G4 iMac and AirTunes

[akator]

I got tired of streaming hiccups with my Echo and Google devices. I already use a G4 iMac in my office to play music and thought maybe it could stream to the rest of the house as well.

Old AirPort Express are cheap now. Over the last few weeks I bought 5 of them off eBay for $10-$16 each including shipping. People don't want them anymore because they are G devices and can only be configured with older versions of the AirPort utility.

They still work great. The iMac handles the streaming without using even half of its resources. My current setup is the only bottleneck because the iMac connects to the network via WiFi and not Ethernet. Even over WiFi it still streams to 3 AirPorts without issues. It should handle all 5 simultaneously when I make some household and network changes over the next few months.

Anyone else enjoying multiroom music streaming with a PPC Mac?

 

[Appleuser201]

Where do you stream from? Spotify? YouTube?

 

[Slix]

AirPlay over older AirPort Expresses is truly the cheapest way to get AirPlay going in a household. I've got one older one next to my bed hooked up to my nice desk speakers, and the audio quality and streaming is great, whether it's from my current MacBook Air running iTunes, an iOS device, my Apple TV, or a older PowerPC Mac (though I haven't done that recently, since all my music is on my MacBook's iTunes).

Glad to see you've got it working! It's like magic when you get a bunch set up all working together.

 

[akator]

Where do you stream from? Spotify? YouTube?

KCRW and Dash Radio are about 25% of my listening.

The other 75% is my own music collection.

For a while I would just connect my phone via Bluetooth to the speakers in whatever room I was in. It always worked, but one day I was suddenly sick of doing it every time I changed locations in the house.

Next I tried the online voice assistants. I've found they work for music streaming roughly 90% of the time. That last 10% was stuttering, playing something other than what I asked for, or losing the internet connection. It was even more tiresome than switching Bluetooth devices when entering a room.

So far my AirTunes setup is about 97% reilable. That last 3% is usually due to RF interference outside the house. It's also gratifying to put old hardware to use.

 

[spf2]

What version of iTunes are you using that allows you to airplay to the airport express? I am interested in getting my imac g4 and ibook g4 playing to an airport express.

 

[Slix]

What version of iTunes are you using that allows you to airplay to the airport express? I am interested in getting my imac g4 and ibook g4 playing to an airport express.

iTunes 4.6 was the first iTunes that supported "AirTunes", later known as AirPlay. Any more recent iTunes has this functionality built in as well.

 

[spf2]

Thank you. I will give 4.6 a try.