airplay audio question

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Level 2

291 points

airplay audio question

Hi, trying to figure something out so I know which way to set up my home network and audio speakers. For the moment I am just playing TV (netflix, iTunes, etc.) on my laptop and not sure if I will buy a TV any time soon. If anything, I would get an iMac first if I can manage to set up the home audio portion of my system properly, which is where I am stuck at the moment.

What I want to be able to do is play sound from netflix and similar browser based services via networked connected speakers (as opposed to Bluetooth), the same way that you would play music from iTunes (via Airplay?). Do you just go into System Preferences and select Sound settings when an Airplay compatible device is on the network, then select the Airplay device as sound output? Assuming this works, is there a lag time for audio playback which makes it impossible to play video on the computer and have it sync with the audio from the external speakers? I know this isn't an issue with my Bluetooth speaker but not sure about Airplay.

Note that I had the idea originally that I could do this audio output with Sonus but they seem to have missed the mark on this and you are not able to output computer sound from your browser via their setup, so now looking for an alternative wireless/networked speaker option. If Airplay is the only option I just need to make sure I can play audio in sync with video before I invest in anything.

thx

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 8GB 1600MHz

Posted on Aug 7, 2014 12:46 PM

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Answer 1

Network 23

Level 6

12,351 points

Aug 7, 2014 1:53 PM in response to sean-o-mac

Yes, you can select an AirPlay device in the system sound output preferences, and yes, all AirPlay audio is delayed two seconds. Some applications compensate for this, others don't. When you play video from Apple applications like iTunes, Apple seems to take care of the audio delay and sync it up right, but if you try to send audio from other applications like a web browser or non-Apple video player the two second lag is there unless the application has an audio sync feature, which most do not.

If you have a video or stream that can be played back from the free VLC utility, it has a Track Synchronization feature that will sync AirPlay audio if you enter -2 seconds.

Sometimes I find it easier to play video sound to AirPlay from my iPad because iOS seems to compensate for the delay from a web browser.

Another way to send AirPlay audio is using Airfoil (extra cost), which has a few more features like being able to send to AirPlay on an application by application basis, but it has no audio delay compensation so it's best for music and other non-video audio.

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