Wireless at last!

[noddin0ff]

I have at last freed myself from the oppressive yoke of having to put actual CD's in my CD player or be physically tethered to my stereo!

It's a small step. I bought the $99 Airport Express from Apple, a $36 6-ft Dayton glass optical cable (Parts Express, very nice looking/feeling cable), and a $1.95 toslink to optical mini adapter.

The AE has a 1/8 jack that is both an analog mini jack and an optical jack. Setting up the network took longer than it should of because I was adding the AE to an existing wireless network and I botched it up the first couple times. Assign an input on my receiver and check some boxes in iTunes and I'm streaming from my laptop. YAY!

Sounds good. No hiccups.

Currently my library is around 280Gb in Apple Lossles and growing so it has to reside on an external hard drive. That's a small problem since I have to plug in a laptop to the HD and sacrifice mobility. However, in February Apples gonna ship their new wireless hub (Airport Extreme, $179) that will allow you to plug any USB External HD into it and share the drive wirelessly over the network. I don't really need more wirless hubs, but it would allow the multiple laptops in the house to access our domestic files and the the music library. Anyone will be able to listen to the library with headphones or stream it to any or all stereos with an Airport Express....

[ericl]

NIIIIICE!

Fun Stuff!!

[noddin0ff]

This weekend I installed Apple's new wireless Airport Extreme base station into my home network. THIS IS COOL!

There's been several posts discussing network attached storage (NAS devices) for serving audio files. In general, NAS is kind of pricey. Enter Airport Extreme ($179). It is a wireless router supporting the new, faster 802.11n and the current 802.11a/b/g protocols. It also has THREE ethernet ports for physical connections. It is PC compatible.

But, I digress. The COOL thing is that it will share ANY USB 2.0 external hard drive over the wireless network. >>>It makes any external drive a NAS device!<<<

I plugged in my external 320GB HD that houses my iTunes library into the Airport's USB port and Tah-dah! The drive is accessible to any computer in the house on the network (wired or wireless). With a USB hub, you can attach multiple drives and/or USB printers to share.

So now, without pluggin in any cables, I can stream my iTunes library from my wireless NAS HD to my $99 Airport Express (or to mulitple AExpress on multiple stereos). I use the AExp Optical out. You could use this with the SlimServer, or any other media player. You can also just store shared files/photos/etc.

Technically, the Airport Express only interfaces with iTunes, but there is a program available called Airfoil that will hijack and send audio streams from other applications to the AExp.

I'm gonna see if I can stream ripped DVD's. The bottleneck is the USB 2.0 connection, I'm not sure if it's fast enough...

For the price of two units, $278 (Airport Extreme & Airport Express) you get a wireless network, cheap and expandable NAS capabilty, the new 802.11n standard, digital or analog streaming to your stereo, and very flexible and easy music management. Works with both PC's and Macs

Tech Specs for the Airport Extreme & requirements