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Airfoil 4 Is Coming – Test the Beta [Access Is Closed]
Posted By Paul Kafasis on November 23rd, 2010
Here at Rogue Amoeba, we’ve got major new versions planned for three of our existing applications over the coming months. Airfoil will be the first of those updates to see the light of day. We’re not quite there yet, but we are ready to start beta-testing.
Airfoil 4 offers many substantial new features, along with interfaces for Airfoil, Airfoil Speakers, and Airfoil Video Player that are both prettier and easier to use. We’re not going to detail all the new features just yet, but Airfoil 4 will be useful if…
…you’ve wanted to watch web video from sites like Hulu or Netflix on your Mac, while hearing their audio remotely.
…you’re using Airfoil to create an office-wide radio station.
…you use Airfoil Speakers on any of your Macs.
If you’re an Airfoil 3 user, you’re definitely going to want to move up to Airfoil 4. With the beta, you can check it out ahead of the official release!
Try It Out
If you’re already a registered user and you’re on Mac OS X 10.6, you can help us test. Airfoil 4 has been tested internally and it’s definitely ready for daily use. We want to get a wider pool of testers, so get in touch.
Update (December 13th, 2010): The beta is all full again, but Airfoil 4 should be out soon!
One last note: If you’re thinking of buying Airfoil, go right ahead! The license key you receive now will work with the forthcoming version 4 as well, free of charge!
G_Money says:
November 24th, 2010 at 12:50 amWhat about for the Windows users? Any video coming there?
loof says:
November 24th, 2010 at 12:51 pmThe only thing stopping me from buying airfoil is Zune support. :-(
Paul Kafasis says:
November 24th, 2010 at 12:57 pmG_Money: We have no immediate plans for Airfoil Video Player on Windows, but we’ll see what happens in the future.
loof: I imagine you too are talking about Airfoil for Windows? We’ll see what happens as far as Zune.app support goes in the future.
Jessica says:
November 24th, 2010 at 4:24 pmWill Airfoil speakers for Mac be updated to work with IOS AirPlay?
Jordan says:
November 24th, 2010 at 6:52 pmMaybe what I want is too magical at this moment but I would love the ability to play any video from my mac to an apple tv (even if only supported h.264 videos). Is there anything like this in Airfoil’s future?
Sim says:
November 25th, 2010 at 12:24 amany chance of AirPlay Video support? Tuaw has an article that details how to make it compatible on iOS but what about mac?
Paul Kafasis says:
November 25th, 2010 at 1:12 amJessica: What exactly does “work with iOS AirPlay” mean for you? If you’re talking about sending from iOS to Airfoil Speakers, Apple prevents this – their software only acknowledges their hardware. That’s also why iTunes doesn’t see Airfoil Speakers.
Jordan, Sim: We’ll see what happens – it’s not coming in Airfoil 4.0.
olivier says:
November 25th, 2010 at 12:06 pmI understand your point of view but insist : I would *love* a version of Airfoil Speaker declaring itself as an Airplay compatible receiver (as an Airport Express).
As Airplay is now open to some other companies (iHome, Denon…), can’t you ask a “license” or something like that to Apple in order to be fully compatible ? I mean, it shouldn’t be a technical problem as Denon brought Airplay compatibility to some of their amplification system thanks to a simple software update.
I”m ready to pay for Airfoil Speaker if it gets that very feature ! (even audio only : video is best, of course, but audio is more important).
Paul Kafasis says:
November 25th, 2010 at 3:24 pmolivier: It’s not possible for Airfoil Speakers to simply “declare itself as an AirPlay compatible receiver”. This isn’t really a “point of view”, it’s reality. Again, Apple’s software (iTunes and iOS) do not acknowledge anything but their approved hardware.
Licensing directly from Apple is not currently possible for software. AirPlay licensing is only available for hardware devices, and requires a hardware chip. It appears that Denon’s “software update” simply activated hardware which had already shipped in the device.
olivier says:
November 25th, 2010 at 6:23 pmThank you for the explanation.
That’s a bad news to me, but you can’t do anything about it… Let’s hope Apple will do the software itself or allow you to do so one day.
Swazen says:
November 27th, 2010 at 5:51 amAirfoil is a big tool for expend airtunes/airplay features with apple receivers!! thank’s for all your work…
What about implementation of an airfoil video feature for airplay compatibility??? not in 4.0 for the moment ok, but that’s possible or not??? (maybe in 4.1 ;-).
csongor suto says:
November 27th, 2010 at 6:00 amdou you have any infomation about supporting 5.1 audio supporting?
Paul Kafasis says:
November 28th, 2010 at 2:11 pmSwazen: AirPlay Video is something we’re exploring – stay tuned to this very blog for more. It won’t be in Airfoil 4.0, however.
csongor: Our audio-grabbing (used in Airfoil, Audio Hijack, and Nicecast) has always been stereo, and we have no plans for changing that. Sorry!
powertogeeks says:
November 28th, 2010 at 5:24 pmWould be great if the update fixes airfoil mac’s dropout problem between AE and Spotify! I use a MacBook & Airport Express combo for streaming music from both Spotify and iTunes via Cambridge Audio DacMagic (connected to the airport via Toslink). While this works excellent with iTunes, with Spotify I get small dropouts in uneven intervalls between 5 sec – 1 min, making listening impossible. i know from various fora that many others have the same problem. From that it seems that the problem is due to the new AE as spotify works well with pre-N AE. Have a look at this forum, for instance. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Problem-Airport-Express-DacMagic
Thanks for making a great product, and for hopefully finding a solution to this problem!
Josh says:
November 29th, 2010 at 11:03 pmI copied two files onto my jailbroken iPhone 4 (from a 2G AppleTV, as detailed here:)
http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/how-to-turn-your-iphone-and-ipad-into-airplay-speakers/
And now, my iPhone now shows up as a destination speaker in in iTunes’ Airplay pulldown and dialog window. Love it.
The even better part? It shows up as a destination speaker in Airfoil, too! It’s as if I have native, built-in version if Airfoil Speakers Touch.
Check it out. Very cool stuff. If you’re jailbroken you probably also have SBSettings installed. Use this hack in conjunction with the “Autolock” toggle, so you can set your iPhone to not shut off while it’s receiving your audio stream.
Josh says:
November 29th, 2010 at 11:07 pmThe files above work from AppleTV to iPhone/iPad/iPod touch of course since they’re all running iOS 4.x.
One wonders, of course, if these files could somehow be reverse engineered to provide the same capability to computers running MacOS or Windows.
Peter Nicholls says:
November 30th, 2010 at 12:08 amAn Airfoil Speakers app for the new Boxee Box media player would be very nice to have – it seems to be linux based, so maybe not impossible?
Kvasve says:
November 30th, 2010 at 5:20 pmTotally agree Powertogeeks! The AE digital out problem makes Airfoil useless if you use other dacs than the very basic one in AE.