What is Reddit's opinion of Airfoil?

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I use the olden Airfoil, Airfoil Speakers and Airfoil Satellite for my olden Macs (10.6.8 or die), olden iPads, iPods and iThings, and spare devices that now can be audio streamers and video terminals. Rogue Amoeba rocks hard.

https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

Check out Airfoil:

https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

I believe the setup would involve running it on your Air and then running the companion app (Airfoil Satellite) on your mini:

https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/satellite/

I haven’t tested this myself so I can’t tell you how well it’ll work, but there’s a free trial.

Also I think there might be some echoing issues when you're on a call. It could be no problem being close to the Mac, but when the HomePod is far away from the microphone, the others parties on the call get hella echo. Or at least that's been my experience today, haven't tested it thoroughly yet. Just something to look out for I guess.

But the stereo pair on the desk sounds damn good! I'd actually go for that if I wouldn't have them as TV speakers in the same space. About the multi-speaker setup; not even sure if you need it. My Mini can literally make me think it is raining in the whole apartment when there's some chill music playing with that background noise kinda thing. It's somehow amazing at spacial audio, so putting it anywhere on the desk will prolly be really good too. If you really want two, you could check out AirFoil which is supposed to help with that. Or you can also just create a stereo pair and then you have one output device to choose for both of them.

I was looking into Airfoil since that solves my problem (and yours by the looks of it) but we shouldn’t have to resort to (pricey) third party workarounds that might get obsolete in a future OS update...

I was looking into returning it and getting a Sonos, but I’m convinced that this has the best sound quality out of all the choices on the market.

I use Airfoil on almost every mix that I do, to check on phones, laptops, and the like. the app sends streaming audio via wifi. delay/lag time of 2 seconds flat, but it's incredibly useful nonetheless.

https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

Airfoil by Rogue Amoeba can do this over a wifi network. It's $29 for Windows or Mac, but the client is free. It's available for Android and iOS, and it also makes sure every device is playing in sync. I've never used it for more than a few devices, so I dunno how well it'll work beyond that.

None so far... someone suggested Airfoil in another thread, but I didn't even try it because there's a 2s delay in the audio, so it's not what I'm looking for. I'm afraid this is a feature I'll be missing on, until I upgrade my mac, which is a shame :(

You can do it with a single speaker with bare bones macOS. It will send all system audio though.

If you want to do multiple (and still play on the Mac) I used AirFoil in the past. https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

I'm not clear why you'd want to airplay music (or Spotify) to Sonos speakers though; you can play both sources natively with the Sonos app. Are you sending to non-Sonos airplay targets as well?

If you have Mac you can use Airfoil which is a great app for steaming any audio from your Mac to any audio network device.

For Windows you can probably use (I don't have Windows and have never used this myself) Chromecast Audio Stream which capture the system audio from your computer and casting it to your Chromecast.

But it's probably going to be some latency (as always when going wireless), so maybe not going to be the best to DJ with.

Depends if you want full functionality with video or only audio.
For music there's Airfoil.

For video there's https://airflow.app/

There are many others, you just gotta google.

You can stream to multiple HomePods easily, and create a L/R stereo pair with Airfoil.

It's more convenient than AirPlay 2 on iOS, as I can set up speaker-groups easily, and choose only specific applications to output their audio. I've used Airfoil for years, and am even using it right now to stream Spotify on macOS to multiple HomePods as I write this. I've tested it with streaming to all 7 HomePods and it still worked without any latency issues (mesh WiFi network), though you can also tweak that in Airfoil should you hear slight delays.

I don’t have an answer for you (sorry), but I have used the below software previously to achieve the same goal.

https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

Multiple speakers and a single audio source.

Worked really well.

*not affiliated - just a happy customer.

Actually, I just figured out an even simpler solution that won't require writing any code! It's not as good or simple as a native solution, but Airfoil for Mac will do everything I need.

Current plan is to get a cheap, very old Mac Mini that has an optical input and use Airfoil with it to Airplay to Sonos in my hifi setup. The Airfoil Satellite iPhone app can be used to toggle sending the optical input to Airplay on/off, and I can then use the Sonos app to group speakers as per usual. The Mac Mini won't need a keyboard or mouse or display, once setup.

The hoops that Sonos make us jump through!

>The ability to bounce out to my iPhone or at least an easy way to get music I create onto my own freaking phone

For the purpose of checking the mix and how it sounds played on your iPhone? Streaming your music directly would be faster and with less hassle: https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

Unfortunately, that's not the case at present. Airfoil (https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/) can send to two (or more) HomePods, but not to both halves of a stereo pair.

macOS doesn’t have systemwide AirPlay 2 functionality, which is required to see HomePods configured in a stereo pair. AirPlay2 still only works in iTunes on the Mac.

You could use Airfoil to send the audio to both HomePods but you won’t get the normal stereo pair functionally, it’ll just output the same audio to both HomePods.

Lol, maybe don’t. I believe the source will be mono since OP is using an adapter that sends the audio signal to the microphone channel, and since the HomePod uses the stereo signal to create ambiance, sound quality will be greatly reduced. Furthermore, the app used is not in the App Store.

Not a solution to present to the team IMO. Better off using an app like Airfoil and using a more robust line-in/audio monitoring solution.

For Chromecast I use Airfoil which is a 3rd party program that you can use to cast to other devices (also works for Bluetooth speakers etc), and it still lets you scrobble. Not sure if it would work from PS4 though.

Airport Express + Speakers (prefer amped speakers) = Airplay speakers

Did you mean two separate airplay but playing both at the same time? If so, I have used this in the past to airplay to multiple airplay devices from OS X https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac . I thought Sierra can do this natively but I dont hav anything to test it with at the moment.

Airfoil works fine. https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

There's a free trial to test it out. I use it for Spotify as well. And you can select the audio from specific apps, not just all the audio. And send it to multiple AirPlay devices, not just one at a time. I think there's also an app to send it to an iDevice.