My AirPort Express's sound (AirPlay) keeps dropping out

[bollweevil]

Please help, I have the following problem:

I have an AirPort Express wifi base station, and I have my stereo plugged into it to play music via AirPlay. I think the AirPort Express is about 2 years old. It used to work great, the sound quality is excellent and it used to only lose the sound like twice a week for 5 seconds.

About 2 weeks ago, something changed. Now, it loses the sound about once per minute, for about 5 seconds. This means the speakers go silent for 5 seconds. It is incredibly jarring, it makes the AirPlay feature useless.

I had similar problems with my first AirPort Express, this is my second one. I bought this AirPort Express about 2 years ago, so I don't think Apple will fix it or replace it.

Should I suck it up and buy a third AirPort Express? Or should I buy a non-Apple product which support AirPlay? Or what?

Thank you.

 

[Primus84]

I had the same problem with mine, I had recently updated its firmware. I rolled back the firmware by 2 versions and it works fine again now.

 

[Bruno09]

Hi,

you can also try changing the wifi channel of your router and see (move 3 channels or more).

 

[bollweevil]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I just upgraded the firmware, because I had never upgraded the firmware before, and it is at least 2 years old.

Bruno09: I think you are suggesting that I change the channel on my AirPort Express. Is that a correct interpretation of what you meant by "router"? I am not using the AirPort Express as a router, I am only using it as an access point. It is plugged into a router via Ethernet, so I can't change the channel on my actual router.

 

[Bruno09]

I was thinking the AE was connected to the router via wifi.

So, if the AE is connected to the router via Ethernet, is the AE the access point your computer connects to ?

If yes, you could try changing the wifi channel of the AE, to see if the connection AE-computer is improved.

If your computer is connected to the router (not the AE) via wifi, you could try changing the wifi channel of the router.

If the computer is plugged to the router via Ethernet, there no need to change the wifi channel, of course.