Airport Express optical output?

lagouyn wrote:
Hello,

My Airport Express is emitting music just fine with an analog 1/8" cable. However, using Apple's optical cable, I'm not getting any sound. If I look into the audio jack on the Express, I don't see a red light. I wonder if I should see red. If so, might the unit be defective

possible. try another cable to be sure.

or do I need to somehow enable optical output (perhaps through the Airport Utility?)...

no.

Go ahead and get iTunes working via analog. Pull the headphone plug from the jack and you should see a red light in there. If you don't, the Express is not functioning correctly.

If you do see the red light, optical cables are quite quirky, so it may take some experimenting.

I have a question regarding the optical connection. Where do I find this cable?
I'm trying to get the digital sound from AX to my stereo receiver which has optical audio input.

Not sure if you ever got your problem solved or not, but I was having the same issue. After resetting my Airport Express Base Station multiple times and digging through these forums, I finally decided to go back to iTunes and and try just un-checking the AX in the "Multiple Speakers" output. When I checked it back on, it magically turned the red optical light on and all was well. In fact, I was running 2 AX base stations simultaneously and got the error on both. But when I unchecked and re-checked both, both red lights came on and all was well! I guess that somehow resets the connection or enables the optical out to work or something? And again, it worked for both of my units.

Hopefully future solution seekers will stumble across this answer and it will hopefully work for them as well!

Cheers!