Airtunes, Airport express: left channel dead / noisy.

I'm using two Airport expresses in my house, to stream music. One of them has been out of use for a couple of weeks. Now, one of the channels of that device is not working when sound is streaming - no music or sound, just an "electric current" buzz.
It's the same no matter what amplifier or speaker system I use, and the other Airport express sends music through both channels on all equipment as it's supposed to. The same goes for headphones directly into the sound out line from the Airport express.
I've reset the device to factory settings several times.
Hardware malfunction I guess - or is there a way to fix this?

No real "user service" repair options on these devices. Based on your description, either the internal DAC or the analog portion of the audio jack may be faulty. To verify either, you could try using the Express' optical digital portion of the port, if you have an audio receiver that accepts this format by connecting the appropriate TOSlink cable. If the sound issues do not disappear, then the problem may be the power circuit in the unit.

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10.5.8 MBP cannot find or reliably connect to AirPort Express on channel 13

Problems with channel id 13:
============================
I believe this is another (NEW!) issue unrelated to the already described WLAN-battery-performance-drop-down. Furthermore the following may not only apply to 10.5.8 but to 10.5.7, too:
Since there are many (~20) WLAN networks in my neighborhood, I decided to switch to channel 13 (in the AirPort Utility for my Airport Express b/g) in order to minimize interference. This used to work fine.
But since 10.5.8 my intel MacBookPro 15" (Early 2006) does not find my WLAN anymore. It is not listed in the available WLAN-list. When switching Airport off on my MBP and on again, it sometimes finds my WLAN but the connection drops within a minute and I am completely disconnected - too short to get AirPort Utility to connect the Airport Express station (but it can find the Airport Express station for a second or so).
However, the iPhone3G and the ubuntu-linux still work great with the very same WLAN.
I tried another WLAN-router (d-link) and this plays well with my 10.5.8 MacBookPro.
Interestingly, when I tell the d-link WLAN to use channel 13, my Mac shows the same symptoms as with my AirPort Express b/g on channel 13.
I have not tested with which other channels this occurs.
The "hack" to restore the 10.5.7 IO80211Family.kext did not work. I reinstalled the 10.5.8 combo-update, but that does not help, either.
Note1: In Germany, WIFI channels 1 to 13 are allowed. Maybe, in the USA this is different and Apple did not tested the 10.5.8 Airport with the channels possibly not available in the states?
Note2: My MacBookPro is too old to apply the 10.5.8 Airport-slow-on-battery thingy patch, posted here in the forums.
Note3: Since 10.5.7 (or maybe a version below?) OS X (after sleeping or restarting) tells me that my preferred network has not been found. Then I disable and enable the airport and select my network once it appears. In the first place I thought this was due to the huge amount of WLANs... but now I am not sure any longer...
Perhaps others have observed a similar behavior?
Note4: I will post my specs (version of MBP and airport) later, since I am at work right now.
Note5: I will try to reset my Airport station to factory defaults and choose another channel.

Carolyn Samit wrote:
HI Samuel,
Definitely try a different channel.
Airport Troubleshooting Guide
Carolyn
Hey Carolyn thank's for your reply!
The Airport Troubleshooting Guide is great. Unfortunately did not help in my case.
(I tried a lot of other things, too. Installing the combo update 10.5.8, resetting PRAM, deleting keychain entries, removing Aiport adapter in the list of network adaptors, removing known networks and so one. Nothing did a change!)
What did help indeed was to plug in the Mac by ethernet cable and configure the Airport Express base station to a different channel. Then it works like charm (again), as you suggested, too.
I tested with another (d-link) wlan (b/g) station and confirmed my first suspicion that it has something to do with the channel and not with the base station or some configuration.
Both, channel 12 and 13 are NOT working, but all others do fine!
This is a bug (introduced in 10.5.8 or maybe 10.5.7, I am not sure?). I repeat, this is a bug and unrelated to the wifi battery issues described by others. I guess I will file a feedback report.
As a work-around, switch to another channel. I am not sure what happens to people who have channel left to "automatic" and the base station changes to 12 or 13 by itself. (Is this technically possible?) I think they will get problems. Definetely.
For completeness, my specs:
Model Name: MacBook Pro 15"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP11.0055.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.2f10
AirPort Card Information:
Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x86)
Wireless Card Locale: Worldwide
Wireless Card Firmware Version: 1.4.16.2
Current Wireless Network: Apple Airport Express
Wireless Channel: 1

Airtunes + airport express

My airport express was not working as a print server so I downloaded Bonjour which immediately fixed the problem. Now my itunes does not recognize my airport express and I cannot play music through my stereo. Any suggestions on how to re-connect my airtunes?

Has anyone heard of a workaround?

Airtunes/airport express not connecting

I'm having trouble with my new airport express. I can't seem to get it set up.
Currently, I have the old, flying saucer shaped airport extreme. I bought the airport express because i want to use airtunes. I used the set up assistant to set it up. Followed all the instructions, but when it goes finish it, it just spins and spins. It looses it. Does this have something to do with the security level I have set up with extreme?
Here is a case of me followng the instructions EXACTLY as it says to do on the product setup but it just NOT working. Ususally things do just work. Not in this case.
Help please?
Thanks.

Here is some more specific information about the problem I am having. After setting up the AirPort Express, here are the messages that pop up.
"The settings for this base station have been successfully updated. You can close this window or wait for the base station to restart."
As this message appears and the gear under it spins... (I wait as the message says to...) the green light on the Express comes on for about half of a second before it turns back to solid yellow, then to flashing yellow, then about 3 minutes later, this message comes up:
"AirPort Utility was unable to find your base station after restarting. The settings for this base station have been successfully updated, but there was a problem re-joining the wireless network or finding the base station. You may need to select your network from the AirPort menu and try again."
Though I am not totally sure what they mean by the "AirPort menu" I can seem to find my Airport Express anywhere. In fact, the only way I can get it to be discoverable again is to do a factory reset. Then my computers can see it. But if I follow the setup as I did, when all is "set up" my computers NO LONGER SEE THE AIRPORT EXPRESS. The light on Airport Express is now slowly flashing yellow. After the factory reset, it flashes yellow but when I click on the airport icon at the top, it does see the Airport Express. After I set it up, NO SEE it.
HELP please:-)
Adam

Airtunes/airport express not working with MacBook

I have a new Macbook and an older Powerbook. The Powerbook is working nicely with my airport express and airtunes. I copied all settings to the new Macbook and configured it the same way, I also did the firmware update.
ITunes found the airport express, connected and I could listen to the music.
Later during the day it didn't work anymore, although I didn't change any settings. ITunes can no longer connect to the airport express, the airport utility does find the base station, but I can no longer configure or reset it.
I started the old Powerbook again which is still working without problems
What can I do to get the Macbook working as well ?

Same issue here!! Everything working fine with OS X Tiger. As soon as I upgraded to Leopard the problems detecting the AX started. The setup I have is the following:
-Linksys wireless router
-AX connects to wireless network to play songs through iTunes and to print via USB printer.
The green light on the AX is solid which means that it is connecting to the existing wireless network just fine. The problem lies with Leopard detecting and connecting to the AX. I have tried just about everything over the last few days and nothing seems to work. Some resets and updates let my macbook detect the AX for a little while but then it starts to drop and cannot be detected anymore. Apple HAVE to do something about this. These are two apple products not communicating properly. What ever happened to the good old days of apple products being so user friendly and "plug-and-play"
Disgruntled Mac user

Airtunes, Airport Express no internet

I'm trying to just use my airport express to run Airtunes wirelessly. I'm not using it for internet but I can't seem to find a way to do this. I'm pretty sure you can do this but Airport Utility wants me to create a wireless internet connection. Can somebody give me a hand here?
Thanks

The easiest solution would be to have the AirPort Express Base Station (AX) configured to "Join a wireless network." In this case, you would have to have an existing wireless network the AX to join. If you do, I can provide step-by-step instructions on how to configure your AX for iTunes streaming.

Airtunes/Airport Express stopped suddently..

Hi!
Bought Airport Express a month ago, works great in the beginning. But since last tuesday it doesn´t work anymore. The system finds the Airportexpress station but I get no sound out of it. Any ideas what to do?

Hello HappyViking,
There could be 99 problems, I take that back there could be 100. Are you streaming music from itunes? Is the vol turned up? is the device connected the base station on and set to the correct input?
Try this plug a set of headphones into the airport ( say the ones that came with your iPod) and test. No sound?
Let's change the status light to reflect activity rather than status. You can do this by using the airport admin utility and configuring the base station. To change the light status click on base station options.
Stream music to the base station, Does it flash? Yes but no music bad audio jack. No then you are not streaming. Try to connect the airport via ethernet( and enable airtunes over ethernet) ,able to stream? Yes then it is not software related. Can you surf the net wirelessly? Yes then the base station is bad, if not then inspect your networking setting and possibly your airport card.
Good Luck,
Cowsweat

IPhone 3G S doesn't work AirTunes (Airport Express)

Hi -- I've been using the AirTunes capability with my 1st generation Airport Express in conjunction with my 1st generation iPod Touch both 2.0 software and the most recent 3.0 software update. Both software versions work great -- no problems.
I'm trying to do the same thing with my new iPhone 3G S and my wife's iPhone 3G S, but it's not working for either phone. Has anyone else experienced a problem, too?
1. My mac is on the wireless network.
2. The phone is on the wireless network
3. iTunes can see the phone
4. I entered the pairing passcode into iTunes
After I enter the passcode, spinning icon on the phone just spins and spins while my ipod touch using the 3.0 software will connect instantly.
Thanks for your help!
Evan

Have you downloaded the Remote App? Wouldn't it be better for your iPhone's battery life to just let iTunes play the music over AirTunes? I'm kind of confused as to what you're trying to do.

AirTunes / Airport Express / Windows XP not working together

Here's the issue. I have two PCs available to me; a laptop from work that is tightly locked down by our paranoid IT dept, and a family desktop that has the iTunes library within it. I purchased airport express so that I could stream to my stereo. The laptop does not have iTunes on it, the IT dept having cunningly deployed some way of blocking its install. They did not, however, block airport utility.
Both computers connect happily over wireless to Verizon FiOs and on into the wider world.
1) The laptop's airport utility will happily locate and allow configuration of the express unit.
2) The desktop unit, however, does not find the airport express at all finding no apple wireless devices. However, knowing from the laptop (and from direct to the fios router's network map utility) I can tell airport utility to "configure other" supplying the express' IP address and p/w. Then it finds it and can configure away until I hit the update button. It then can find it no longer until I configure other again.
The point is, iTunes / air Tunes, hosted on the same desktop, displays, I suspect, similar behavior. It never finds the "speakers".
I have tried switching off Norton's firewall altogether, the windows firewall altogether, going w/o any WEP or WPA without luck. Also, I have tried configuring the unit as first as a "joining an existing wireless network", and, second, as it own new wireless network again without avail.
I have spent 4 hrs with Apple support and we thought we had it licked; the speakers appeared briefly after switching to a "bridge" connection share mode. The speakers duly showed up. Letting the gentleman go off the phone in triumph, I stupidly neglected to test the connection from iTunes through to the amp and ran into the error code 15000. Trying some of the ideas in these and other forums to beat that then led me back to square one, never seeing the much anticipated speakers again.
Any ideas out there?
Thanks much!

I detected a problem with Airport+iTunes in Vista and some XP machines.
I have 3 machines: Lenovo 3000 N200 Vista, Compaq nx9010 XP and Asus EEE Top XP.
On the Compaq, APutil and iTunes perform flawlessly 100% of the time. However, on the Lenovo and the Asus, ApUtil doesn´t detect my 2 Airport Express, and iTunes will drop the connection after 30-60 minutes. Then I have to restart iTunes in order that it "sees" my Airports again.
At first, I thought it was a problem with Vista. Later, as it happened on my Asus XP, I thought it was a hardware/driver compatibility problem. Then I decided to make some experiments.......
I found that at startup, 2 processes are activated: iTuneshelper and APAgent.
I cancelled both of them. Voila ! Suddenly APUtil detects my Airports, and no more dropped connections in iTunes !!!!!
Now, it remains still unanswered to me: Why did the problem not happen on my Compaq ???

No Airtunes, Airport Express connected (green light)

Hi all,
After many an hour faffing around I finally got the AirPort Express connected to my Windows XP PC. I can edit the configuration using the Admin Utility, and the light on the AirPort Express is solid green (ohh the joy when THAT finally happened).
Alas iTunes (6.0.1.3) doesn't see the speakers. The menu option (under Preferences> Advanced) is ON, I've checked my firewall and have UDP Port 5353 open (both ways), but still nothing.
I'm not using any security on the wireless connection (no need) and I'm approaching my wits end.
I have manually configured the AirPort Express to an IP address instead of using DHCP (which pulled my internet connection) and I ONLY want to stream music, not interested in using it to access the internet.
What am I missing? I've Googled, read many posts on this forum, and THAT post by Simon that everyone links to, but to no avail. I'm SOOO close though, I know it!

Side note: I'm on a PC not a Mac (freudian slip?)
Info: I am on Telewest Broadband (UK) and my cable modem is a Scientific Atlanta Webstar 100 (it's a USB connection to the PC). My wireless connection is a D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G122 USB Adapter.
OK I'll need to pick up a cable as I don't have one.
Questions.
You said: "Then connect the cable modem to the Airport Express ethernet port. Pull power to both the modem and the Airport Express for five minutes or more."
"Pull power"? I take it you mean just leave them plugged into the power (the modem won't work without power anyway).
The reason I ask for clarification is the next line:
"Then plug the modem into power and wait a minute."
Shouldn't it already be plugged in to power, if it's not plugged in, it won't work?!
Finally:
"Your Mac should now, after reconnecting to the Airport Express wireless network, be able to access the internet."
So, is there anyway to configure the Airport Express NOT to access the internet. I'm not bothered about this at all, I just want to stream music downstairs. No internet access required (BY ME, I understand the Airport Express may want it, but does it NEED it).
Apologies for more questions, and many MANY thanks for your responses so far. Once I get this working (and I will), I'll be writing up a detailed set of instructions, screenshots, the works (I'm a technical author by trade ya see).

Airport Express, Extreme & channels

I have a Extreme and Express on the same wireless network.
I've been posting to the board issues I have with my Express dropping iTunes signal.
Recently I was advised to turn off WDS as that limits range. Now drop outs are not as frequent, but they still occur... Interestingly enough, they occur about after 1/2 hr of playing time.
I recently read that due to 2.4GHz phone signals, I should change the channel from default 11 to another. I can change on the Extreme, but not on the Express since it has been set up to join an existing network.
Q: how do I change the channel on the Express if NOT it's own network (on the Airport admin utlity)
Q: should the two devices be on the SAME channel or several apart
Thanks in advance,
Rob

If the AX is attached as a client to the AEBS (your main base station), you do not have to change the channel on the AX. The AX will auto-negotiate to whatever channel is being used by the AEBS. You need to only change the AEBS channel to see if your interference problem is cleared.

An error occurred while connecting to the AirPlay device "AirTunes AirPort Express". An unknown error occurred (-15000)

??? After upgrading to Lion.

I'm getting the same exact error trying to play music wirelessly to my AppleTV (1st gen) from my desktop. However, I'm not on Lion yet but still running 10.6.8.
AppleTV v3.0.2
Airport Extreme Base Station v7.6
iTunes 10.5.1
My firewall in mac system prefs is OFF and I still get the same error.
Help... anyone?
thanks

Disrupted Playback using AirTunes/Airport Express

I've been having intermittent trouble with playback using Airtunes. Songs will play, then cut out... the song is still progressing in iTunes, but with no sound. Sometimes it will flicker in and out. Sometimes it won't. Sometimes quitting and relaunching solves it. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it coincides with when my Time Capsule is backing up. Sometimes not. It's infuriating to try to problem solve it because it's so sporadic.
Tonight I can only get about 6 seconds of playback each time I double click on a song.
Is anyone else having these difficulties besides me and my Mom (who doesn't live here and has her own setup that's not working?)

This has been on ongoing problem.... I was hoping that iTunes 10 would have found a way to resolve this... But alas this is not the case as it is the very problem that brought me to the discussion boards today. It is infuriating as AirTunes is my only music resource at home. I have been using it for the past five years and the problem of the sound cutting out and/or sputtering is no better now than it was back in 2005 when I first started using it.
It is downright embarrassing when I have guests over and the music constantly cuts out... Makes convincing my PC fan friends why they should switch to Apple a bit more challenging.
You would think that with all the resources Apple has at their beck and call, they could make AirTunes actually function as described... But clearly this is not a priority. Sad really...
Message was edited by: 24gotham

Airtunes no longer working with AirPort Express? can anyone help?!

so i recently bought a refurbished airport express and i loved how i could stream audio over the wireless network via airtunes but the delay was a bit annoying so i took it upon myself to try and find a solution to this.
I bought a reverse audio splitter (1 female to 2 male) thinking that i could plug my speakers into the female end of the splitter, leave one of the male audio jacks plugged into the airport express, and the other male end into my computer so when i was at my desk the audio would go straight from my computer to the speakers (bypassing the airport altogether) and the delay problem with airtunes would be solved.
this worked for a little bit, but the next day when i went to play a song via airtunes it didnt work.. no error messages, just no sound.. i did some investigating and found that there was a red light coming from the audio jack on the airport express which i found out could mean that either it is in optical mode or that it is just dead..
But here's the real weird part!! so i also have the program called AirFoil to transmit audio from the internet to my speakers via the airport express, and the speakers connected to the airport can play itunes when AirFoil is connected to itunes even though the light is still red inside the airport audio jack!! weird huh?
Anyways, i just wanna know if there is anything that i can do to fix my AirTunes sound output since it seems like the audio jack on the airport express isnt totally dead??

I'm in the same boat. I can still get on the web with it, but neither airport utility or itunes can see it. disappointing to say the least.

AirPort Utility not detecting Airport Base Station nor Airport Express

Earlier today, we were listening to music on multiple speakers (computer and airtunes / airport express) as we always do. Nothing new here. Stereo speakers stopped and computer lost connection with Airport Express. Couldn't get it to reconnect. Unplugged airport express and plugged it back in - no dice. Hard restart.....AirPort Utility detected it once and I tried to reconfigure. Got an error message at the end of configuration.....
Now.....
Airport Utility doesn't even pick up the Airport Express. Not only that, it doesn't pick up the Airport base station, which we use for our internet connection (and I'm using right now). Both are old - Airport base station is the round small anthill looking one (probably about 6 or 7 years old) and airport express is about 5 years old. Never had a problem with either. Airport Utility is 5.4.2.
For now, Airport base station is working, but I don't have access to it via Airport Utility. Airport express just flashes amber......

Welcome to the discussions!
Not sure what to suggest that you may have not already tried. I would recommend that you start with the base station first to see if you can access the settings in AirPort Utility.
Have you tried connecting an ethernet cable from your computer directly to one of the LAN ports on your base station to see if that will help? Power down your base station and computer before you hook up the ethernet cable. If no luck at first, leave the ethernet cable connected as sometimes the base station will simply "appear" after a few minutes.
If still no luck after several tries, your only alternative is to hard reset the router back to factory defaults and try to reconfigure it.
Once you get the base station back, you can use the same procedure on the Express to see if you can reconfigure it.

Airtunes, Airport express: left channel dead / noisy.

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