airport Express to disconnect, meaning no one else can connect to the device after I leave work.

Unfortunately I am unable to reproduce your problems in my setting here. However the pulseaudio-module-raop needs to be unloaded correctly from PulseAudio. Then streaming to the otherwise untouched AEX is fine for all subsequent users on the same or on a different machine. Maybe it's an issue from your router or your DHCP-server?

By the way I did not find an easy way other than power off to reset the AEX since codes to control the device are not open - too bad.

Loading and unloading the AEX as a RAOP-Device for PulseAudio can easily be done with stream2ip

[dshrek]

very interesting to hear. For me it's just the other way round: mplayer, audacious, exaile, gmusicplayer and guayadeque are playing smoothly whereas totem and rhythmbox are choppy. Did not figure out why, though.

Is it possible that it is just a problem of the right configuration? Maybe different distros have different configuration files. I am using Kububtu 10.04.

[Takkat]

Is it possible that it is just a problem of the right configuration?

ACK. It's definitely a matter of config. But what is to configure where?

[dshrek]

very interesting to hear. For me it's just the other way round: mplayer, audacious, exaile, gmusicplayer and guayadeque are playing smoothly whereas totem and rhythmbox are choppy. Did not figure out why, though.

This is quite strange. Exaile, guayadeque, totem and rhythmbox all use the gstreamer engine. I would have guessed that if one works, all the others should, too. For me, that is the case, at least for three of them. I have not yet installed and tried to use guayadeque.

But for you, two of them work and two do not. This makes no sense to me, as I don't think that any particular setting of the players should have an influence on the streaming to the AE. Only the settings of gstreamer should be relevant for that.