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Jul. 31st, 2019 04:45 amIn a previous post, I've mentioned that through various tricks and gadgets and so on, I have something of a working setup for broadcasting audio through the house, or at least most of it. It's not complete, and has some bugs, either new or persistent.
-Last year I got an iHome IW2 device that can receive audio from an Airplay 1 player. That worked, for a while. Then suddenly nothing will connect to it. I got it for cheap off ebay, so that might have something to do with it. Maybe it's just getting crowded out of the wifi network? I'll have to do some experiments.
-I got a new home theater receiver some time ago, as I had been planning to, and it came with Airplay 2 capability. That seems great until there's the fact that Airplay 2 devices are not backwards compatible with Airplay 1, which means anything running my preferred version of iTunes (10.7) won't properly connect to it.
-Had I gotten a new receiver a couple years earlier, it would likely have had Airplay 1 natively and everything would have worked the way it should have.
-The workaround there was to install a bit of software that takes a computer's audio and broadcasts it via Airplay 2, which the new receiver can understand.
-The 4th generation Ipod Touch shouldn't have Airplay 2 capability but it communicates with the receiver just fine? This shouldn't work but it does. Hey, I'll take it.
-The Airport Express devices are solid; everything works with them. I have 3 of these; I'll probably get another 1 or 2 later on for more coverage. Out of the box, the optical audio didn't work very well; lots of sound dropouts. A firmware update fixed that and as a bonus, made the device compatible with both Airport protocols. These are holdovers from an earlier age when Apple products had some compatibility with 3rd-party devices. That is, these have the option of connecting to any powered speaker via headphone jack or optical audio. Now Apple is trying to push their Homepod line, which has the speaker as part of the unit, for 300 bucks, as opposed to being able to use a set of generic computer speakers for a tenth of the cost. Assholes.
-The Ipod Touch also has/had an issue where it didn't update metadata on its songs. In particular, when a song was last played and how many times it was played. It's something I like knowing for some reason. According to Google, it's the whole Ipod Touch line that has that problem. As it turns out, the trick is to create the playlists within the Ipod itself, not Itunes. All that's needed is the initial creation and putting one song in it then allowing it to sync; once that's done, then it can be populated and arranged via Itunes on a computer. When a playlist is created in Itunes and then dragged over, the files are there, and they'll play, but the metadata doesn't get updated.
-I still need to order a new screen and battery for the Touch. It is turning out to be a versatile gadget worth keeping. I'm wondering if I should have gotten a 5th-generation one though?
-Somewhat unrelated: I have been able to mostly recreate most of the most-used playlists that were on the dead Ipod. Mostly.
When Apple stuff works as a system, it works fantastically. When something newer is added to the mix for any reason, then all hell breaks loose, and Apple won't do a damn thing to help. To Apple, it's apparently the consumer's fault for not going all in and replacing an entire system with their latest and greatest. All told though, despite the bugs and glitches, and Apple's own asshattery, I'm having more luck with using Airplay than with using Bluetooth.
At some point I also mentioned that I tried using a Sonos. I have the Play:3, and the audio quality is great. For the purpose of playing audio from an Android-based device, it works just ducky. But that seems to be the limit of its usefulness. Beaming audio from a Windows computer? Nope.
-Last year I got an iHome IW2 device that can receive audio from an Airplay 1 player. That worked, for a while. Then suddenly nothing will connect to it. I got it for cheap off ebay, so that might have something to do with it. Maybe it's just getting crowded out of the wifi network? I'll have to do some experiments.
-I got a new home theater receiver some time ago, as I had been planning to, and it came with Airplay 2 capability. That seems great until there's the fact that Airplay 2 devices are not backwards compatible with Airplay 1, which means anything running my preferred version of iTunes (10.7) won't properly connect to it.
-Had I gotten a new receiver a couple years earlier, it would likely have had Airplay 1 natively and everything would have worked the way it should have.
-The workaround there was to install a bit of software that takes a computer's audio and broadcasts it via Airplay 2, which the new receiver can understand.
-The 4th generation Ipod Touch shouldn't have Airplay 2 capability but it communicates with the receiver just fine? This shouldn't work but it does. Hey, I'll take it.
-The Airport Express devices are solid; everything works with them. I have 3 of these; I'll probably get another 1 or 2 later on for more coverage. Out of the box, the optical audio didn't work very well; lots of sound dropouts. A firmware update fixed that and as a bonus, made the device compatible with both Airport protocols. These are holdovers from an earlier age when Apple products had some compatibility with 3rd-party devices. That is, these have the option of connecting to any powered speaker via headphone jack or optical audio. Now Apple is trying to push their Homepod line, which has the speaker as part of the unit, for 300 bucks, as opposed to being able to use a set of generic computer speakers for a tenth of the cost. Assholes.
-The Ipod Touch also has/had an issue where it didn't update metadata on its songs. In particular, when a song was last played and how many times it was played. It's something I like knowing for some reason. According to Google, it's the whole Ipod Touch line that has that problem. As it turns out, the trick is to create the playlists within the Ipod itself, not Itunes. All that's needed is the initial creation and putting one song in it then allowing it to sync; once that's done, then it can be populated and arranged via Itunes on a computer. When a playlist is created in Itunes and then dragged over, the files are there, and they'll play, but the metadata doesn't get updated.
-I still need to order a new screen and battery for the Touch. It is turning out to be a versatile gadget worth keeping. I'm wondering if I should have gotten a 5th-generation one though?
-Somewhat unrelated: I have been able to mostly recreate most of the most-used playlists that were on the dead Ipod. Mostly.
When Apple stuff works as a system, it works fantastically. When something newer is added to the mix for any reason, then all hell breaks loose, and Apple won't do a damn thing to help. To Apple, it's apparently the consumer's fault for not going all in and replacing an entire system with their latest and greatest. All told though, despite the bugs and glitches, and Apple's own asshattery, I'm having more luck with using Airplay than with using Bluetooth.
At some point I also mentioned that I tried using a Sonos. I have the Play:3, and the audio quality is great. For the purpose of playing audio from an Android-based device, it works just ducky. But that seems to be the limit of its usefulness. Beaming audio from a Windows computer? Nope.
