Monday, June 7, 2004
"How AirTunes Works"
Posted by James Fee in "ARTICLE" @ 06:00 PM
"Essentially, AirTunes is a method of creating remote speakers for a copy of iTunes, and sending data to those remote speakers via a wireless network. That network can be formed by connecting an AirPort Express to another AirPort Express, to an AirPort Extreme Base Station, or even to a non-apple 802.11b or 802.11g access point.
When you select an AirPort Express device in the new pop-up menu at the bottom of the iTunes 4.6 interface, that device essentially replaces your Mac's speakers as the audio-output source for whatever you do in iTunes. At that point you can do anything you'd normally do in iTunes -- play music from your Library, from someone else's library, or from your iPod; play an Internet radio stream; even play an audiobook. The sound won't come out of your Mac -- it'll come out of the speakers attached to the AirPort Express."
An interesting little article on how AirTunes works. What interested me was, "AirPort Express supports Apple's Lossless Compression technology -- and everything that your iTunes streams across the network to Airport Express is compressed using that technology". Looks like that is where AAC Lossless came into play. 8)
When you select an AirPort Express device in the new pop-up menu at the bottom of the iTunes 4.6 interface, that device essentially replaces your Mac's speakers as the audio-output source for whatever you do in iTunes. At that point you can do anything you'd normally do in iTunes -- play music from your Library, from someone else's library, or from your iPod; play an Internet radio stream; even play an audiobook. The sound won't come out of your Mac -- it'll come out of the speakers attached to the AirPort Express."
An interesting little article on how AirTunes works. What interested me was, "AirPort Express supports Apple's Lossless Compression technology -- and everything that your iTunes streams across the network to Airport Express is compressed using that technology". Looks like that is where AAC Lossless came into play. 8)
