Airfoil Speakers Touch does one thing, and it does it well. The iPhone application receives audio wirelessly from your computer and plays it either through its built-in speakers or via the headphone jack. To owners of Apple Airport Express users, this might seem familiar. That’s because it is. Essentially, this application turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into an Airport Express. I’m a heavy user of Apple’s Airtunes, the magic which lets me stream music to multiple speakers around the house. I have a couple of airport express units hooked up and either I or the Lady can send tunes to them. The trouble is, this only works with iTunes. Get your music from anywhere else and you’re back to running cables.
This is solved by an application called Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba (OS X and Windows), which takes the audio from any application and streams it to the remote speakers, or even another computer on the network. It even does video, something even Apple can’t manage from iTunes. Enter Airfoil Speakers Touch, an iPhone version of the free Airfoil Speakers app which turns a Mac, Windows or Linux box into an audio receiver. Fire the application up and the iPhone is immediately recognized by the mother ship, like this:
As you can see, it looks just like any other receiver on the network. Here’s what you see on the iPhone:
If I pick “Melocotron” (the name of my iPod — it’s like a peach, only more robotic), then the music starts transmitting:
That’s pretty much it for the basic functions. Notice, though, the neat touches that start even here. The picture shows the correct model of the computer sending the audio and even a snap of the screen (here you see Spotify running). There’s also an icon to show you which application is sending audio (again, in this case it’s Spotify). Those bars you see are level-meters which jump up and down, 1980s-style, in time with the music. They can be switched off in the preferences, here:
You can control the volume using the on-screen slider and, if the iPod is in a dock you can use the Apple remote to control the iPod’s master volume, too. That’s it for controls, and that’s where the annoyances start to creep in.
If you are using the Apple Remote, make sure you don’t press anything but the volume switch. If you do, Airfoil Speakers Touch will quit and the music will start blaring from your laptop’s speakers instead. Worse, the iPod will start playing the first track in its library. This is a problem caused by Apple, not by Rogue Amoeba — all apps do this when the remote is used — but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.
Next, if you usually use the Apple made Remote application for your iPhone, you can’t use it and Airfoil at the same time. Airfoil will quit out as described above. Again, annoying, but a consequence of the inability to run background processes on the iPhone.
Gripes aside, Airfoil Speakers Touch is a wonderfully simple and useful little application. You can use it to hook up an extra set of speakers indoors, for instance, or send audio outside to battery-powered speakers where there is no power and, therefore no way to use an Airport Express. You can even use it to listen to a new, un-synced podcast with headphones while you cook. You, know, for example. Best of all, it’s free, although you’ll need the $25 Airfoil software to use it.
Product page [iTunes]
Product page [Rogue Amoeba]
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