Under The Microscope

Airfoil: Rave Reviews and Linux Software

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.

Tux.pngAfter 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.

17 Responses to “Airfoil: Rave Reviews and Linux Software”

  1. Christopher Giffard says:

    RE Linux: The news I’ve been wishing for for a long, long time.

    I love you guys.


  2. Nathan says:

    All 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!


  3. phoomp says:

    you guys rock!


  4. sat says:

    See here:

    http://nanocr.eu/2008/03/15/rogue-developers/

    Good stuff though!


  5. Quentin says:

    sat – 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).


  6. vmarks says:

    Hi,

    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


  7. borland says:

    Quentin: 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?


  8. Paul says:

    vmarks: 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/


  9. Rubin110 says:

    After 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.


  10. Rubin110 says:

    Figured that out, edited /usr/bin/airfoilspeakers , now I get this…

    http://pastebin.com/m400683d6


  11. Rubin110 says:

    Any 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 @.


  12. Frank says:

    Why 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… :(


  13. TwitterJoe says:

    Ditto Frank.


  14. Paul Kafasis says:

    Rubin: 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!


  15. Henry C says:

    Rubin: WHat did you fix on /usr/bin/airfoilspeakers?


  16. Henry C says:

    Im 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?


  17. Karl says:

    I can’t get this to work on ubuntu. Can anyone provide info?


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