Well, it took Rogue Amoeba more than a year to develop and after many replies of “It’ll be released when it’s released” in their now-dead forums, RA released a major upgrade to their Airfoil application today.
At the top of the “Wow” list is the app no longer requiring Airport Express units to play audio on different Macs! Instead, they use a free app called “Airfoil Speakers” that runs on any Mac you want to route sound to and shows up in Airfoil the same way an AEX would.
An opaque black box pops up on the computer(s) receiving audio with a volume slider.
This is HUGE…as it allows an exponentially-lower cost than a Creston-type home audio control system with similar media-hub style control.
Another massive leap forward is their “Perfect Synchronization” which is just that – no audio-lag that plagued previous versions of Airfoil (and Airtunes inside iTunes). Somthing so simple kicks an app like this from “99% there” to a full 100%.
The $10 upgrade fee is easily justified when considering the ability to stream to a new Mac whenever you’d like without kicking down $99 for a new AEX.
Pick it up on Rogue Amoeba’s site.
Don’t forget the Video playback in Airfoil. Also HUGE. Playing video on the main screen, and streaming the audio to all the Airport (or just other computers) around the house too. I *love* it.
the main issue is that it is not controllable by the iphone . .
what i do is use airport express and apple tv’s as airtuens zones,
all streaming music from an imac . .
the iphone can remotely control which zones are on and whats playing. you can even add internet radio to the airtunes setup by creating playlists in itunes with internet radio stations . .
motech,
I use the iPhone as my remote too… but with VNC and Airfoil. It overcomes Remote app’s biggest drawback – that it only works with iTunes. VNC + Airfoil allows Sirius etc. to be sent throughout the house in addition to my iTunes library.
The main drawback to me is that, unlike iTunes through AirTunes where I can stop the streaming to my stereo system when I want to watch TV instead, that with Airfoil I gotta go to the Mac and stop Airfoils from streaming to my AirportExpress. Not a big nuisance, but it would be nice if Airfoil was fully controllable from my iPod.
Yeah.
I just came back from a friend who showed me Rogue Amoeba. It’s quite cool. The only thing it misses is that the volume and sources should be able to be controlled from the iphone.
I see that people mentioned it before. I don’t really see why it takes so long to build this. I’d happily pay 10-15 usd for that. If you can sync audio between all these wireless devices it should certainly be able to move a few slider or change the output destination on your pc. After all, it’s just some data.
I hope Rogue Amoeba will do it. It would be a bit of a shame to have another company have to build a remote for Airfoil….
Apart from even better customers satisfaction.. there’s money to be made and you’ll all be able to do this at home as well.
Don’t need to call it airfoil for iPhones (because that would be just an excuse to drag it on). Just call it airfoil remote. Should be nothing difficult right.
Hope to hear about it soon.
Roger
Roger, I couldn’t agree more. I want to use my iphone as a remote to the airfoil software on my mac. this way, I can choose to send audio from my computer to multiple zones, make changes to the volume of each zone and, one day, hopefully have a pandora remote app so i can also control the songs, station etc. this would be the ultimate home dj tool for parties.