Airport Express (2015) + Airplay = drop outs in music

1. Why would music streaming work perfectly well using Apple TV, but not Airport Express?

The AirPort Express base stations are noted for jitter issues. Interestingly the 1st generation 802.11n base station did better the the latest 2nd generation model when it comes to both jitter and THD. These specifically impact performance for both analog & digital output.

2. Are there things I can do to make the Airport Express more closely mimic the WiFi behaviors of an Apple TV?

Since you already eliminated Wi-Fi interference as a issue, the only option would be to replace your Express with the earlier model ... unfortunately, there is no guarantee doing so would actually resolve the issue. Maybe you may know someone willing to loan you one to try out.

Thanks for the Ken Rockwell link. I am familiar with his work and I found it to be an interesting read.

If you still think Wi-Fi may be an issue, please give the following AirPort User tip a go. It provides a means to determine the best placement for your base station. It was primarily intended for extended networks, but the same basic principles apply for streaming.

I have an older Airport express and it is connected to my DAC via the tousling cable. I beam my music wirelessly to my airport express.

When I updated the firmware it started the dropouts. Reverting to an older firmware (7.6.1) fixed the issue.

Today I bought a new computer, a new Airport Extreme and a new Airport Express.

When it was all set up, the dropouts returned. Worse than ever. Every few seconds.

I replace the new Express with the old express with the old firmware and all is good again.

Looks like apple updated the firmware in a fashion that doesn't work well with the optical cable out to a DAC.

I can't believe that they haven't corrected that yet and that there aren't more complaints.

Having the same exact issue, and its awful. From my iPhone 6+, through the Airport Express (latest model) to my Cambridge Audio 840C CD player/DAC. I have an expensive system that constantly drops the music that is streamed to it, and the weak link is the Apple product. Tried several solutions, including several different cables, network troubleshooting, etc. Apple should do the right thing and finally fix this issue with a firmware update ASAP, once and for all.

I talked to the maker of my receiver (DAC). I have a Peachtree Nova. Fantastic DAC.

They have tweaked on of their digital import ports to accept high jitter signals. It degrades the sound just a tiny bit, but it can accept jittery signals.

Here is what I learned. The only time that the jitter issue crops up (and why others don't experience it) is when we go optical from the AE to optical in on our DAC. Using standard 3.5 plug fro the AE to RCA inputs on the DAC creates no jitter and dropouts.

The problem is with any AE firmware above 7.6.1 AND going optical toslink from the AE into the optimal input on the DAC.

I know that the manufacturer of the Peachtree Nova says that this issue is not present with the Apple TV with the most recent firmware.

When the new Apple TV comes out next month, I plan to buy one for my main Media Center to work with my TV and I'll take my Apple TV 3 and replace my old Airport Express. Thus ditching the old AE that has the older firmware (7.6.1).

But yes, the bottom line is that even on the newest Airport Express, the new firmware is STILL BROKEN and messes up the optical to optical connection.

From my experience and extensive testing: It is NOT a wifi issue. It has NOTHING to do with the settings in our Airport Express or Airport Extreme. It is 100% a firmware problem combined with the optical toslink connection from the AE to the optical input on high quality DAC receivers.

I have tried almost everything including using third party music apps to see if airplay would be fixed. I changed routers and all sorts of nonsense. The waste of time and money that apple has caused is straight up crazy.

I just swapped out the firmware on an airport express (using optical output to the marantz 8801) to firmware 7.6 after reading some of these specific threads.

I have had the dropouts problem with the latest version of appleTV (small black one) as well. I haven't bothered with changing the firmware on that since the video works fine.

So far the firmware change seems to be working... Perhaps they broke the optical output on both the airport expresses and the appleTV's.

Hi all.

I just registered on purpose after reading this, to claim the same.

I have an Airport Express latest Gen and i can't use the optical out. It is not the network environment, as i am working connect by ethernet.

Through Analog i have ZERO issues, through optical, it skips. I've seen a lot of users with this problem and apple doesn't seem very comited to fix it.I've read elsewhere that it may be even a hardware issue that it's impossible to solve and thus the silence...

Pitty i spent my money on this. I bought it from apple on purpose to have a higher quality product to connect to my B&W and now i'm stuck with something I can't use... 😟

Ricardo.

Airport Express may just be the most frustrating product I've ever owned. Well done Apple!

I have the 2nd generation running version 7.6.4 and I think it is less reliable than the first model from 12 years ago or so.

I have trusty old Mac Minis and an iPhone 6, all my music is on iTunes and I want it to work seamlessly with my Bose multi-room hi-fi (from 2000, still going strong). All the Airplay Express has to do is pass an uninterrupted stream to the aux input on my amp.

Airport Express / Airplay does not work with the iPhone 6 in combination with iTunes / Music app. It is even worse if trying to share from a library on another Mac on the same network (too much wireless streaming to handle, presumably). By work I mean no drop outs, no losing the connection completely when within 5 metres of the box, no mysteriously dropping out of view of Airport Utility. The iPhone 6 streams YouTube audio very competently to the Airplay Express so it is a mystery to me why I can't stream from the Music app.

Airport Express does work (fairly) reliably from my Mac Mini located 5 metres away - bit I still get some drop outs, especially if sharing as mentioned. Come on! I know how to set up the network (did I say I've owned and used an Express for about 12 years?) and have put more hours than I care to admit trying things out as an unpaid beta tester for a product that should "just work".

I only want to be able to use the iPhone 6 to decide which music to play over Airplay, music which exists on my Mac Minis on the home network, I don't require the music to be streamed to the iPhone first!! Occasionally I wish to stream music directly from the iPhone but generally it shouldn't be involved in the streaming, at all.

Please Apple look at this issue. There is nothing more annoying (in the First World at least) than music that skips or drops out! What would Steve do?

Wow, glad I found this thread. Finally some information that makes sense. I too have the Airport Express optical-out dropping-out issue, and always assumed it was a wifi issue. However, we live a long way from anyone and can't see a single other wifi network, and only have a (new model) Airport Extreme as the primary base-station, so everything is "with the Apple ecosystem" like MonkeyBoy1103.

Just one thing I'd add — it's not a combination of the Airport Express optical out plus high-end DAC. I have this issue using the DAC in my Pioneer VSX-322 receiver (~usd$200).

I'm going to try reverting to an older firmware.

So I reverted the Airport Express to 7.6.1 and it hasn't dropped out once since. Thanks so much for the suggestions above.

I left my Airport Extreme untouched, running 7.7.3.

All totally crazy. In the old days I used to feel sorry for Windows users, who I thought had to worry about things like discussing the best third-decimal-place firmware version of their router to use, to avoid causing problems with stuff that just worked for me out-of-the-box. Maybe poor software quality is all you should expect from the largest player...

Well not sure if this helps since my last step but I haven't had any dropouts since.

I just set the AE basestation DNS Servers field to 8.8.8.8 (which may or may not have had anything to do with it because I did have a dropout while testing), but the last bit was to simply put details into the Airplay fields - 'Airplay Speaker Name, Airplay Speaker Password, Verify Password ........ If that's clearly written in the instructions for setting up Airplay on an AE, then I must start reading setup instructions again ;-)

It has only been a day of use with no dropouts since so I hope it holds now and is of some use to others.

If your ISP only have IPv4, then change the Airport Express setting to IPv6 on the local net only. This will remove the Airplay dropouts, relax to the music instead!

I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for your post pointing out the problem with using an optical cable from the Airport Express to an upmarket hi-fi system. I was using a proper cable (3.5 jack to optical) and suffering from repeated 'drop-outs' etc - in short the sound was horrible! I use an Airport Extreme as my router and I had spent hours and hours reading posts explaining different settings etc etc for the Extreme and the Express to work together - all to no avail until I spotted your post about the cable problem. I fitted a proper jack to jack cable (Audioquest Evergreen) and now have superb sound. Thank you! It is extraordinary that Apple can't own up to this problem but c'est la vie I suppose.