Apple AirPort Express with Air Tunes M9470LL/A [OLD VERSION]
by Apple Computer
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Apple AirPort Express with Air Tunes M9470LL/A [OLD VERSION]
Customer Review: Incredible piece of technology
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone who gives the AirPort Express less than a 5-star review either doesn't know how to use it or they're just plain nuts. I have a Mac desktop computer and USB printer in my upstairs bedroom and a G4 Powerbook. I use two AirPort Express units...one in my bedroom, which I plug my DSL line and USB printer into. And one in my downstairs family room. I can roam all over my 1700 sq. ft. house with my Powerbook, surfing the net flawlessly. I can even surf the net from my backyard deck or my front porch. The range is phenomenal. And I can print to my printer from anywhere. The coolest thing about the AirPort, though, is the Air Tunes feature. Each AirPort Express unit has a jack to plug in a set of powered speakers. I have a set of JBL speakers w/ a subwoofer in my downstairs family room, and can now play all the songs loaded on my upstairs desktop over the speakers in my family room...wirelessly. The sound is awesome, and the signal never cuts out. I also have to say that the AirPort unit itself is aesthetically way cool. It's not much bigger than a deck of cards. And plugs into any outlet. I've grown to love the constant glow of that little green dot on my AirPort units. It's like they're a part of my family now. I've used other wireless routers in the past. The AirPort is by far the best I've ever used. And it's so portable. One suggestion...if you have a bigger house, consider buying two of these. Yeah, it's a bit more of an investment...but your wireless range will be extended and you'll have more places to beam your tunes to. I haven't tried hooking the AirPort up to my main stereo system...but I'm sure that would work as flawlessly as the powered JBL speaker system does. Apple really hit a home run with AirPort Express. It's an incredible product that does exactly what it says it will. Highly recommended. UPDATE (12/10/06): I wanted to mention two developments in my AirPort Express world. One, I've since bought a third AirPort express and have hooked it up to my main stereo system. It works like a charm! I can now play my whole iTunes library on either my computer speakers in the bedroom, the JBL speakers in my family room, or through my large stereo system in the living room...or any combination of the three...or all three simultaneously. How totally cool to have a house full of music playing no matter where I go. Also, I recently got a new Windows laptop computer from work. And lo and behold, the Dell Windows laptop connected to my AirPort wireless network flawlessly. So now I have a Mac desktop computer, my Mac PowerBook laptop, and my Dell Windows laptop all hooked up to the Net wirelessy. All thanks to AirPort Express. And I can print to my Epson printer wirelessly from any of the computers. Ignore the negative reviews of this product. Those people are either crazy or don't know how to hook-up or work this device. Take it from a three AirPort Express household: This product is among the best Apple has ever come up with!!Customer Review: Mixed Network ... No Problems
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this primarily to use in client mode as a means to stream music from my Office Laptop running iTunes to the various stereo locations around my house. So from that standpoint it works great, and I give it a 5 star rating. I have not yet had the opportunity to use it in the other wireless modes, or the USB print sharing, so I cannot comment.
I run all Windows PC's (XP and Vista) on a mixed and very busy network(wired and wireless). I use a "third" party (D-Link) wireless G access point and a separate D-Link wired router. When plugged directly into my DHCP enabled router for the initial set-up, the Airport Express was immediately recognized and assigned an IP address. The subsequent set-up procedure to join the wireless network and then some other simple naming and security modifications were very intuitive once you poke around inside the Airport Utility Software and become familiar with how it works.
The first thing you need to do is install the provided CD. This contains the Utility software to configure the device. There is no web/browser based set-up that some people might be used to with other vendors wireless products.
For initial set-up to join an already existing wireless network, it's really quite simple .... just: 1)Plug your Airport Exp directly into a port on your router 2)Plug it into a power source 3)Launch the Airport Utility software 4)Click on the "Manual" set-up button 5)Select the "Wireless" tab and enter your wireless network name(SSID), security type, and password information 6) Click the "Update" button. The device will re-boot, and it should now join your network as a wireless "client", and report a solid Green LED. I really do not understand why Apple did not put this procedure into the manual, since I would imagine that a great deal of people that purchase this item will need to know how to perform this exact set-up procedure. Anyway ....
Overall, I'm very impressed with the user interface for configuring the Airport Express, and the way that it interacts with Airtunes / iTunes. I have to admit that Apple has done a great job with this software package and hardware interoperability.
The sound coming from my stereo via the Airport Exp, is amazing .... just like having my iPod or other audio source plugged directly into it. I am very pleased!! Maybe one day I'll be able to take this cool little box on the road and try out it's other wireless networking capabilities. Since the unit can also be set up as a wireless access point, I guess one other benefit of owning the Airport Express is that if my D-Link Access Point at the house ever dies, I've got a back-up unit just sitting there waiting to save the day!
In short ... three enthusiastic thumbs up .... great user interface, a great product, and a great value!!!
Customer Review: Beautiful Product - working very well w/ Belkin wireless router w/o an aircard, and, Jeffrey C - I wish I could buy you a drink
Summary: 5 Stars
I have an early flat panel imac w/ Itunes and no airport card. Am however running my own wireless network with a Belkin router.
Jeffrey C's review gave me the hope that I could make this work w/o having to also buy an airport card - so I took the plunge.
Took me about 25 minutes to set up w/ Mr. Camden's instructions - and it only took me that long because I had to track down my wireless password (you know, the really really long one you usually just set and forget).
It's working like an absolute charm through our stereo. Great sound quality once you learn how to adjust the volumes correctly. Absolutely effortless and easy to use with I-tunes. Note that I haven't tested any of its other functionality - that's not what I need it for (printers and such).
Just got a decent set of powered speakers at a yard sale for $2 - we now can have music outside whenever we want.
I find it interesting that it was easier to find a solution to the set up issues here in Amazon reviews rather than in the regular online forums.
And - did I mention - it's absolutely beautiful??? Wonder if they sell skins for it - would hate to see it scratched.
[Update 6/9/07]
A few months ago we reorganized our home office. The room is small, our HP printer is large - so, we threw it in the closet and attached this box. We now have a wireless printer in the closet!
Set up was extremely easy - plug in USB cord to this. My Macintosh found it immediately.
The trick for making my laptop PC find the printer over the wireless was to install Bonjour on the laptop. Took two minutes and all set.
Another cool thing that always surprises me is that I can take AirPort Express and plug it into the stereo when I want to stream music, and then switch it back to the closet printer when I need to print (which is much less frequent). It just starts up, blinks a bit, turns green and knows what it's doing. Absolutely not fazed by the switch.
One note: I have an HP all-in-one - scanning is not available over this. I just run a long wire the few times I need to scan. However, this might not be an option if you scan.
I love having the printer out of the way!
If the usage overlapped more - I'd buy a second one, but the manual move from printer to stereo and back are very easy and work fine for me.
[Update 8/15/07]
Turns out my wireless router doesn't have a strong enough signal to work well on the porch in these nice Summer days.
Enabled Wireless Bridge on the Airport, and now I have a strong signal wherever I plug it in - and it still works fine for music and wireless printing.
Might have to break down and buy a second, this thing is so flexible
Customer Review: Whole house distributed audio - wireless - synchronized music streams from your Windows PC
Summary: 5 Stars
I was not originally a fan of iTunes on Windows. Avoided it like the plague, prefering alternatives such as realplayer and anapod. My wife however loved iTunes for the convenience of the iTunes music store. We both have iPods and car integration and I was fine without iTunes in my life (esp. on Windows).
However, after multiple failed attempts of trying to get my wife to use the xbox 360 to play music on the main stereo I knew I had to find a solution that let her play her iTunes music and playlists directly on the main stereo.
Enter AirPort express, a device I originally thought of as a simple alternative to a RCA cable from iTunes on the PC to the stereo. I was able to configure the AirPort in 10 minutes using the instructions in the main spotlight review, the wife could easily play her iTunes music on the stereo, and all was good in the world.
That's when I noticed the ability to use multiple speaker output from the iTunes speaker selector. At the time this was "My Computer" and "Living Room". If you select mutiple speakers and listen closely, you will notice that all audio output across all speakers is time synchronized, meaning that there is no echo or overlap despite digital streaming. Apple is using a real time music streaming protocol that makes this all possible and it sounds awesome.
I was so excited in fact that the very next day I got another AirPort for the Kitchen. I had to upgrade it to firmware to revision 6.3 (download from the Apple site) to avoid the "does not support playback as part of a group" error that occurs with firmware revision prior to 6.3. I can now play music from iTunes in our two main rooms with wiring. The quality is great. We're going to get one for the bedroom too for a whole house distributed audio solution.
Awesome product with great attention to detail with the time synchronized speaker output and multi room support. I'll be using iTunes for playing music on my PC and around the house from now on. MS is going to have a tough time beating the iTunes/iPod/AirTunes combo.
BTW, you can stream audio over ethernet or wireless. I have both setup, wired for the living room and wireless for the kitchen.
Can't comment yet on the wireless access point capabilities, or wireless G, I'm just using the music streaming capabilities over wireless B and ethernet.
Whole house audio for $130 a location. You'd pay way more than that for just having someone install hardwired audio (and you can take this to your next house too).
What are you waiting for!
Customer Review: Great product -- for what I was looking for
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a wonderful product. I wanted an optical connection to my receiver to listen to my music and this is a great product for that. Because it's close to my reciever, I don't intend to use the wireless printer capabilities and I already have a wireless router, DHCP, NAT, etc. and don't need that capability in the Airport Express either. Sometimes I wish I could've gotten this product a lot cheaper since all I want is to stream my music to my receiver via optical interface. I tried to do this by using a laptop, USB soundcard and remote control PC, networking, etc. and it was too complicated to be an elegant solution. The Airport Express does well and as expected from an Apple product.
One thing to note is that you need to either get the "right" optical TOS cable or get an adapter (which is what I did -- $7 cost); you also need an optical TOS cable -- $19 at Walmart. I didn't want to spend another $40 for the xxx kit they sell that contains the right cables.
In my setup: cable modem, wireless router (with existing network), DHCP, NAT, 802.11G/B, and wired network, the setup was not straight forward (and frustrating for an impatient, excited guy who just got a cool new toy that's he's been waiting over two weeks for) -- i.e., you plug in the device and you get the infamous blinking amber light -- all I wanted was the Airport Express to "join" my network. I could not tell whether the Airport Exprss was out of range, broken, unable to talk to the wireless router, etc. However, the solution was EASY: connect the Airport Express via wired network and let it get an IP address via DHCP (i.e., plug an Ethernet cable into the RJ45 connector and let the device alone until you get the solid green light). Once you get the light, run the "Airport Admin Utility" and configure it from there -- tell it you just want it to join your network (and give the SSID)).
Once I figured the above, it was easy to setup wirelessly, connect, and play music. Again, I love this product (so far) and highly recommended -- and I'm a picky guy. We'll see how it holds up (being on all the time, it seems to get warm) -- see how picky I am?