Apple wireless device streams tunes to stereo — and more

July 22, 2004

By CRAYTON HARRISON / The Dallas Morning News

Apple Computer Inc.'s AirPort Express is supposed to move music back to its rightful place – the entertainment center.

Apple Apple’s new AirPort Express.

The paperweight-size device can do other things, too – it's a base station for a wireless computer network, allowing a user to connect multiple computers to one another, the Internet and a printer.

But the biggest problem AirPort Express tries to solve is one that more and more music lovers encounter as they stuff their collections onto computer hard drives.

A bumper crop of products has popped up in the last year to allow consumers to stream music from their computers to their stereos. AirPort Express, which began shipping last week, is designed to do the same thing the Apple way – with simplicity, ease of use and style.

To a large degree, the Express lives up to Apple's reputation. It's a small, smooth, square device with rounded edges, a standard wall plug and three ports – one for Ethernet, one for a USB printer connector and one for audio.

The audio port is the most difficult part of the equation. It's an analog and optical digital mini-jack, which is great in that you can use it with several types of audio components. But it might require an extra trip to the store to set up.

For digital sound, you'll need a stereo with an optical digital audio input port – shaped like a small rectangle – and a Toslink-to-mini digital fiber optic cable. For analog, Apple suggests a cable with a mini-stereo jack on one end, splitting into the traditional red-and-white RCA jacks on the other.

The Express worked swimmingly when I tried it in its most simple capacity. I plugged it into the wall and connected it to my stereo, then wirelessly connected my Mac to the Express through Apple's AirPort software.

Then I opened up Apple's iTunes music software, clicked a button at the bottom of the screen to instruct the computer to play music through the Express and hit Play. Music blared from my stereo.

The process worked just as well on a computer running Windows 2000. Through iTunes, I could control the music playing on my stereo, selecting playlists and shuffling songs just as I would to play music through my computer speakers.

I ran into a problem when I tried to connect the Express to the wireless base station I already have at home. Using Apple's AirPort Express software utility, I followed the instructions, telling the computer that I wanted the Express to be part of an existing wireless network and that I wanted the Express to extend the range of the network. Easy enough.

When I had everything connected and played music in iTunes, my stereo began blaring once again. But only intermittently. Long pauses interrupted the song.

The AirPort Express software warned that connecting the device to an existing network could reduce the performance of both base stations. And my older base station was very close to the Express, which could have caused radio interference.

I visited Apple's discussion forums to see if other users had this problem, and a few did. But the product is so new that no consensus has been reached on how to fix it.

These new-product kinks normally get worked out fairly quickly, and I suspect my experience with the Express will be no different.