Air Disk and iTunes/Air Tunes?

[Soundhound]

I'm thinking about getting the new Airport so I can put my 500 gig itunes music folder on an external disk and share it throughout the house - several powerbooks and four airport expresses driving stereos etc.

Will this work? Is there a way to keep just one powerbook as the master, for organzing the itunes folder on the external, etc

In addition, someone suggested putting the itunes library file on the external drive to keep this all running well. Any thoughts on that?

thanks.

 

[OldSkoolNJ]

Yes this can work. Here is my setup. I have a 24in iMac upstairs in the office which is where the main library of music resides. I run the Airport Extreem as the main router. Then I have an Express in the bedroom on a home theatreconnected via TosLink, an Express in the living room on a hometheatre connected via TosLink and an Express in the kitchen hooked up to a set of powered Logitech speakers. Then we have an iMac G4 in the living room, a MacBook Pro and a MacBook thats gets used through out the house. The G4 and Laptops are set to share the library with the 24in Imac so as to not use up their hard drives and keep everything orghanized one space. From any of these computers we can play music on those computers or to any of the speakers around the house. I have a new Airport Extreme coming. Once I have that I will still use the main 24in Imac to host the library but I will store the library on network storage. The older Extreme I have now has been stable and fast enough to handle the 24in streaming music to airtunes in the bedroom, while sharing the library with the g4 and the G4 sending that to airtunes in the kitchen with a minor hickup here and there because of so much transfer going on. I would imagine with the new extreme it will handle this load even better.

Kevin

 

[Soundhound]

Sounds like a good system, Kevin. A couple of questions.

1) What's TosLink?

2) This is more complicated. The trick to my setup is that the computer I use to run the setup is my powerbook, which is not always connected and available to the network. I currently have an older G4 Titanium serving up a 500 gig external drive to the airport extreme base station, and to four airport expresses around the house, which are connected to stereos. I manage the itunes music folder on the external hd wirelessly over the network from my newer Powerbook by making the folder available on the network using something called Sharepoints on the older G4 which is connected to the hd by firewire. This makes the disk available on the network and I mount it to the newer powerbook. ALl the other powerbooks that access the folder do so through the shared library.

The problem is that the libray file is huge (for an itunes library file) and every time I open iTunes on my newer powerbook, it takes several minutes to load. And dealing with the mounted hd is very slow and pokey.

I was hoping that the new AIrport and Air Disk would make this setup better. Any thoughts?

thanks

Yes this can work. Here is my setup. I have a 24in iMac upstairs in the office which is where the main library of music resides. I run the Airport Extreem as the main router. Then I have an Express in the bedroom on a home theatreconnected via TosLink, an Express in the living room on a hometheatre connected via TosLink and an Express in the kitchen hooked up to a set of powered Logitech speakers. Then we have an iMac G4 in the living room, a MacBook Pro and a MacBook thats gets used through out the house. The G4 and Laptops are set to share the library with the 24in Imac so as to not use up their hard drives and keep everything orghanized one space. From any of these computers we can play music on those computers or to any of the speakers around the house. I have a new Airport Extreme coming. Once I have that I will still use the main 24in Imac to host the library but I will store the library on network storage. The older Extreme I have now has been stable and fast enough to handle the 24in streaming music to airtunes in the bedroom, while sharing the library with the g4 and the G4 sending that to airtunes in the kitchen with a minor hickup here and there because of so much transfer going on. I would imagine with the new extreme it will handle this load even better.

Kevin

 

[OldSkoolNJ]

TosLink is a stlye of fiber optic that the Aiport Express uses. Both of my home theatres are digital and this way I have my music streaming to it digitally. (better sound) As far as how the new Airport will help, I really dont know yet. I am looking forward to trying out a few things with it. I will deff keep you up to date. I am hoping to store all that on network storage.

Kevin

 

[Soundhound]

thanks, I'd be very interested in how it works out for you. I'm thinking I might just have to get one and work with it for a bit to see if it'll do what I want.