Delay in airtunes

I recently purchased the 21.5" quad core imac and love it. Very recently, within the last month, I've started experiencing some delay when streaming audio through airtunes. It's a slight delay but enough to create an echo effect and drive me insane. The issue occurs when using both itunes and airfoil. I'm using an airport extreme for wifi and two standard airport 802.11 g's. Do I need to update to the airport N? Tried restarting airport, system, itunes and modem and the problem persists but sometimes just corrects itself. Any ideas?

You can use Videolan's VLC to delay the video stream
to compensate for the audio lag ...
Thanks iFelix.
Being a wireless neophite it seems my post was a bit premature. As I have played around a bit (and read more of the forums) I got a better feel for what AX/Airtunes is capable of.
It would be nice to be able to stream the audio and video to my home theater system. That way both the audio and video feeds would be buffered at the same rate.
Macbook 2.0 / 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.6) G4 Digital Audio 800 mhz accelerated/768 mb

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5 seconds delay with airtunes

Hi. I've just setup my airport express and it was surpricing that whenever I start playing anything iTunes "thinks" about 5 seconds before starting to play anything. It looks like iTunes is buffering or something. So is this normal or is it just me? This happends also with using airfoil. Video plays normally but audio comes five seconds behind and every movie looks like dubbed.
Thank.

Thanks for your answer. So is there any way to get video and audio in sync? I should propably ask this from airfoil forum because I can't even listen videopodcast wirelesly with iTunes, but as I started this thread I may as well ask it here...
Thank, mk

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.

Looking for a way to get built in audio to be heard out of AirTunes

Looking for a way to get built in audio to be heard out of AirTunes, not just iTunes.

thanks for the post, i downloaded that app but like i read, its really a worthless piece of junk, the 2 second delay yet alone i did not succeed to send my iChat audio to my airTunes speakers.

Airtunes 2.0 Update

With the 2.0 update - Is it possible to stream to both the apple tv and another airtunes (airport express) at the same time. In other words can you stream the same song to multiple rooms at the same time?

Just to confirm. The answer to your specific question is yes. You turn on Airtunes in the ATV's setup (then you can leave it on, it doesn't interfere with anything else) and if you send music to it from iTunes, it will play it - provided you're not actually already using it to play something else of course, in which case iTunes will warn you.
So the ATV can be an Airtunes client, but NOT a server like iTunes itself and it will play quite happily along with any other ATV or AirPort Express. However, it is likely that you will notice the relative delays between them. How bad they are and how acceptable they are is down to your network and you.

Trouble with AirTunes - conflicting channel noise?

Hi there
I have just bought an Airport Express with AirTunes. The device works great - but thus far I have only been able to successfully play music on the network it creates - I haven't been able to use WDS or get it to join a network and still stream music without there being constant pauses in playback through AirTunes. I thought this might be down to there being three WLANs in the close area which are operating on the higher end of the channel spectrum. I was able to change the channel on one of these WLANs so it now operates on channel 4, but there are two WLANs which have the same signal strength still operating on channel 11,12 or 13. The thing is when monitoring in Kismac, they seem to hop between channels quite quickly. I thought this might be because they are trying to avoid noise: but they seem to hop at the same time. When one jumps ship to channel 11 from channel 10, the other seems to.
What I'm asking is, does anyone have any experience of pauses/delays/gaps in AirTunes playback and could this be the problem?
I'm also trying to get the Express to act as a repeater, but that's another story. The problem there is that I don't have access to the settings of the main router (my neighbour kindly shares it) so I can't update firmware/change WDS options on it.
Thanks!

Don't wire your the task out on the Create Task to the input of another task.
Not sure what you mean. Those are CREATE CHANNEL functions I'm calling, and the point of them is to ADD a CHANNEL to an existing (or new) task.
I want ONE task that combines the voltage channels and the strain-gauge channels, and I READ the task to get all the channels together.
If it's not legal to add a channel to an existing task, then I should get an error, and the input TASK INPUT would be worthless.
The weird thing is, it seems to work on the real hardware (with 4 voltage + 1 strain). At least my client hasn't complained and it's an important channel.
But it looks like I can't trust the simulation.
Steve Bird
Culverson Software - Elegant software that is a pleasure to use.
Culverson.com
Blog for (mostly LabVIEW) programmers: Tips And Tricks

Front Row does not support Airtunes in Leopard

Can anyone tell me if I am just doing something wrong or if Leopard does not support airtunes in the new and improved Front Row?

I'm having the same problem, and it's a big one as one of the main uses for my Mac Mini is as a media centre controlling iTunes via the remote!
I think the root of the problem is that previously (on 10.4) Front Row launched and used iTunes in the background and so it respected whatever setting was current in iTunes.
It seems to now be using something else (maybe QuickLook) to play it - at least I haven't noticed the same delay when using Front Row when iTunes isn't launched...
This is something that needs to be rectified soon because one of the driving reasons for my upgrade was the 'new' AppleTV-like Front Row.
This upgrade has made my Airport Express useless and is tempting me to downgrade and ask for a refund - removing functionality is not a way to get new customers!

AirTunes compatibility with Front Row

In the AirPort Express FAQ, it says:
Question: Can I use other applications, like QuickTime or Windows Media Player, to send sound to AirPort Express via AirTunes?
Answer: At this time Apple only supports sending one AirTunes stream to AirPort Express via iTunes 4.6 or later.
What does this mean for Front Row? Is Front Row just a interface for iTunes and hence works with AirTunes, or not. I see in the Front Row forum people asking many questions about getting volume control with Front Row and AirTunes, so it seems like the FAQ description sounds more limited that the reality.
I am particularly interested the ability to watch a movie (that has been loaded into iTunes) using the Front Row interface and piping the sound out to AirTunes. In this case, would Front Row be using iTunes (and work with AirTunes) or would Front Row be using QuickTime (and not work with AirTunes)?
If movies in Front Row will work, will it work for all movies loaded into iTunes -- e.g. not just mov files, but also avi files supported with QuickTime plug-in to make them work in iTunes? And, if avi files loaded into iTunes would work, would it work for both movies physically stored in /iTunes/movie folder, as well as 'reference movies' stored in that folder pointing to files stored elsewhere?

Per the Wikipedia AirPort article, no video in iTunes. Apparently, there are 3rd party utilities that can pump any program sound output (Mac and Windows) to the AX, not just iTunes -- which is handy, say, if you want to play Pandora in Safari. However, even these programs say they are useless for video. Apparently, the AirTunes protocol delays playback 2 to 10 seconds for buffering. Delay in audio playback aren't a problem, but with video, the sound and picture would be out of synch.

Experiencing lags when using AirTunes

Hey all
I have a Lenovo Notebook and a Fujtsu computer, both running with Windows XP. I am running a WiFi-network with a TP-Link Router connected to a Motorola Modem (some crap my ISP gave me). There is an AirPort Express connected to this WiFi in my living room (approx. 12meters away from my router), to which my TV is plugged with an audio cable.
So, with this installation I am streaming music from my notebook (connected via WiFi) to the AirPort with iTunes (AirTunes). From time to time, I am experiencing lags or delays: for 1 or 2 minutes, the music interrupts every 5 or 10 seconds and stops for a couple of seconds. This is extremely annoying.
I have found an archived topic (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9587938) in which it was told that it's an issue appearing only since iTunes 8 and that a future update might help. Well, today theres iTunes 9 running on my PCs and the problem seems to exist, still.
Does anybody have a solution for that or is it still caused by the software?
I have been thinking of monitoring the network usage - maybe there is some sort of peak or overload during the lags.
And yes, as soon as I have finished my studies I will get me an Apple computer and an AirPort extreme. But I need to have a salary for that
best regards from Switzerland
Ivo

I was just listening to music with my airtunes speaker and after approx 15 minutes it started to have those interruptions again. So I decided to look for a monitoring solution (after a tool offered by microsoft didn't satisfy my needs). I now found Network Activity Diagram - which is great. I can now monitor the traffic to the AirPort graphically. I will do that the next time I'll be listening to music and tell you about my observations.

ITunes 9, Apple TV, and AirTunes issues

It seems that iTunes 9 on my iMac has two issues, possibly related, both of which are very irksome. Both issues appear after the computer wakes from sleep, leading me to think they are symptoms of the same problem.
Issue #1 is that the AppleTV keeps vanishing from the list of devices. iTunes knows about the AppleTV, the AppleTV is on the network and can stream from iTunes, but the device is missing and hence sync won't work. I've checked the firewall log and the AppleTV is being accepted for incoming connections, so it's not a firewall issue. I've reset the AppleTV, reset the connection between iTunes and the AppleTV, resynced all my content and the problem persists.
I've found two ways to fix this issue: restart iTunes, or go to Preferences : Apple TV, uncheck "Look for Apple TV", close Preferences, open Preferences and recheck the same selection. After a 2-3 second delay, the AppleTV appears in iTunes.
Issue #2 is that the remote speakers connected via an Airport Express disappear. This seems to happen at the same time as the AppleTV disappearing, as the drop-down box for selecting the remote speakers vanishes. Normally it lists the computer, the Apple TV, and the stereo but then the box goes away.
Similarly for issue #1, I can get the drop-down back by going to Preferences : Devices and unselect "look for remote speakers", close and reopen Preferences and reselect the same checkbox. Interestingly, doing this does NOT bring the AppleTV back as a device, but the Apple TV is listed along with the remote speakers.
I think the two issues are related, as they both involve the network. My computer is linked via Ethernet to the DSL router with 802.11 then going to the two devices. It seems to me that iTunes is not reestablishing the connection after waking from sleep. But it's not consistent; I can put the computer to sleep and wake it up, and the connection is there. Other times the connection is gone.
The only thing I can't rule out is a problem wirelessly connecting to the devices, but the AppleTV has always reported 5 bars of signal, and the fact that it still streams from iTunes, yet iTunes doesn't see it, makes me think the problem is in iTunes.
Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else with these problems.

After suffering with the Apple TV for four months, and scouring the internet for fixes, tricks, and workarounds before posting, I have to wonder how many thousands of people there are silently slamming their heads on the sofa while they wait for apple TV to unfreeze, catch up to their attempted remote prompts, or simply just restart as if ATV even gave up on itself. (issues are in Bold)
I have to opt with the streaming feature to bring my movies, music, and photo's to a big screen and home theater sound system due to a 2TB (mostly full) Western digital external HD plugged into the 802.11n airport extreme.
A possible reason for *the 2 second stoppages in play of movies and music are that the airport has to link the music/movies to my computer(itunes), which must travel back to the airport to go to the apple TV.*
I'm also using the iphone for remote use, being that the infamous IR issues with the standard remote are so notorious, I wouldn't be surprised if Best Buy started selling the ATV with white paper already taped to the sensor.
*While using the main menu, 1 out of 4 times in a five minute period of navigating the ATV, the product is unresponsive to commands from either type of remote, and I am left to:*
*1. wait until it unfreezes after about 4 min (60% of the time) when all prompts are suddenly recognized by ATV, all at the same time, to which often it goes back into another multi minute freeze before use is temporarily made available again.*
*2. hold the menu button down on the IR remote so ATV restarts after i've waited over 5 min to see if the freeze will work itself out(15% of the time) or*
*3. try to wait out the issue until the ATV restarts itself with no prompted action (10% of the time) to which I am asked to pick a language again and given the option to restart, run diagnostics or restore factory settings.*
*---The last 15% of the time ATV stays frozen and unresponsive to any remote for, in my estimation ever (I literally waited almost two months, pressing buttons many times a day to try an wake the ATV got nothing but a screensaver before i gave in), until you're forced to pull the plug because the holding-menu-button restart option isn't even working **
I've tried restoring factory settings, changing IR remote batteries, unpairing and repairing, unsyncing and resyncing both itunes libraries, remotes and airport extreme connections, jogging the itunes preferences, putting paper in front of the IR sensor, restarting both itunes and unplugging the ATV, and I even went back to exchange the apple tv for another apple tv to see if it was just an issue with the hardware...nothing has eased these ailments.
The airport and all wireless devices in-play are no further than 15 feet from each other, including the airport, which is just on the other side of a very thin wall w/i 10 feet of the ATV.
*If, in the menu freeze, (which, again happens about 25% of the time i attempt to navigate the ATV menu) you give up on the iphone remote, u see the ATV is receiving the signals from the IR remote, but nothing moves most of the time (mentioned above) and the best you might get after waiting and trouble shooting long enough is the screensaver stopping for a split second, when u press a button on the IR remote, before continuing to ken burns until you want to use the ATV to play frisbee with interstate 20 traffic.*
I'm not sure if Apple over-engineered this device to the point where it's tripping over itself to perform the most basic functions, but I bought this device so I could watch my movies and listen to my music wirelessly, and at this point, the DVI wire and headphone jack splitter are a much more reliable (yet burdensome) option than the ATV.
If I had to guess, it seems most problems stem from users who stream from an external hard drive, whether it be plugged into the host computer, or broadcast wirelessly (this is not taking into consideration the IR remote issue). This might be an unpopular suggestion to Apple, and i'm sure you have some reasoning for not making this an option, either for monetary or twisted legal obligations but the internet complaint factory might be a little less whiny if you just simply make an option to have the ATV be a screen emulator, with AirTunes, and cut all the other youtube, direct internet to ATV garbage that 65% of the people using this product didn't buy it for.
I have been nothing but awestricken with Apple products since I was a child, and thought there were no ends to the company's ability to make products that work with each other easily, seamlessly, and without the need of a computer engineer to set it up for you. Unfortunately though, it seems, for the time being, we might have met the limits.

Can I Send Music to Two Airtunes at the same time?

I read somewhere there was some software or other fix that would allow me to send my iTunes music to two separate Airport Express Airtunes (to different stereo systems in different rooms, of course) at the same time.
Is this true? If yes, how/where do I get the fix?

And there would be no easy way to synchronize the
sounds coming out of two Airport Expresses controlled
by two different users.
I'm not denying that. My point is that synchronizing multiple AirTunes streams is far from trivial due to the prebuffering delay and the fact that TCP is being used as a transport. The TCP transport is the most complicating factor because of the automatic retries when packets are dropped, which introduces latency (delays).
There's one other difficulty with TCP: The communication is point-to-point. This means that each Express must have its own stream. With each stream taking approximately 700 kbps of bandwidth, two Expresses would chew up 1.4 Mbps of bandwidth, three would use 2.1 Mbps, etc. If you have a less-than-ideal wireless connection, dropouts become much more likely with each added Express.
There's actually a convoluted approach I figured out over a year ago involving n + 1 users, each running an instance of iTunes, where n is the number of Expresses being streamed to. Nicecast was used to create an MP3 stream from one iTunes instance and then the other iTunes instances would pick up the stream and play it through the Expresses. It, too, suffered from the bandwidth escalation I described above.

AirTunes is NOT working!

I've got the speaker connected to the airport express
and also the speaker's power is on
I have ticked the options both in Airport settings and iTunes setting
what's going on?

I've had similar problems since upgrading to 8.1. I have a MBP and have my library split between my internal hard drive and a network drive. With the previous version of iTunes I had problems with iTunes not responding while it was determining gapless playback but the situation would resolve itself within a couple of minutes and seemed to be much worse when importing large files or a large number of files. Despite these issues, I had no real problems with airtunes or with dropouts until I upgraded this week. Now, iTunes stops responding whenever I switch between speakers or try to listen to any of the files that are stored on my network drive. It literally takes 3 minutes from the time I hit play until I actually hear something (if I hear anything at all). Last night simply hitting pause and trying to hit play again caused iTunes to stop responding, and the program is now incapable of playing the next track on the playlist if the files are on my network drive. I've checked on system resources (which are fine), and have closed down everything else to no avail. The situation on the previous iTunes, with the lag and delay created by having my library on a network drive, were pretty bad but tolerable because everything still worked more or less. Despite the fact that this newer version of iTunes was supposed to make the program much faster, it's become slower and much less stable when connecting with the external drive. Has anyone else here experienced similar problems while working with an external or network drive?

Using Multiple Speakers AppleTV has slight lag or delay to audio

Hello all!
I recently purchased an Apple TV and have updated it to the latest versions as is all my software on my mac. For the last year I have used AirPort Express for streaming to my receiver across the room using a standard 1/8" to RCA stereo connection. When played on my computer at the same time it creates a nice room filling sound.
However, I tried using the Apple TV as the remote speaker instead of the AirPort Express since I have it hooked up with the optical cable instead for movies and what not obviously. However, there is a very slight delay when using the AppleTV as a remote speaker giving a slight reverb effect to the music playback.
I am going to test a regular analog audio out from the AppleTV later tonight in case it my be a signal processing issue with my receiver (Yamaha HTR-5500). However if anyone has any ideas in the interim, they would be appreciated. Thank you so much in advance!

Thanks for the quick reply.
Both the Airport Express and the AppleTV go to the same receiver and therefore go to the same 5.1 speaker set up. It is either the Computer & AirPort Express or Computer & AppleTV going at the same time. I don't use all 3 out at the same time since that would be pointless.
Here is the basic hardware/network setup:
- Ethernet connection from wall goes into AirPort Express for network dedicated for my upstairs man cave
- Wireless connection feeds my iMac which in turn feeds the audio signal for AirTunes back to the AirPort Express
- The Audio from the AirPort express goes directly into my receiver.
- The AppleTV is wirelessly connected to the network as well.
I am aware of the mini-tos link on the AirPort Express but the way I have it set up it is also is the wireless router for my office and therefore is plugged directly into to the wall and the extra adapter is just a bit too much weight on it so i stuck with the basic stereo out since I only use it for music and anything in ProLogic cam be through a regular stereo signal if need be.
But yeah, I am going to try the analog out on the AppleTV tonight and whatever my results are I will post them here. Thanks so much!
Message was edited by: J.C. Richardson

Turn off the audio delay?

My question is pretty straightforward and simple.
Is there any way that I can turn off the ~2 seconds audio delay from the AirPort Express audio output?
Thanks!

Not really.
iTunes uses a QuickTime CODEC to convert audio files to Apple Lossless, and then, uses AirTunes to send them to the AX. In turn, the AX uses built-in software that converts the Apple Lossless to an Encoded Digital Audio format. From there, digital audio is sent to a optical transceiver to convert the electrical signal to an optical one before sending it to the innermost part of the audio port. For analog, the AX has a built-in DAC to convert the Encoded Digital Audio to Analog which is sent to the same audio port.
One operational glitch is the fact that, as the AX doesn't have a local clock circuit, when the incoming data is interrupted, as it is when you change songs in iTunes, there is no longer a digital output to feed the DAC, which loses lock as a result. This is typically "heard" as the delay you are experiencing.

AirTunes to Apple TV is slightly out of sync with other AirTunes devices

I've noticed that AirTunes playback through Apple TV is slightly out of sync with the audio output from my Macbook and the AirTunes via my two Airport Express Base Stations. The audio from Apple TV is about a second delayed, causing a mismatch between AirTunes playback on the TV and my Macbook and other AirTunes devices. Thus, my Macbook and AEBSs are in harmony, but Apple TV's AirTunes is about a half-a-beat delayed.
Has anyone else noticed this problem or know of a way to remedy it?

This is quite intriguing. I would expect that an amplifier would be able to decode the digital signal with no noticeable delay, otherwise DVDs etc would play with audio out of sync when using the digital output of the player. In fact, rather the opposite is true with new larger screens where it is the video that's slow and the audio needs to be delayed.
So this would point to the Apple TV's digital output being delayed vs. it's analogue output and I'm not too sure I understand why. It receives digital information over the network and then takes longer converting that to SPDIF (its digital output format) than it does converting it to analogue. Odd.
Perhaps an expert can advise us on this.
This would however explain why the Airport Express can exhibit the same problem and why some people don't experience any delay - they are probably using the analogue output of their Apple device.
What we need in iTunes when selecting devices to play from is an additional control for each with a +- setting that can adjust the delay of each output device so they can all be brought in sync. Since the delay appears to remain consistent that ought to solve the problem for everyone once and for all.
I'll try some tests of my own and see if my problem is indeed this digital delay.

Delay in airtunes

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