How To Stream Online Radio or System Sound via AirTunes
If you have Airport-enabled Speakers and are addicted to services such as Last.fm or Pandora, it won’t be long before you decide that you want to play the music through those speakers; likewise, if you are a teacher and want tobark orders at your kids. Unfortunately, on Mac or Windows, you can’t just play such streams or system sound directly through iTunes or other music players.
So what’s the solution? In this article I take a look at AirFoil and how to do just that either wirelessly or over an existing ethernet network. I also look at Rogue Amoeba’s AirFoil Speakers, combined with Sound Flower, which enable AirTunes functionality on any Mac or Windows computer and allow you to stream the master computer’s sound to them.
Streaming Audio to Your Speakers
Developed by Rogue Amoeba, Airfoil allows you to hijack the audio stream from any application and then transmit the the audio via AirTunes to your Airport basestation attached speakers. The process of doing this is pretty simple. Once you have downloaded AirFoil and installed it in your applications folder, open it up. From there you will see a list of the available AirTunes-enabled devices.
Select the application from which you wish to hijack the audio in the bottom section of the window, and then click the “Speaker” button to the left of the device name. AirFoil will then prompt you to quit and relaunch your application, though if you install Instant Hijack from Rogue Amoeba then you will be able to get started streaming audio immediately, every time - should problems arise you can easily uninstall this later by selecting “Install Extras…” from the AirFoil drop menu and following instructions.
If you wish to stream to more than one set of speakers at the same time, simply click as many active speaker symbols as you like, entering passwords and adjusting the volume accordingly. In addition, you can change the application preferences so that Airfoil will automatically start streaming through a specific device, or set of devices, every time it is launched.
Streaming Sound to Other Computers
Also in the Rogue Amoeba arsenal, and to compliment AirFoil, is AirFoil Speakers. This will essentially turn any computer into a “stream-to” device, and thus allow you to stream music, or sound with Rogue’s Sound Flower (System Sound Hijacking), from one computer to many others, rather than streaming only from AirFoil to sets of speakers, a great function for use in any classroom with students under headphones.
To get started install AirFoil Speakers on all the associated computers, start it up and then crank up the volume. After that you are ready to go!
To install Sound Flower, select “Install Extras …” from the AirFoil drop menu. Select the correct tab and then click install.
Under The Hood - Extras
If you love to tweak settings then there are a bunch of things you can do, from changing the effects on the audio channel, using the effects window and the associated equalizer, to tweaking the source settings, with the “Advanced Source Settings” in the Edit drop menu. That way you can serve up the sound however you like, combining single or audio streams and mixing them up to great effect.
Conclusion: Sound However You Want It
This set of tools and functions from Rogue Amoeba are the perfect enhancement to anyone needing to transmit sound wirelessly, be it online radio and music recommendation services such as Last.fm or for use in the lecture hall or elsewhere. Airfoil is available for both Mac OSX and for Windows and though not free, can be taken for a risk-free test drive prior to purchase. At 25 USD for a single user license and 45 USD for a family pack of 5, AirFoil is a worthy default purchase for any music nut or teacher.
Find out more on the Rogue Amoeba AirFoil web site.
