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Airfoil 3.4: A New Beginning
Posted By Paul Kafasis on October 14th, 2009
After many months of development, we’re happy to unveil a major update to Airfoil, our tool for streaming any audio all around the house – to the AirPort Express, Apple TV, other Macs, PCs, and Linux boxes, and even iPhones and iPods Touch. Airfoil 3.4 is now immediately available. You can read on for more information or just download Airfoil right now.
Here’s What’s New
On its face, Airfoil actually looks much the same. The biggest feature is one that won’t be immediately obvious: improved hijacking. Hijacking in Airfoil is now improved for many different applications.
This includes hijacking of apps with sub-processes for audio, such as Google Chrome, as well as other outliers like Dashboard, where audio is now helpfully grouped into one source for simpler hijacking. As well, capturing audio from QuickTime Player, Safari and other WebKit applications now works instantly, with no need to quit and relaunch, if you’ve got the Instant Hijack component installed.
Airfoil 3.4 also includes an update to the Instant Hijack component, one which fixes several rare but serious conflicts on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). If you saw any issues with quicklookd crashing or conflicts with some Kodak printers, grab Airfoil 3.4 and update the Instant Hijack component, and you should be set.
Finally, if you’re using Griffin’s Radioshark USB radio with Airfoil, you’ll see our updated Radio Tuner window. It features improved graphics as well as access to important radio settings for Japanese and European radio bands.
A New Beginning?
This update to Airfoil somewhat akin to Apple’s own Snow Leopard update. There aren’t a lot of flashy new features, but we’ve worked incredibly hard on the backend of Airfoil, particularly the hijacker (the piece that pulls audio from other applications), to make it all work better than ever.
As time passed since its original release, it became more and more difficult for the underlying hijacker to grab all audio. We’ve had struggles with applications with audio-playing sub-processes, background applications like Dashboard and other oddities. The updated hijacker in AudioHijackKit2 works to handle all of this and more.
Earlier this year, we talked about AudioHijackKit2, the next-generation framework that will power our applications. Our XM/Sirius client Pulsar was the first application to make use of this, and now Airfoil is too. We’re confident this update will position Airfoil to work well with nearly every app now and for years to come.
Go on, Download It
Enough reading! Whether you’ve used Airfoil for years, or you want to check out streaming audio all around your house, you should visit the Airfoil page and download Airfoil 3.4!
Adam says:
October 14th, 2009 at 12:56 pmNew Windows version coming too?
Paul Kafasis says:
October 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pmAdam: Airfoil for Windows doesn’t track Airfoil for Mac’s release schedule at all. We just shipped an update with Windows 7 support, among other fixes, and have plans for more updates, but nothing in this post or in Airfoil for Mac 3.4 relates to Airfoil for Windows.
Adam says:
October 14th, 2009 at 3:39 pmI know, sorry to cross-post, just got excited, I love the product, but don’t have a Mac yet.
Ted B says:
October 15th, 2009 at 6:02 amExcellent Job. Thanks for all the hard work. You now truly are “100% Snow Leopard compatible.” And once again I’m more than happy with my purchase of Airfoil.
Andrew Lovatt says:
October 15th, 2009 at 1:02 pmHi
I have used AudioHiJack and Fission for some time – both truly excellent. Congrats you Rogues – you rock.
Now stoopid question of the day: on “what” devices can I listen to AirFoil “all around my house”? Both this site and Apple don’t seem to properly address, as in “what do I plug in to what?” Of course if I had laptops, iPhones or iTouch round the house that makes instant sense – but you are talking about other devices… Can you clarify?
Andrew
info@redmoonmedia.com
Tony C says:
October 16th, 2009 at 6:46 pmHas any experienced about a 4 second delay in audio when streaming to a audio system? If so, is there a fix for this. It is pretty upsetting.
Pierre says:
October 19th, 2009 at 5:42 amI really love this app for my audiosystem back home (mac), works just perfect. But how do I get a valid serial for my netbook (pc) if I wanna send my tunes from another computer in the same household? Ive already paid for the mac-version…
Stephanovitj says:
October 19th, 2009 at 2:46 pmGreat product that got even better !
It seems the dropouts that plagued the previous versions when streaming from Apple Airport Express to Cambridge DacMagic now are gone….
MH12345 says:
October 20th, 2009 at 11:56 amWell, I’ve had a great week. I just discovered Pandora. Then I discovered that my Apple TV works like an Airport Express (i.e., accepts streaming music, but just, I thought, from iTunes). Then I discovered Airfoil which lets you stream any audio source from your computer accross Apple TV.
I’m a very happy camper. Now I just need an app for my iPod Touch that makes it a real remote for Pandora — unless I’m missing something, there’s still a gap there. You can play Pandora on your computer, you can stream it to your Apple TV via Airfoil and play it on your stereo, but you’ve got to go back to your computer to change the Pandora channel.
I probably should be whining on the Pandora website, but I thought I’d try here as well.
Paul Kafasis says:
October 20th, 2009 at 9:08 pmAndrew Lovatt: I think the Airfoil page does a pretty good job explaining to what you can send audio:
“Send any audio to AirPort Express units, Apple TVs, iPhones and iPods Touch, and even other Macs and PCs, all in sync”
I’m not sure how we might make that more clear?
Tony C: The AirTunes protocol, used by both Airfoil and iTunes, delays audio. There’s no getting around this – Airfoil isn’t recommended for use in situations where you need instant audio.
http://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=AirfoilVideoPlayer
Pierre: You can purchase a license key for Airfoil for Windows right through our store, http://www.rogueamoeba.com/store/
Stephanovitj: Nothing should have changed there, from our end – that’s always appeared to be a Cambridge-issue. But if it’s currently working better for you, great.
MH12345: Controlling Pandora isn’t really something for the Airfoil side of things. Perhaps for Airfoil Speakers – we’ll see. You might look for iPhone-based remote controls in general, or VNC clients.