can the airport express do this?

[steve knight]

my wife wants to pump itunes output to her stereo. right now we use a standard wireless router but both our macs are using Ethernet.
can I plus the express into the stereo and connect to it wirelessly without it being plugged into the cable modem or connected to the wireless router?
how do you control the sound if it comes out the speakers on the computer or stereo. she is blind and it needs to be easy to use but also I don't want voiceover being pumped through the stereo.

 

[rgarjr]

Since you have a non apple router I don't know how easy it will be to add the AE into your setup.

Yeah you can have the AE connected wireless to your network and plug your 3.5mm to RCA audio cable to your stereo.

You can use an Iphone or Ipod Touch using Remote App to control your Itunes playback. You need to have a computer running Itunes to be able to do the AirTunes.

I like to listen to Internet streaming radio stations on mine and works out nice.

 

[steve knight]

If I don't connect it to the router will it just connect to her computer wirelessly?
I also wonder if other aps besides itunes will they be able to access it? I need to keep this cheap right now. I have to buy a airport card for her g4 as is. I would not mind having an airport extreme but the budget does not stretch that far. but if I can get this to work I can dump sirus radio.

 

[quasinormal]

I am fairly sure it won't be a problem. I tried an Express that wasn't connected to internet the other day and it worked. This was just after hard resetting the Express so it was in its default state.

You'll need Airfoil to send non itunes audio to the Express.

 

[bohbot16]

The Airport Express should connect to your non-Apple router wirelessly just fine. The Apple specific feature that you will lose is the ability to have the Airport Express extend the range of your network. It will connect to your network as if it is another computer.

Once it is connected to your network, iTunes will be able to send audio to it directly. You will need to turn on the option "Look for remote speakers connected with AirTunes" in the Devices section of iTunes preferences.

After discovering the Airport Express, iTunes will have a pulldown menu available that will let you choose to send the iTunes audio out of the computer speakers, the Airport Express, or both. This pulldown is in the lower right corner of the iTunes interface and is the last graphical element in the interface.

Once you have this set up, only the audio from iTunes will be sent to the Airport Express. All other audio from the computer will be sent through the computer's speakers. The purpose of the additional AirFoil software is to send audio from other programs or possibly every sound from the computer to the Airport Express.

Once the audio is streaming you can control which track is playing from within iTunes and adjust the volume at the stereo.

Hope that helps.

 

[spacepower7]

The Apple specific feature that you will lose is the ability to have the Airport Express extend the range of your network. It will connect to your network as if it is another computer.

Well this is what Apple claims, but it is pretty easy to setup to have the Airport Express extend the range of a non-Apple router. I had the first Airport Express extend the range of a BuffaloTech router and it worked flawlessly for over 3 years. Search macrumors and google it.

 

[Buzzwriter]

What about playing DVDs through the express-to-speaker wireless link?

We've enjoyed using our Express link for iTunes, but my wife recently started a new business that provides all its training on DVDs.

Is there any way for us to play those DVDs through the speakers using the same Express-to-speaker wireless connection?

 

[AppleNewton]

To the original poster;

What you would want to do is plug in the AirPort Express, then plug your stereo into your express.
On your mac open AirPort Utility (Spotlight AirPort Utility)

It should show the Express there go ahead and set that up, it will take you through a step by step process.
Name Your Express, create a password for it, select you want to Connect To An Existing Wireless Network.
Select your current Network (with whatever wifi router you are using)

it will restart the express

now open itunes after its done refreshing, make sure the stereo is on.
in the lower right corner of itunes it will show a list of outputs.

Now if you just want the music volume to be controlled by the Stereo, click on just the stereo output in the lower right of itunes and adjust the volume in itunes to a desired level and then the stereo can control its output volume.

We've enjoyed using our Express link for iTunes, but my wife recently started a new business that provides all its training on DVDs.

Is there any way for us to play those DVDs through the speakers using the same Express-to-speaker wireless connection?

at this time no. not through dvd player atleast or itunes...itunes movies no since i dont think there is a separate audio track tosend the files out.

 

[theotherguy]

We've enjoyed using our Express link for iTunes, but my wife recently started a new business that provides all its training on DVDs.

Is there any way for us to play those DVDs through the speakers using the same Express-to-speaker wireless connection?

not that I know of. I tried using airfoil but the sound was always about 1-2 seconds off from the video. I remember looking through the threads about 2 years ago and the answer was no, so unless something has changed since then...

 

[bohbot16]

not that I know of. I tried using airfoil but the sound was always about 1-2 seconds off from the video. I remember looking through the threads about 2 years ago and the answer was no, so unless something has changed since then...

AirFoil now has a video player that keeps the audio in sync with the video. I don't think it works with DVDs, but I know it works with video files from HandBrake.