Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

[Spoon]

Apple introduced the Airport Express as a cheap streaming device, it can communicate either by wireless or wired, and features a 3.5mm audio output which doubles both as SPDIF output.

Air UPnP runs on a Windows PC (as a service) and monitors the whole network for any Airport Express devices, any found are then exposed as a UPnP device, this frees the Airport Express from iTunes and allows them to be used with any UPnP server (such as Asset UPnP). Airports can be integrated with other UPnP devices and allow extra services (such as Internet Radio to be sent to the Airport), also the Airport express can play formats it could not normally (such as FLAC, WMA, Wavpack, ogg vorbis, mpc, etc)

No configuring needs to be done, new devices are detected, when switched off they are unconfigured. Note all the UPnP translations are done on the PC on which Air UPnP is installed, the Airport Express is not altered in anyway.

Compatible with XP, Vista, Windows 7 & Windows Home Server (remote desktop into the WHS machine to install), install:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpoweramp-Renaissance-Air-UPnP.exe

4.5 MB

Guide: Straight after installing Air-UPnP Starter is running and looking for airports, even after the computer is rebooted. If using a firewall other than Windows Firewall, then the program uPlayer-upnp.exe should be added as well as the ports 26126 (both TCP & UDP)

[dvdr]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

Spoon

you are a genius!
Does this mean: buy an Airport Express and a little active speaker, plug them in in the kitchen and have radio&music there without the need of an expensive streaming client? :D

[Teknojnky]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

that sounds pretty cool

[Spoon]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

Does this mean: buy an Airport Express and a little active speaker, plug them in in the kitchen and have radio&music there without the need of an expensive streaming client?

Correct

[dvdr]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

Quick feedback:

Plugplayer recognizes it, Songbook will not display it as a renderer, so: no access with Songbook
Playing tracks with Plugplayer: clicks and and noises when switching tracks or hitting pause, play, next, previous.
I streamed flac-files. The first two from an album were played fine, then Songbook started to jump titles as it could not play them, and again and again jumped on the last track, once it finally could play it.
WMA (I have set Asset to trancode to wav, flac are set to play natively for my Linn DS) played fine.
But also clicks and noises when playing mp3.

[dvdr]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

This morning (the Airport must have had a good night's sleep ) - clicks and noises are gone, but now, after adding an album in Plugplayer, Air UPnP stops playing after one track :(
And I must have had a good night's sleep, too :blush:, since I discovered, that it's been my fault , that Songbook did not discover Air uPnP: default settings are to only discover Linn Renderers. You have to go to the settings button on your iPod and manually enable "uPnP AV Devices" in Songbook's settings dialogue. With Songbook, adding and album, playback does not stop, then! It must be a Plugplayer problem...
But sorry to say: there's some glitches, still - some slow responsiveness, some lockups, and one time after a lockup, the Airport Express was not discovered at all anymore. Even stopping the service and running it again for a few minutes did not rediscover the Airport Express. Had to unplug it and do a "hard reboot", then it worked again.

[dvdr]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

EDIT:
With Songbook, adding and album, playback does not stop - but only, as long as the iPod and Songbook are active. Otherwise, playback will stop after the current title.

[BadCommand]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

Ok, so what am I missing here in the relationship between Asset & Air? I don't understand what interface is used to get Asset to initiate sending song(s) to the AE. With iTunes I just select the music, go to the AE(s) I want to stream to, and hit play. I don't understand the connection to interface.

Also, in Win7, while I installed Air and entries where made in the firewall for Air- no AE's are showing up under Network.

Finally, how is this different from Airfoil?

Thanks!

[BadCommand]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

I guess I should be more specific about an interest. I have Airfoil now and use it to interface my large library of downloaded WMA's to my AE's via WMP12. This is done through a bit of a kludgy method because of MS's protected path. I have to take the line out of the sound card to the line in of that same sound card and capture that line in. Sound is so so at best. I would like to remove this limitation and stream to my AE's without the loopback.

Any chance of doing this with Asset & Air?

[Spoon]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

We have not implemented the Cara functionality yet, this means any control point has to be active to play the next track (that is UPnP for you).

[Spoon]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

Badcommand - we cannot play protected WMA files.

Airfoil takes output from other applications, Air UPnP is a player its self.

[robertjwarren]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

i must be really dense...what is needed to get this working?

I have

hp laptop, win xp, airport express....seem to have all the parts...dont know how to get air upnp to launch?

[Spoon]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

You need a UPNP server, such as Asset
UPnP Control point, such as Plugplayer on ipod touch, or http://oss.linn.co.uk/trac/wiki/LinnGui on the PC.
And Air UPnP which runs automatically.

[robertjwarren]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

Hi spoon

dont have ipod touch so will try the pc route. Will get back and let u know how I fair

[dvdr]

Re: Air UPnP (control Airport Express as UPnP devices)

We have not implemented the Cara functionality yet, this means any control point has to be active to play the next track (that is UPnP for you).

Sorry, did not know...
A few more things I noted, maybe you can look into these:

when playing 48kHz/16 bit content, I get a lot of distortions - a piano does sound as if they put glasses on the strings. Interestingly enough, when playing a highres wav (not sure whether 88.2 or 96) this goes well (no resampling chosen in Asset-config...)

Applying volume with Plugplayer works fine, but in Songbook: don't touch the volume control slider, Airport Express will lock up and needs to be powered off and "rebooted" to work again.

I browsed through the forum lately and came across the possibility to define some sort of config-file for uplayer, that would put it into "apply replay-gain" mode, if I remember right. Is there a way to get Air UPnP into that mode as well - other than with my HiFi in the living room, I would love to stream replay-gained material into the kitchen....

Thanks!