airport express dropout: What worked for me

I have had no problems with 5ghz, except when I tried to bond 2 channels for more throughput. That requires both channels always working together, and one gets a 80Mhz bandwidth. But always a channel would get interrupted, causing the link to stop working. I changed to one 40Mhz channel and 5Ghz wifi has been very steady, in any room.

Ah, maybe because the AirPort Express can only handle up to 40 MHz-wide channels on the 5 GHz band.

Ref: Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points - Apple Support

Thanks for the writeup. A couple of questions, if you don't mind.

• Where is the AirPort Express physically in relation to the Linksys router? Same room, different room, or different floor?
• I am assuming that the Express was configured to join the Linksys' 5 GHz network originally ... correct?
• Then you just reconfigured the Express to join the Linksys' 2.4 GHz network instead ... correct?
• Finally, which version of wireless security are you running on your network ... WPA or WPA2?

Same floor, different room

From experience, and regardless of what router manufacturers say, the 5 GHz band is basically only useable if you are in the same room as the wireless access point. It would also support your findings that moving your Express to the 2.4 GHz band gave you much better results.

Yes, only other device is a printer. Don't know, but maybe printing will cause sonic dropouts now....

Like any other device operating on the same band, they all have to share the same bandwidth. Also, remember on wireless, no two clients can "talk" at the same time. As you can imagine, when the printer is being sent a large print job, the Express, can only access the network in between any wireless transmission gaps. Finally, steaming uses UDP over IP to communicate. UDP is a connectionless protocol. Everything sent down the wire is not verified that it is received. Actually you want it that way, otherwise songs would sound funny if packets have to be resent. UDP is also used primarily for voice communications for the same reasons. The printer, on the other hand, relies on the TCP protocol which does require a connection be established before receiving the print jobs. This assures that both the sender and the recipient get all of the data as it was intended.

WPA2

Good! This wireless security type uses the least amount of overhead and provides the best overall bandwidth between clients.

I just ran twisted pair to the AExp and took it off wifi. SoundCloud would start but would still dropout with safari, but the other browsers worked fine. It maybe not enough sound samples are buffered in the AirExp and it keeps running out. Maybe the Apple TV has bigger buffers?

I do know that the Express has a 2-second buffer, but I honestly don't know what buffer is used for the Apple TV. Since the Apple TV is primarily used with both audio & video, I can imagine it has a much larger buffer.

An audio stream from the Mac, regardless of the source, must first be compressed using Apple's Lossless Compression (ALAC) via a QuickTime codec, encrypted with 128-bit AES, before it is sent to the Express. In turn, the Express will first decrypt the stream, then decodes ALAC to an encoded digital audio (PCM) format at the same audio quality level of the original source audio file format. It then buffers it for up to 2 seconds before it outputs it out either analog/optical digital audio port.

You may want to compare using iTunes with a local media library on your Mac vs. SoundCloud when streaming to see if there is any difference.