Airfoil speakers

I wasn't clear what this meant at first, i.e. until I ran the app. It came free with Airfoil, and is effectively a digital equivalent of an Airport Express! I was running WKSU to the stereo via iTunes, and could now effectively add the iMac 5:1 system as a destination :) There was a bit of echo but not too bad.. this is a fantastic product, my only complaint being that its a bit too geeky for most people to get their heads round from a spec/manual point of view, though simple in actual practice.

Now I have dual band networks!

The Airport Extreme (Gigabit) arrived by a huge DHL lorry around kl.12.. of course I had to go at it like a bull in a china shop, and an hour or so later I have both networks sitting on top of the PC and Airport Express in proxysta (bridge) mode working towards the iMac. I have also installed Rogue Amoeba on both machines (it lets you know when the speakers/stereo is in use)

Oh yes.. the E61 has been set up on the AE 24 network as default, as have the n770 and n800. All work ok, which is what I hoped for.

Haven't tried the E61 downstairs yet, but I expect it will be even better now that its seperated b/g out.

Airport Express in proxysta mode

Came across this mode in a Macworld review by Dan Drakes. I set up my AE by adding a tick in the allow ethernet clients box, and after that I have had no trouble manually accessing the configuration. Also the E61 still works ;)

Yesterday I had all sorts of trouble accessing the config, though I discovered a surefire way this morning by plugging the beast out/in and rescanning for devices until it appeared, then I could 'get in' to it..

So I have Airtunes working from iTunes to my stereo...

Found it!

At last, I discovered why Squeezebox was not making that final inch in the connection processs - I had changed the firewall settings to be 'essential only' :(

So, now I can start living again...

Latest on Squeezebox

At first I thought all was solved.. I updated Tiger to the 5th April nightly 7.0.1 and blow me it updated the firmware to 88 and took off :)

So I quickly posted the good news for others, and went to Leopard, updated but quickly got screwed up again with fw being downgraded to 86!

To cut a very long story short, I have ended up with preventing fw update automatically, its 88 again now, and Squeezenetwork works ok on Leopard but Squeezecenter doesn't make the final inch of being recognized by the web interface...

Am currently running the latest XP version 7.0.1, and that too works OK. So I have a couple of choices.

Big question is what is the difference between my TC setup and the other guy's who has 10.5.2 working with a single TC.

In a day or so, I'll have a couple more Apple devices so that I can set up both a 2.4 Ghz and pure 5 Ghz network, plus an Airport Express link to the stereo - so called Airtunes! :)

Still no fw 88 for Squeezebox

I have been going back and forth each day between Leopard and Tiger partitions on iMac to check out whether or not the firmware, which is supposed to have resolved the Time Capsule Squeezebox problem. fw 88 has been released or not.. today's version 7.1 would not start the server after installation so I had to dl today's v 7.0.1.. that worked OK, but it was still the old fw 86 :(

A few tired days..

I wasted a whole day recently on the Squeezebox issue, trying to get both the Time Capsule and Linksys routers working together. I managed to get them both working but I couldn't get Squeezebox to communicate fully. Later I did manage to get it working on the XP system when both were connected by ethernet cable to the Capsule. Likewise on the iMac when running it on Tiger.

According to the bugzilla firmware 88 should have resolved this, but its 2 days from that statement and still no update to 88 happening/available.

However, as I have learnt in my long faultfinding career, you only learn by solving problems. When things work smoothly your brain is not taxed, so no memory is formed.