Jason Fox

Streaming audio with Apple’s Airport express is seamless and simple.  You plug in the Airport Express into the wall, plug in the audio cables (NOT INCLUDED) to your stereo and off you go.  However, if you want to watch movies on your computer and enjoy the same wireless audio you get with iTunes, things get a bit more complicated.

First off, Apple’s Airtunes protocol apparently has a built in 2-ish second delay before it starts playing the audio you’ve summoned up.  That’s not a problem if you’re listening to music, but, if your audio is paired with some video the result is unsycnhronized viewing.  More importantly, though, is the fact that iTunes only let’s you stream music to the Airport Express.  What about that pirated copy of Paranormal Activity you just downloaded from bit torrent?  Fear not, there is a solution.

First you need to get a nice little app called Airfoil.  Airfoil allows you to stream ANY audio from any application to your Airport Express.  Wow, perfect!  Well, hold on a second, let’s return to that little issue with Apple’s Airtunes protocol before you plop down your $25 for a license (you were going to BUY a license, weren’t you?).

The problem again is that any audio you play over the air with your Airport Express will be delayed about 2 seconds.  This means that your audio will lag behind your video.  Booooo… Ok, so, let’s just delay the video a bit so that the audio has time to catch up!  Simple solution, right?  Yes and no.

Desynchronization of audio and video will work in video players like VLC.  VLC makes desynchronization of audio and vidoe really, really simple.  In fact, you can change the sychronization settings on the fly by pressing the “f” and “g” keys.  I found a post that explains it all.  (Note that his instructions are for an older version of VLC.  However, the instructions are the same except that in the new one you select the “All” radio button in the bottom left hand corner of the preferences pane instead of the “Advanced” checkbox to access VLC’s full array of settings.  Also I found -2100 to be a better delay for me.)

Unfortunately there is no solution that I know of for synchronizing internet video like Hulu.com with the delayed audio of the Airport Express.  That’s a bit of a let down as Hulu.com is really the only way I watch “television” these days (It’s not exactly television if I watch it on my computer, now is it? I’m really “watching computer”.  Oh what will we do when the mediums we’re used to are no more?  How will we know what to call things anymore? Will a newspaper still be called a newspaper if we read it on Apple tablet or will it be a newstablet?)  If anyone knows of a solution please let me know.

In conclusion, a combination of Apple’s Airport Express, Airfoil and VLC allow you to cut the cords and enjoy audio on your stereo wirelessly, however, it’s not without faults and frustrations and some big exceptions (read: no Hulu.com). Oh, I should mention that Airfoil does ship with its own video player that handles the audio desyncrhonization for you.  I however was unable to get it to play several of my videos.