Audio Drop while using airtunes

William: It sounds like your issue may not be entirely the iBooks fault. It sounds like what you are doing is streaming your library to the iBook and then back out to the AX. This could be causing your dropouts. You might wanna try using the iBook as a true remote control using a VNC.

Now, I haven't used a VNC, just read about it, but it sounds exactly what you need. You should be able to use it to control your iMac thru your iBook. That way, your iMac will be doing the streaming and you won't have the extra network burden of a double stream. Give this program a look. http://www.redstonesoftware.com/vnc.html

Let us know if this fixes your problem.

Brian

Just wanted to add to this thread on what has worked for me.

I have been having the audio dropout issue since getting the AXs. Sometimes I have better luck than others and sometimes I just bring my laptop in the same room as the AX connected to the stereo (I almost always get drops when streaming from my office).

My setup is like this, Airport Extreme Base Station (on the other end of the house), an AX in the living room (in the middle of the house), and a AX in my office with my Powerbook (opposite end of the house from the Base Station). They are all set to 'g only'.

I had both AXs setup as remote base stations. I had a feeling this wasn't helping my network, so I set the living room AX to be a relay station connected to the main base station and my office AX. I also turned on Interface Robustness.

Well, I have been streaming almost two full albums of music to the stereo without one drop from my office. I am monitoring the Activity Monitor for the network and it is staying steady at around 120Kbps out. I have even used the network to copy files and been on the internet and it stayed strong. I am even getting faster file transfers over the network.

So that's my story. I hope this helps someone out there.

Brian

Same problem, New G4 iBook, Original Airport Base Station, new AX connected to stereo. First few days I had no dropouts. Today I had lots, with increasing frequency. Bad enough to go looking in the forums for advice. Tried pretty much everything suggested. Nothing works. The fact that the problem has shown time dependence may be of significance to the nerds at Apple. Anyone else find that it gets worse with time?

I just experienced the last word in drop-outs. The music simply stopped playing. Itunes still showed the pause symbol as if the song was playing but the time elapsed reading remained fixed. Double clicking on a different song got things started again. This is the first time I have seen any feedback to the iTunes app itself. Very strange.

FWIW, I just had a dropout on my ibook G4. It happened when my Washing Machine cut off (finished a cycle). The play/pause button does absolutely nothing until I switch back to computer speakers and then I can go back to AirTunes speakers. This seems like a flaw with iTunes.

Well, after much frustration, I changed the AE protocol to 802.11b only, and all is happy and smooth.

Hi,

Just to let people know. I just bought a Linksys WRT54GS and I have been streaming without a single drop. The setup was a snap (I followed the instructions in the article Ewen, "Express and D-Link routers", 11:26am Nov 14, 2004 CDT ) and it has been working ever since.

I highly recommend this product.

Good luck.

Mark

I'm having serious problems with audio dropping out to my airport express. My girlfriend says she's had the same problem on my computer when she's playing through the computer speakers and not the airport express.

When I look at iTunes, it looks like it pauses. The "elapsed time" meter is frozen and nothing is happening. Sometime it will start playing but the rest of the time it just freezes up and the only solution is to switch between the Airport Express and My Computer. Then it starts playing again.

Well, I give up. I'm taking this thing back. Before it just stopped playing in the middle of a song for a few seconds. NOW, it won't even start playing the song. It just sits there showing that it is trying to connect with the Airport Express. Meanwhile the unit itself has a bright green solid light. Its getting WORSE the more I try.

After over a year of experience, I'm finding that Apple's solutions, while user-friendly, aren't very robust. An annoying recent evolution illustrates.
I have a 4-computer network in my house, supported by an Airport Extreme base station, and 2 Airport Express units. The latter are connected to 2 stereos.
The Airport Extreme base station is a new acquisition, replacing an original Airport bs. As soon as I added the new base station, performance degraded, even though I also added a Dr. Bott's Omni antenna.

I just upgraded my desktop computer from a G4 with Airport to a G5 with Airport Express. The signal I now get on my desktop is about half as strong as on my 802.11b equipped G4.

I get frequent audio drops on the Airport Express units.

I'm pretty frustrated, and moved to the non-constructive reflection that Apple's wireless products bite the big one.

I have the suspicion that, since the vast majority of people (myself included) seem to have had their problems solved by the firmware updates, many of the remaining problems are due to external factors like interference and the positioning of the unit.

For instance, I started getting dropouts again recently. Turns out it was because I had a portable TV antenna nearby, which was either attracting interference or soaking up the stream. Once I retracted and moved the antenna it was fine again.

Even though the firmware updates virtually solved my problems, I have very occasionally had a few minutes of dropouts, which I can only attribute to transient radio interference.

Of course I spoke too soon, presuming that coincidence meant causality. The drop-outs have now returned.

However because they only recently became a problem again, I'm guessing it's due to iTunes 4.7.1 or OS X 10.3.8.

I am running iTunes 4.7.1 and OS X 10.3.8. I was getting countless drop outs with wireless AirTunes, and decided in the end to redo my entire network in an attempt to fix the problems.

To make a long story short: my Linksys WRT54G router is now wired by ethernet to the Airport Express. Wireless is disabled completely on the Airport Express. Mac Stumbler reports that I have a 90+ signal to my router with <45 noise-- pretty good. I am less than 15 feet from the router.

Believe it or not, I am still getting dropouts. The Airport Express is connected directly to the router, folks! I have cycled through all of the channels. I have absolutely no problem with my wireless connection otherwise, nada. iTunes streaming cache is set to Large, and I have disabled Sound Enhancer, auto volume adjust, etc.

I have come the conclusion that this product simply does NOT work as advertised.

On 9 Feb., I installed the 6.1.1 firmware update, upgraded from OS 10.3.7 to 10.3.8 and set my base station to Channel 11. I have not had a drop out since. FWIW, I have two 2.4 GHz VTech phones and a microwave oven operating in the same room.

I have no idea if using channel 11 does anything significant, but I'm not about to change it. Good luck to y'all.

Peter

Great! This worked for me. I am using ABS Extreme with AX. Audio dropouts have been reduced markedly making AirTunes usable again.

Thanks!

PE