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

Likewise - thanks for your post. I thought I was going mad. I have a complicated set up at home with 5 different Airport Expresses/Timecapsules (and different types) with mixed wired / wireless modes. I have the most recent Airport Express connected via a Toslink cable to a Monitor Audio amplifier and when I play my music from an iPhone or iPad (usually Spotify) it's a gamble as to whether I can go through one song without breaks or pops. I have the option of using the amplifier's Airplay/wireless connection but it's slower to connect and even that drops out occasionally (but it's still more reliable than using the Airport Express/optical link).

Although seemingly obvious it never occurred to me to just replace the optical link with a decent analogue cable. This has now been ordered from Amazon and arrives today. Hopefully that should be the end of it.

I just don't understand how there isn't more talk of this issue. Either there aren't many people using Airplay to listen to their music in this way or people don't complain enough. Weird.

I also have a Peachtree Nova 65se and am having dropout problems with the Airport Express using the optical out.

Unfortunately, I don't have a spare analog input on my Nova (am using that for phono) so I'm kind of stuck.

I saw that people here are saying that 7.6.1 was the last version of firmware that didn't have this problem, but that would appear to not be available for my Airport Express (at least option clicking on version in the Airport Utility only shows versions going back to 7.6.2, and I can't seem to find a download anywhere.)

Just wondering if anyone found a way solution to this - finding the older firmware ?

Or if Apple are actually reading any of this, can you please fix whatever you broke with the optical out in firmware version 7.6.2?

New version of Airport Express firmware (7.6.7) is out today. Unfortunately it doesn't help the digital out jitter problem. The only conclusion is that Apple can't fix the problem.

I have a 3rd generation time capsule and a 1st generation airport express.

The time capsule is connected via wifi to the airport express and the airport express is connection via optical (toslink) to a Denon receiver.

With both devices running 7.6.4, the sound is perfect; no audio dropouts, ever.

Updating both to 7.6.7, there are audio dropouts every few minutes.

Rolling both back to 7.6.4, it is once again perfect.

Hopefully this will be addressed in the future; my setup isolates the firmware version as being the culprit.

That would be a second gen Airport Express. The first gen is the wall wart rectangular box 802.11g only and isn't upgradeable to 7.6.7. The second gen is the square one that does 802.11n. The second gen has all sorts of problems with various external DACs because of jitter. You sound like you got lucky and your Denon doesn't have a problem with it (or didn't).

It's a first generation, but the second variant of it that supports draft 'N' and is upgradeable to 7.6.7. It's still got the 'wall wart' form factor.

AirPort Express 802.11n (1st Generation) - Technical Specifications

Thanks for the info. I probably knew this at some point but since I only own the 1st 1st gen (802.11g) and a couple of the 2nd gens it is easy to lose track. It's a bummer that Apple keeps breaking working optical outs. The 2nd gen optical out hasn't worked since 7.6.1 apparently (mine started at 7.6.4 and never worked.)

If your unit shipped with 7.6.4, can you still roll back to 7.6.1, or must the device have shipped prior to 7.6.1 to enable rolling back?

One shipped with 7.6.4 and I've never found a version of 7.6.1 that works with it. The other shipped with 7.6.5 and I've never even found a version lower than what it shipped with that works with it--not even 7.6.4. Latest version 7.6.7 works on both but does nothing to help the jitter problem. My old 1st gen 802.11g works fine when wired to ethernet and all routing turned off working as just an Airplay receiver using the TOSLINK optical outs for audio. The 1st gen Airport Express is on 6.3 and can't be configured on any modern version of OS X.

I really hope Apple recognises the toslink output issue and corrects it (7.6.8, maybe?). It doesn't seem right that they shipped a product that can't be used in that way.

I suspect that there aren't enough people who use optical out of their airport express to notice the issue. That's the most likely explanation.

The only other possibility is that it only affects a certain range of Apple's own hardware or only a certain range of third party hardware.

If Apple's engineers can reproduce the issue with certain firmware versions and not with others, then they can isolate it to the changes in the code. It's got to be in there somewhere!

So one would hope... this has been driving me nuts. I have three TV 3rd gen that won't play nice on Toslink to my Dynaudio Xeo 2. I have been replacing cables, updating firmware, you name it. I also tried with an AirPort Express 1st gen, but maybe it was 2nd variant (having some significance reading this thread).... My 20 years' old Yamaha MD player works just fine using Toslink, so it isn't the speakers. I guess?

My home network includes both two current generation Airport Express (v. 7.6.7; one running TOSlink, the other running wired audio output), Apple TVs (one first generation and one second generation), and an Airport Extreme (v.7.7.7), which runs in bridge mode from my modem/router, connected via ethernet cable. I am running OS X 10.11.5, with iTunes 12.4.1.6. All these wifi devices are within 30 ft. of the Airport Extreme.

I found that in the Airport Extreme, unchecking "Block IPv6 connection" on the wifi config page solved the iTunes multispeaker dropping problem.

Interestingly, the fix worked only when the Airport Extremes are connected to the 2.2 Ghz band wifi, not the 5 GHz band connection.

There have never been dropout problems with the first generation Apple TV running on the 5 GHz network. The second generation Apple TV is connected via ethernet cable, and it has never had a dropout problem either.

So my conclusion is that in my case, the router is putting out IPv6 on ethernet (I found no way to control this in its settings), and the Airport Extreme in bridge mode was blocking IPv6 in wifi and causing the dropouts. Why this occurred only with the Airport Extremes, and not the Apple TV connected via wifi, is a mystery.

If Apple gets out of the Airport business, I sure hope 3rd party Airplay receivers are available.