Sound Output on iMac selecting an Airport Express

Question

Level 1

4 points

Sound Output on iMac selecting an Airport Express

Hi

After a couple of years of faultlessly streaming music from my iMac (27-inch, Late 2013 running High Sierra), to my airport express (Connected via ethernet and wifi), it has suddenly become impossible, unless I do it using iTunes.

So, what's the problem?

I've recently subscribed to Quobuz, so rarely use iTunes anymore.

Quobuz was working faultlessly until 3 days ago. When using it, I select my airport express via Sound, Output.

It doesn't work now. I can't select any of the airport express dotted around my house. It jumps back to Internal Speakers and shows the problem illustrated in the screen grab attached.

I can still connect with with my 16"MBP running Monterey, so the problem seems to be the imac, rather than the airport express.

Things I've tried.

Switching wifi on and off.

Renaming the airport Express.

Copy and paste `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'` in Terminal, although I'm unsure if I'm going through that procedure properly. I got that from an old answer on here to a similar problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks

Paul

iMac 27″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Feb 16, 2022 2:30 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 16, 2022 3:01 PM in response to pollybampton

Paul, open Audio Midi Utility in Application>Utilities & see if you can add it to sound out there or get some clues.

Start with this...

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

Reply

Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 17, 2022 1:30 PM in response to pollybampton

To find out if it's system wide or user specific, try this...

Open System Preferences>Users & Groups, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.

Does it work in the new account?

Reply

Answer 3

pollybampton Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 17, 2022 1:53 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi mate,

Before I do that, let me tell you that I now have it working.

Let me explain... I googled a soundoutput query and followed a link to a macrumours forum

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airport-express-ii-airplay-streaming-suddenly-stopped-error-10.2272599/

This is not the same problem as mine, but close enough to have a read at it. So, I turned the clock back a year in the date and time preferences. I was able to select the airport express, but couldn't play anything from Quobuz. Probably because the new date was before the subscription. I then noticed I couldn't connect to the internet, so quickly put the date back to today. And now it all works!!

No idea why, but it works. I just hope I don't have to do it every day...

Any idea what I've done?

Reply