Airport Express/Airtunes cant play music on airtunes and computer at same time?

Hmm...

Name ONE set of external speakers that allow you to play thru your laptop speakers at the same time. Why would you want your crappy laptop speakers invading on your nice set of home ones?

Apple made this point clear at the launch of the Express. You might want research products before you lay down the cash in the future.

God, I'm getting sick of people complaining because a product works as designed not as they fantasized it would.

RichP said:

Got my airport express, set it up, and have music streaming to it. However, it appears you can either select to send music to the airport OR your computer speakers. Both cant play music at the same time.

Am I missing something? this is irritating to say the least!

Click to expand...

Well mostly I thought the idea was that you would tell iTunes to play to your Living Room Stereo via the Airport Express, then leave the computer room to go to the Living Room to listen. I guess if you're looking for the effect of walking all around your house and listening to the same music wherever you go like at the mall or something then no, it's not designed to work that way, nor was it advertised that way. Or if your computer and stereo are in the same room...then why exactly would you want to do this?

Probably not a feature most people would necessarily need, but I could see being added in the future if enough feedback makes it to Apple's ears...the iTunes popup menu I guess could have checkmarks for selecting multiple output sources at once, or at least a "play through local speakers" checkbox.

I have a question about the AExp I hope someone who has set it up can answer. Can you pipe ANY selected iTunes to the AExp, or just your own locally stored Library? That is, can you select internet radio and send it to the AExp? Can you select a shared Library over iTunes sharing and send it AExp? This question is not really addressed on Apple's product page (although in one of the graphics iTunes appears to be playing a shared playlist to the "Living Room Stereo"). This is a make-or-break deal for me in terms of buying an Airport Express, so I've been waiting to hear from some people with some real hands-on experience with it.

i would guess it is only one stream from itunes at the time - either to one pair of local speakers or one remote airport express base station. that makes sense to me, at least. this is a beginning, i hope.

if apple some day implements streaming to multiple locations, it should not be airtunes+local but rather a selection of as many destinations available.

give that feedback to apple (all of us) and it may happen in itunes5 or something...

If it plays in iTunes, it can stream to an AirPort Express. The audio from Music Videos/Movie Trailers probably won't stream, because it is QuickTime, nad dosen't actully use iTunes audio output.

How it works is that is gets the audio that would normally go to your computer's speakers from iTunes, rencodes it in Apple Lossless, and streams it to the AirPort Express.

I know this is an old thread but I want to chime in to add my vote that a 'multiple location' streaming function be added. To be honest it's such a 'duh' feature that it's not at all clear why they didn't enable it from the get go. If Apple is truly trying to insinuate itself into the living room and media functions of the household this should really be a feature offered IMO. Without it, you can't come close to replacing (or setting up from scratch) a whole-house audio system...all you can do is use an AE audio output to feed your existing whole-house audio system. But what if you don't already have one?

TM