Airfoil: Rave Reviews and Linux Software
Posted By Paul Kafasis on March 13th, 2008
Since its release, Airfoil 3 has been garnering praise from all manner of Mac journalists. TidBits mentioned it briefly back when 3.0 was released in January and when 3.1 came out in February. This week, however, Rich Mogull has posted a fabulously in-depth look at his use of Airfoil.
“Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil 3.1 is that rare program that takes a complex task, makes it drop-dead simple, and includes only what’s absolutely necessary. Airfoil is a near-perfect application that’s razor sharp in its focus, and Zen-like in its simplicity.”
You can read the whole article over at TidBits now. And of course, you can go to the Airfoil site to download Airfoil and get started with wireless audio around your house.
After requests from users, we’ve got a port of Airfoil Speakers for Linux currently in testing. If you’ve got a Linux box you want to turn into remote speakers for Airfoil, you can grab Airfoil Speakers for Linux right here. This won’t be officially supported nor do we have plans for any other Linux software (there won’t be an Airfoil for Linux, just the speakers). That said, we are looking for any feedback you have before we make a final release, so let us know in the comments here.
Christopher Giffard says:
March 14th, 2008 at 7:38 pmRE Linux: The news I’ve been wishing for for a long, long time.
I love you guys.
Nathan says:
March 15th, 2008 at 1:14 pmAll I can say is WOW! You guys really listen to your customers! I am extremely impressed by the developers initiative to make Speakers available for Linux. Great work and I am very pleased to support your efforts!
phoomp says:
March 15th, 2008 at 6:08 pmyou guys rock!
sat says:
March 15th, 2008 at 9:46 pmSee here:
http://nanocr.eu/2008/03/15/rogue-developers/
Good stuff though!
Quentin says:
March 16th, 2008 at 12:25 amsat – Yeh that was our mistake. We’ve fixed the problem and updated the Linux build, the Windows build is fixed as well and will be pushed out this week (official builds take more testing and work to update then betas).
vmarks says:
March 16th, 2008 at 3:28 pmHi,
I’ve got a bootable CD distro I cobbled together from an ubuntu/gOS base. I run mt-daapd, bonjour, and ushare on it. I was wondering, Paul, what’s your policy on my including this in my distro?
The way it currently works is, I boot the disc, it shares volumes of music and video, which can then be played back on itunes as a shared library. It’d be an odd round trip, music->itunes->back to same machine for speakers, but it could be handy.
Would your license permit my putting it on my bootable distro?
Thanks,
Victor
borland says:
March 16th, 2008 at 4:23 pmQuentin: re “We’ve fixed the problem” – what exactly does that mean? Have you removed the GPL code and replaced it with your own, or have you released the source of airfoil speakers, or have you done something else entirely?
Paul says:
March 16th, 2008 at 5:13 pmvmarks: Putting Airfoil Speakers for Linux on there would be just fine. However, realize that Airfoil Speakers works exclusively with Airfoil (for Mac and Windows), not with iTunes. You’d need to pull the iTunes audio out with Airfoil, and send it along to AFS.
Borland: See this follow-up for a full explanation – http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2008/03/16/mea-culpa/
Rubin110 says:
March 24th, 2008 at 12:51 amAfter a bear of a fight to get a newer version of mono running, I get this error without the GUI…
22:42:19 rubin110@joker:~$ airfoilspeakers –debug 9
AirfoilSpeakers: Airfoil Speakers 0.9.2.0
We could not initialize the GUI. Falling back to command line…
Using 00301b301baf8f9f as mac address (/sys/class/net/eth0/address)
AirfoilServer.AirTunes.RTP.Audio.AFSRTPAudioConnection – setup UDP connection on 0.0.0.0:33488
ERROR: We could not load the Audio Player library. Please ensure that the audio player library is accessible in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and is compiled for your playform.
We were looking for: libAFSAudioPlayer
Real-time signal 1
Any help would be great.
Rubin110 says:
March 24th, 2008 at 1:56 amFigured that out, edited /usr/bin/airfoilspeakers , now I get this…
http://pastebin.com/m400683d6
Rubin110 says:
March 26th, 2008 at 1:44 amAny chance of getting assistance, or am I just out of luck? You can also email me directly, take the link to my web site and replace the first dot with @.
Frank says:
March 26th, 2008 at 11:51 pmWhy no Airfoil for Linux?
I have two turntables that I run through a mixer and into my Linux box. I wish I could stream those to some Airfoil speakers, sure do… :(
TwitterJoe says:
March 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pmDitto Frank.
Paul Kafasis says:
April 7th, 2008 at 5:17 pmRubin: Be sure to try the 1.0.0 that was released today.
Why no Airfoil for Linux
Simply put, because there’s approximately zero market for paid software on Linux. We’re a software company (not a support company, not a documentation company, etc.), we sell software. Porting Airfoil Speakers to Linux was made easier thanks to Mono, so we decided to give it a go, as it adds value to Airfoil for Mac and Windows. Airfoil itself, however, for Linux, just doesn’t make sense for us. Sorry!
Henry C says:
April 8th, 2008 at 2:51 pmRubin: WHat did you fix on /usr/bin/airfoilspeakers?
Henry C says:
April 8th, 2008 at 4:41 pmIm still getting the erorr Rubin was getting with rel 1.0.0
ERROR: We could not load the Audio Player library. Please ensure that the audio player library is accessible in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and is compiled for your playform.
We were looking for: libAFSAudioPlayer
I made sure /usr/lib/airfoilspeakers/ is in my LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Any ideas? Help?
Karl says:
May 10th, 2008 at 5:03 pmI can’t get this to work on ubuntu. Can anyone provide info?