Product Name: Airfoil Company: Rogue Amoeba URL: http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/ Price: $25 for a single use license, $46 Family pack System Requirements: OS 10.4.0 to 10.5.2, Intel, PPC (Windows, Linux also available). Level: Beginner Version reviewed: 3.1.3 Rating: 5 out of 5 Apples

For years I've dreamt of having an audio system that would transmit music all throughout my living space. The options I've seen have been far too pricey, and my attempts to homebrew something have been unwieldy and stopgap. Airfoil and its companion Airfoil Speakers provide a cheap solution that lets me easily stream music to every room of my house. In its simplest form, Airfoil is installed on one computer which transmits audio to one or multiple Airport Express or Apple TV units on your home network, each of which is connected to powered speakers or a home stereo system. Alternatively, the machine running Airfoil can transmit audio to other Macs or PCs on your network as well, once they are running Airfoil Speakers, a small application also included with Airfoil. I don't have an Airport Express or an Apple TV, so I can't speak to Airfoil's performance in those regards. Setup is simple. The installer puts Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers on your hard disk. Once Airfoil is installed, you just need to launch it and type in your code and a window will appear showing a list of devices that you can broadcast to. In my case, I needed to first install Airfoil on my other machines and run Airfoil Speakers before the machines would show up as receivers on my main machine. At this point, you're ready to broadcast. You just need to play some audio on the main machine, for example a song or stream in iTunes. Make sure iTunes is selected as the audio source in Airfoil and click on the speaker icon next to the receiving device you want to broadcast to. After a slight delay, your music streams through the other machines. There's a two-second delay for the audio to reach the other sources, but evidently this is unavoidable due to the hardware on the Airport Express. In addition to iTunes, you can transmit any other application on the Mac such as Rhapsody or RadioSHARK. Airfoil also includes a video player that will play Quicktime movies and handle the two-second sync problem. There is also preliminary DVD player support, but it is largely experimental at this point. This would let you, say, watch a movie and broadcast the audio elsewhere in the home so you didn't miss any of the story if you're needed elsewhere. Rogue Amoeba has a try-before-you-buy policy, so you can download the fully functional software that injects static after 10 minutes. It's a great way to give the software a test drive and see if it meets your need. Strengths: Airfoil is quite inexpensive when you look at the competition. Sonos, the big dog of wireless home music networks, retails for about $1000 for a remote and two zones. Just onto the scene is Logitech's purchase of Squeezebox technology, which is more affordable at about $550 for a similar setup. This will still set you back a pretty penny. Both systems would need additional hardware while Airfoil just needs another Airport Express or more Macs. User group folks are not always cutting edge and tend to collect older hardware, so you'll be happy to know I have Airfoil running smoothly on a 400 MHz G3 Lombard. Airfoil is also scriptable. Using a sample script from Rogue Amoeba's site, I was able to set up a script that, when triggered, wakes up my other Macs, loads a random song in iTunes, plays the song, and transmits to the other Macs. Another script turns it all off. Finally, the simple interface is quite easy to use. "It just works". Weaknesses: The system controls are software-based, so to transmit music you need your computer on and running Airfoil. Other expensive solutions have remotes for easy music accessibility, where with Airfoil you'd just need to use your Mac's remote (if it has one). Also, the Airfoil doesn't transmit video. This doesn't really bother me, but it would be incredibly slick to be watching a video in the living room while doing chores, move into the bedroom and continue watching the movie without any interruption. Finally, there is some optional "Extras" software, Instant Hijack and Soundflower, that allow you to extend Airfoil's functionality. These are Application Enhancers which by their nature can work strangely with system software in some cases. One of these was crashing my machine and I had to reinstall Airfoil. Rogue Amoeba is great if you have any problems, as I had to contact them during my testing and they replied almost immediately. Summary: Airfoil is an incredible piece of software that lets you easily stream audio throughout your home network. If you've got other Macs or an Airport Express at home and want to listen to the same audio in different rooms, this is the software for you.

Reviewer: Dave Comeau Dave is probably best known in the MLMUG world for being the son of Moe, noted curmudgeon and angryman-at-large. Dave has been a Mac user since 1989 when Dad won an SE to replace the family's fleet of Commodore 64's. Dave lives in South Philadelphia, and works as a Product Specialist at MEI. He enjoys home automation, stereoscopic video creation, and playing with his iPhone.

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© 2008 by Dave Comeau & MLMUG
Posted 05/19/08
Updated 06/06/08