Airfoil Satellite

This is an EASY 5-Stars. I’ve been using Airfoil Satellite on iPhone in conjunction with Airfoil on the Mac for around 5-10 years. I absolutely love Airfoil / Satellite I will add: it is central to my own, “roll your own” DIY super low cost BUT best quality whole house sound system. There is simply no better solution for setting up your own highly controllable DIY multi-speaker setup. (like Sonos) My setup is to play audio (Sound Cloud or Spotify) out from MacBook Pro via WiFi out to WiFi speakers throughout my house and property. Having a rock solid mesh WiFi system is key. A must. Play out is controlled by Airfoil on a MacBook Pro. I remotely use the Satellite iOS app to control volume, playback on the fly as needed. To receive the audio signal being sent out I use Speakers with WiFi capability like the Google Nest Audio speaker. Or even much better: use an Apple AirPort Express with audio jack to connect to studio grade monitors. Like amplified Mackie it Dyn Audio. Put the $$$ in best quality amp & speakers. Not the software & connectivity . Let Airfoil / Satelite and Apple do the rest. note: I don’t use Bluetooth speaker in the mix. Although tempting to put good/cheap BT speakers all over my property, they get out of sync, loose connection too often. Kudos to the awesome people at Rouge Amoeba. Over many years, any time I reach out there are super responsive, knowledgeable and well versed in the tech they support. A++

About 2 to 3 sec latence so not good enoufh

This is one of those apps that you ignore because it seems irrelevant to your life, until you realize how well it solves a particular problem. My problem is that I want to play audiobooks in my bathroom while I shower and shave. This may seem trivial but all of the Apple solutions are terrible. In particular playing to a HomePod from either an iPhone or a Mac breaks the connection as soon as the audio is paused for more than about 20 minutes or so. I did not want to have to futz around with trying to connect to the HomePod every day when I start shaving. Airfoil removes this problem by maintaining a persistent connection. So my solution is - Airfoil running on an old mac, playing audiobooks on that mac, sending the audio to the HomePod. - Airfoil satellite running on an old iPhone essentially mounted on the wall (think like a carphone mount). Now I just tap the iPhone to wake it up, the lockscreen shows Airfoil Satellite, I hit play and audio starts. 20 minutes later I hit pause and audio ends. Nice and smooth! Extra bonuses I did not expect: - Books.app (apparently as part of its general incompetence and user contempt) reduces the volume of audiobooks substantially compared to Music.app, so you can't get full volume out of your HomePod. Airfoil restores that full volume. - I didn't know or care about the ability to send audio to multiple speakers, but once I experimented with it, I decided to send the audiobooks to not just the bathroom HomePod, but also the source iMac and to my aTV (which in turn plays it through the soundbar). Now the audio is essentially present through the entire house at an even volume, and I can leave it playing after I finish showering as I then get dressed and wrap up other things. ....... Much of this functionality (playback on homepod, synching across multiple speakers in different rooms) is available in one form or another IF all you care about is listening to music. The problem is if you want to listen to non-music content (eg lectures or audiobooks, acquired and curated by you). That's where Apple's (and other companies') solutions fall apart, and that's where Airfoil shines. It's also possible to send the audio to whatever other speakers you have lying around. I tried this to a Jambox BT speaker and a Chromecast Google Home Mini. It absolutely works, and if those speakers are all you need, life is good. However I found that the audio to both of these tended to be slightly out of sync with the Airplay audio (ie wh

If you work with audio and need to quickly test how something will sound on other devices- this is THE app for you. It functions perfectly, plus I find the interface intuitive. There is latency, but that’s to be expected. I don’t think there’s a way around that, and it doesn’t matter for the app’s intended purpose- quickly testing audio on multiple devices. I absolutely love this app. It’s hard to imagine what I’d do without it.

No. I tried the trial version and only played maybe 4 or 5 songs and then it overlaid white noise to obscure the sound and asked for me to buy the license and me thinking that a trial version for something worth 35$ is usually a week or at least a couple days. In the short time I was able to test this app the sound dropped once and it was a somewhat fiddley to use. I'll just buy a blue tooth speaker for the same price.

I’ve been using Airfoil on and off for about 15 years, and it does a great job syncing audio to speakers in different rooms. Better than any other non-wired solution I’ve tried. Listening to the same thing as I walk around the house without needing to wear headphones is really nice! It’s also great for parties. And being able to change which speakers are playing and their volume settings from the satellite app is super convenient. Also, the app is lightweight enough that I’m using some old hardware (iPad Mini 2, iPhone 6s) to run satellite speakers. All that said, it’s not perfect. The speakers occasionally get out of sync just enough to be annoying. The only way I know to fix this is to disconnect & reconnect. And sometimes the sound is distorted in a way which makes it sound like the orchestra didn’t tune before playing! Also, while the old hardware usually works great, the software crashes sometimes out of the blue, or refuses to connect even when it can see the server (neither of these happens on my newer iPhone).

I haven’t used Airfoil Satellite for a few years since the introduction of AirPlay 2. What a mistake. I have a couple Yamaha receivers. One doesn’t take AirPlay 2. And I have a stereo pair of HomePods in the living room, but only an iPad Pro in the kitchen. So my music was mostly localized. But, in a dream world, I figured I would be able to have the same music follow me around everywhere as I did my chores. Well … dreams do come true. After a recent update, I realized Airfoil could reach every one of these devices with the same feed. And that my entire home and detached office setup could be controlled by my iPhone. Highly recommended!

This app has a lot of great features, such as streaming to multiple audio devices at the samence time, such as a phone to a computer or computer to phone, or connecting several speakers to several devices. This app might be ok if you need to stream the audio of your desktop to multiple iOS devices, but it has some glitches that should be fixed. The biggest one would be the audio delay from the desktop computer to the iOS device, even on a good wi-fi connection. This needs a lot of improvement because remote desktop apps such as team viewer, or chrome remote desktop, even microsoft's remote desktop client, give good audio quality that does not have a 2 second delay. 2. As the connection may become faulty at times, the pitch of the audio fluctuates slightly and a loud clicking noise can be heard. 3. After a few minutes of use, a loud white noise is present in the audio if left open long enough. If you want a reliable speaker other than playing music, I would look elsewhere, this app is not for you. However, this app does have potential, it needs a lot of work to be acceptable enough for use.

This app is trying to steal data from customers notes app. Apple refuses to do anything about it. Do not store your passwords or login info in the notes app. Apple will not protect you.

Not real happy with the phone app. The computer version works perfect. I have 7 speakers to control and this doesn’t seem to adjust volume well right now. Hoping for updates.