16 June 2018 Update - Review of Airfoil V5 New beta of Airfoil V5 is working much better and have updated the following.
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When looking at MC playback to Whole House Audio solutions a couple of years ago,
TuneBlade as discussed in this thread
AirPlay Whole of house in Sync with JRiver Media Center came up trumps. It works, is reliable and keeps audio distribution in Sync.... but you need all AirPlay compatible devices. Things have changed a bit since then, including:
- MC24 Introducing Sync Playback between Instances (across Win, OSX and Linux)
- Greater adoption of Chromecast Audio driven by Google Home compatible devices
Airfoil V5 for Windows has just been released as a Public Preview and now includes audio streaming support to:
- Chromecast (Chromecast Audio, Google Home etc)
- Airplay (Airplay, Airport, Apple TV, HomePod etc)
- Windows, Macs, Linux PCs (by running their companion app "Airfoil Satellite")
- Android and iOS Devices (by running their companion app "Airfoil Satellite")
- Bluetooth Devices
Coupled with MC 24's "Link Zone", it now seems like we have the ability to stream to pretty much any device on any platform. Here is some of my results testing MC24 and Airfoil V5 Beta.
Airfoil Setup: Download and installing Airfoil is straight forward. Once running you will see the ability to select a Source (in this case Media Center 24) and available speakers that you can turn ON/OFF and adjust the volume including in this example, Chromecast, Airplay and an Android Phone. See Pic AF1 The companion "Airfoil Satellite" app gives you a similar view and control from you phone/tablet.
MC Setup: In MC I created a new Zone with the Default Audio Device = Direct Sound (Airfoil does not like WASAPI), and an A/V Sync Correction of "-2000" (to offset the Audio delay so if you play Video the Audio will be in-sync on your devices). See Pic AF2
Known Issues: The blog post for the Public Preview lists some known issues they are working on. In particular is that they still have not yet nailed sync with between Chromecasts and with Chromecasts and other devices (eg Airplay). Fixed! I had no issues with sync between Airplay, Chromecast, and "Airfoil Satellite" on on both PC and Andriod devices.
How did Airfoil V5 go?In my test I had 10 speakers playing from MC via Airfoil inclulding
- Main PC (wired and running MC and Airfoil + Airfoil Satellite)
- 2 x Airplay AVRs (wired)
- 1 x Android Phone running Airfoil Satellite (wireless)
- 2 x Airplay Speakers (wired and wireless) that were different brands
- 3 x Google Homes (wireless)
....and the results are (without trying to adjust the sync sliders for each device):
- All devices played perfectly in sync and remained so over the test (about 1 hour)
- The Android Client required a slight sync adjustment in Airfoil to bring it into line with the rest
- Don't use native desktop playback on the PC running Airfoil (as it will be out of sync) but instead also run "Airfoil Satellite" if you want to hear insync audio on this PC.
Nice update from the previous beta as Chromecast is now playing in sync with the other devices. Looking forward to seeing how the Public Preview develops.
Things I liked:
- Very easy to setup and get running
- Support for heaps of devices (Airplay, Chromecast, BT Speakers)
- Good range of "Satellites" for all the major OS including Windows, OSX, Linux, Apple TV, even Android and iOS! You can now use your old phone/tablet as an audio renderer! These clients are also remotes so you can control Airfoil from these devices. Nice!
Things I Did Not Like:
- Inability to select a specific audio end point to capture the MC output from. You can select Media Center, or System Audio but it is all or nothing. With TuneBlade you can set a specific audio end point. This is a better idea as in the MC Zone you can then output audio device to be the one to be captured by Airfoil
- Inability to change the overall audio delay, it is set at 2000ms. TuneBlade also defaults to 2000ms (this is the standard for Airplay) but allows you to change it to lower values.
- Airfoil Satellite on Android crashed on me a few times (logs sent)
- Airfoil Satellite on Android does not have an option to start and boot and run in the background