Wireless

As a long time audiophile I've certainly gone through phases when sound quality trumped content. Many of us have taken this detour once or twice during our enjoyment of high end audio. Albums like Californication from Red Hot Chili Peppers sound terrible after listening to a high resolution version of Chinese toothpick flicking. Californication is one of my favorite albums even though the dynamic range compression is overbearing at times. Whenever I catch myself unwilling to listen to my favorite albums because of the inferior sonic quality I know something is wrong and I've gone off course. Nearly 100% of the time I would rather listening to my favorite content through an AM radio than listen to a Scottish nose whistle recorded at 24/192 and impeccably produced. What follows is my story about a recent experience with some friends, three laptops, an Airport Express, an old Denon receiver, and some boom-box speakers. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed such low quality sound so much. This is an example of what happens when one takes a break from the all too serious nature of our wonderful hobby.

In the second part of this series I discussed pushing music from a music server to another location in a residence using Apple Airport Express units. These work wonderful for playing the same music in every location as the Airport Express only follows the lead of the main music server. Playing different music in each location of a residence is a little different story, but it can be accomplished in much the same fashion. Substituting AppleTVs for the Airport Express units allows a listener to either push music from the main music server, the exact same way as an Airport Express, or pull music from the main music server independently of what's playing on the server. Plus, using an iPod Touch or iPhone this can all be controlled from a single location.

In part two of the wireless music distribution series we get into the actual configuration of an Airport Express and iTunes to distribute music from the music server to another zone / room with AirTunes. Unfortunately the word configuration has a bad connotation when it comes to computers. Much of the time when people read the word configuration they immediately tune out and look for a canned solution that's plug n' play. Fortunately when working with most Apple components and applications the word configuration really means putting a check mark in a box and clicking OK. I'm happy to report that this is the case when enabling AirTunes. Here are some instructions and a video showing exactly how to complete this simple configuration.