iHome AirPlay wireless speaker system is revealed on company teaser site

The iHome AirPlay wireless speaker teaser site is up. iHome has unveiled a completely new design for a completely new category of Apple audio accessory.

The picture and copy on the teaser site show a stereo all-in-one speaker design, with a metal base and black cloth grille. A capacitive touch panel on top rounds out the visible form-factor elements. The copy states that the speaker includes a rechargeable battery, which if you let your imagination run with it, means you can achieve a completely wireless listening experience using AirPlay, no strings attached.

AirPlay speakers will allow point-to-multipoint streaming of content from any iTunes 10 (or later) library running on Mac or Windows operating systems. As Apple mentioned on Wednesday, AirPlay functionality will also extend to the iPad, and presumably all iOS devices, when iOS 4.2 is released at the end of 2010. So users could stream audio directly from iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to an AirPlay speaker.

AirPlay is the new name for AirTunes, the wireless audio technology that has been used for the past five-plus years by Apple to stream audio from iTunes to the Airport Express and Apple TV. Audio is streamed using Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), meaning whatever format your audio is stored in within iTunes, if iTunes can play such a file, than it can send it via AirPlay, after it is "transcoded" to ALAC. Since ALAC is "lossless," it transmits the audio without any additional degradation, or music data loss, compared to the source file.

For the first time, this wireless audio functionality is now available to Apple's third-party licensed accessory makers, and iHome is one of these, being one of the most prolific in the space over the last five years.

AirPlay by Apple enables iHome, others, to bring wireless audio home

I've written about AirTunes in the past. Since late 2004, I've played with Apple's wireless audio technology as a feature of iTunes and the Airport Express. I never tried it in concert with Apple TV, but for a couple years, I enjoyed three separate zones of home audio using two AirPort Expresses and a Mac mini. In the context of offering a solution for simple music playback across the home, it has always been a great solution.

For those who don't know, AirTunes lets people stream music from any computer running iTunes to any AirTunes receiver located on the same local-area network. So you could have AirTunes receivers (up until now, only the AirPort Express and Apple TV), in any number of rooms in your house, and using iTunes, or an app from Apple called Remote, control what music is sent where. Users could then listen to music from any audio system plugged into either of their AirTunes devices, which presented basic line-level audio signals.

Well, today was a big day. Widely reported elsewhere, Apple announced a host of new products in their latest keynote address (new iPods, new Apple TV, iTunes 10, and an iOS 4.2 preview). Layered into the announcement was the fact that AirTunes has now been "re-branded" as part of a larger wireless media feature-set from Apple, newly dubbed AirPlay, which also encompasses video and photo sending around the home.

The AirPlay story is embellished by their website and press release, and is the feature most relevant to wirelessaudioblog readers. Apple announced that AirPlay speakers and audio systems will soon be available from third-party manufacturers. iHome, Denon, Marantz, JBL, and Bowers & Wilkins are all now readying systems that will use AirPlay to receive audio from a user's iTunes library, and when iOS 4.2 releases later this year, it seems as though AirPlay speakers might receive audio directly from many tens of millions of portable iOS devices. This wasn't super explicit during the keynote, but would seem reasonable.

After working in the wireless audio category for 6 years, it's gratifying to see the technology get situated for wide-spread adoption. The fact is, the Apple team is a band of user-experience aficionados, but as we all also know, they are commercially brilliant as well. So there is finally real hope that more people will realize some of the promises of wireless audio for multi-room home audio networking. By opening up AirPlay to third party accessory makers, Apple opens the door for more affordable, lifestyle focused product concepts to reach the masses. For product makers that have been wrestling with existing wireless audio technologies – home-grown wireless audio solutions (i.e. Logitech, Sonos), RF ASIC-based solutions from STS or Avnera (Klipsch, Panasonic, Sony, Best Buy) – AirPlay is offered as a technology solution that not only has Apple's robust wireless audio protocol inside, but also the promise of Apple's market-making, 3rd party developer support. The accompanying marketing platform is composed of strong messaging from Apple and a huge installed-base of complimentary AirPlay products, i.e. Apple's iTunes, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch...

Readers of wirelessaudioblog know I work in product development now at iHome. One of our most exciting projects this year has been designing and developing our first AirPlay speaker. Apple's technology enables us to deliver a product that is uniquely wireless, uniquely AirPlay, and particularly beneficial to existing iPod, iPhone, iPad customers, i.e. iTunes users. The iHome AirPlay wireless speaker will reach the market this holiday season, and it offers consumers the ability to send iTunes audio to any room of the house, multiple rooms of the house, and control it all with Apple's Remote app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

I'm really excited to see AirPlay mature in this way, because it's always been an impressive, promising take on wireless audio. Now Apple has put the full commitment of their third-party hardware developer support team behind it. This should keep things really interesting, and I'm actually really looking forward to see what other device-makers have planned.

iTunes Remote: a long time coming

While many early adopter types (like me) have been fiddling with Airtunes, and looking for ways to turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a remote control for whole home audio, clearly the engineers at Apple have been doing the same, and building the native functionality into the iPhone OS 2.0 and the latest version of iTunes.The iTune remote page over at Apple pretty much explains it all. No longer will we need Signal.

Remote features include:

• Basic security for connecting iTunes and Apple TV libraries


• iPod controls user interface you are already used to when playing back content form a given library


• Intuitive search-as-you-type.  Very cool.  Type "r-o" get any content that contains such letter-sequence grouped as songs, artists, albums, etc.


• Multi-room destination control.  Remote allows you to control what rooms the audio plays back through if you are using Airtunes devices.


• Adjustable buffer size.  Allows you to adjust whether you want a short or long buffer enabling less  or more interference robustness and throughput reliability.

All good stuff.  Can't wait to get my hands on it.  I specifically want to answer the following questions:

• How does it deal with multiple remotes in the same house?


• How well does the remote provide instant and clear state feedback on the current system configuration?


• How does a single remote deal with setting up a multi-source topology?


• How does it deal with contention for a single receiver, i.e. what happens if you try to send audio to the same room from two different libraries using two different remotes?


• How well in practice does the interference robustness perform?


• How annoying does the delay introduced by the buffer really become over time?

No matter the result, I am sure Apple will delight many with a feature no one was really expecting.

I've been tinkering... Apple Airtunes is pretty slick

Many folks are familiar with Apple Airport Express and Airtunes. It provides the ability to send iTunes audio from a PC/Mac to speakers that are connected to the Airport Express (which has both a Toslink and a line-level output). I've been playing with the latest variant. With Airport Express w/ wireless N, they've added the ability to support simultaneous receivers receiving the same content. What I call a point-to-multi-point topology.

I've also been playing with Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil which lets me not just play iTunes music, but ANY music from any app on my Mac, or wait for it... a Windows PC. I also have been using Airfoil Speakers which lets me turn any PC, Linux box, or Mac in my house, to an Airtunes receiver. A little tray app runs on that PC, and makes it look like a Airport Express, for example.

I've heard Airfoil lets your send music to Apple TV as well, though I haven't been able to test that. I assume it's as robust as the others have been... and with that little bit of foreshadowing...

It really works well! I love it actually. About my setup:

Audio source:

1. My Macbook Pro running all manner of audio... iTunes, Pandora, Slacker, whatever...

Receivers:

1. My iMac running Airfoil Speakers


2. Airport Express-1 hooked up to Bose SoundDock Portable


3. Airport Express-2 hooked up to Bose Companion 5s.

So a little about Apple Airtunes, which is Apple's proprietary protocol for sending compressed audio over WLAN (AoW). This is all reverse guesstimated based on what little I know about wireless audio...First of all, I call it AoW... I hesitate to call Airtunes "wireless audio", because it only appears that "audio" is being sent wirelessly... what is actually being sent are chopped up AAC (correction via mats) Apple Lossless "data" files with a whole bunch of QoS goop wrapped around it. Strictly speaking, Airtunes relies on a non-linear, asynchronous packet-based transmission scheme, TCP-IP over WLAN. What Apple has created is an extremely broad time-window for synchronizing audio data, creating isochronous behavior using asynchronous foundations and lots of software... that's why you need devices running Apple smarts on either end. Airtunes basically estimates a total time buffer need based on network utilization and bandwidth requirements... creates a time-stamp on the source material... encodes both the stamp and the buffer-time in the data stream... Marker "A"... then it takes the audio data... compresses it on the host side, then essentially transmits the compressed file plus meta information... performs the network transmission, decoding... audio decompression, and again recovering the time stamps and synchronizing them to the device clock and then upon reaching the target time marker extrapolated from the buffer-time... begins rendering the audio at... marker "Z". Or something close to that... I think...

All-in, what Apple does are three important things:

1. Prevents audio dropouts due to periods of reduced network throughput... i.e. it behaves as a buffer. This is important since the WLAN network is a shared network and throughput for audio is not guaranteed.


2. It makes sure all the nodes are playing music in sync to one another, and without time-varying node-to-node drift... This is important in whole-home audio scenarios to reduce echos and unnatural artifacts.


3. To the extent A-to-Z can remain fixed over a playback period... Airtunes also can avoid any audio discontinuities during playback. If the buffer was well-estimated at the beginning of a transmission, then you won't have to resize the buffer and suffer a "skip". One advantage of Airtunes is it can be content aware on the source side, and know when there are silent periods and take those times to reset buffers if need be. Not sure they do this or not.

The result. Fairly rock-solid performance for up to 3 nodes spread across a 80 ft radius space.

Pros

• Apple has been giving much of this functionality for free to those who already buy up Apples stuff. The "converted" are very close to having this stuff working for them.


• Apple software rocks. So this stuff really isn't THAT hard to set up. A little easier than say setting up a WiFi network. A bit harder than hooking up a TiVo. By PC standards... not bad.


• Sound quality and link performance are generally great. For that party mode performance, it works pretty well.

Cons

• Compared to setting up piece of CE equipment, it involves much too much PC time. Installing software, control panels, SSIDs, etc... Advnaced PC user know-how is a must. Even by Mac standards.


• Poor marketing... did you even know this was possible...???? Today???? Like all things, Apple likes to Trojan horse features... then once they get them shaken out by geeks like me, they rationalize them in to shiny new products and services that Stevie J can launch... MobileMe anyone???


• Delay Delay Delay. Buffering and buffer management is the magic to Airtunes... but oh how clumsy it is when you want to adjust volume, or change track... User have to check their audible feedback expectations. Usability nightmare. And what was strange was the more I use this system... the more I notice the delay time.... and of course the more it annoys the shit out of me.


• Cost!!! If you aren't a Apple hardware dork yet. Be prepared to dump $99 for each Airport Express. Add to that the cost of the speaker system you need to connect to it. Rogue Amoeba software is a great convenience, but it ain't free... not bad though to be honest. Airfoil is about $25 per seat. Airfoil Speaker is free... but the computer it runs on is not!

Overall Grades:

B+ for Apple - for giving us a platform

C for Airtunes - for working ok, but using WLAN... a terrible, terrible transport.

A for Rogue Amoeba - for exploiting a platform to the fullest and making nice software that just works.

Apple's Trojan Horse... it may be only a sandbox

Over on Micro Everything, Mats picked up on an recent WSJ article about Apple’s wireless audio potentialities. I too have given this plenty of thought… no big surprise… but I just can’t keep quiet about my random toughts anymore… there are many things I find pretty intriguing about Apple’s approach to this wireless audio distribution, but the aspect I want to talk about foremost is how sneaky and un-Apple they’ve been in rolling it out.Wireless audio by Apple has been leaking into the Apple platform, reaching the more adventuresome consumers via a series of Trojan Horse tactics…

1. The Airport Express. It started here with a simple point-to-point wireless audio feature called Airtunes about 4 years ago. The two primary limitation… it only allowed point-to-point links and the source point had to be iTunes running on a computer. Well now that has changed…


2. The 2nd generation Airport Express with Wireless-N has also seen the quiet launch or point-to-multi-point airtunes. Now you can play your iTunes to more than one Airport Express endpoint at any time.


3. Because Airtunes is a custom audio payload protocol that uses WLAN network as its network transport, any WLAN enabled device with the necessary protocol software running on top of it can be a potential source or receiver of Airtunes content… such as
   
   
   
   1. Another PC - as receiver as well
   
   
   2. Apple TV - source or receiver
   
   
   3. iPod Touch - as source via WiFi
   
   
   4. iPhone - as source via WiFi
   
   
   5. iPhones and iPods are also perfect platforms to have your sweet touch screen remote controls… (a la http://www.alloysoft.com/) with all kinds of opportunities for third party skins, features, meta content exploits, etc… and not to mention the hardware only gets cooler and cooler every year, so consumers will constantly be getting more and more GUI capabilities.
   
   
   
   

The “predictable” wireless speakers would perhaps be very slick looking speakers with Airport express electronics built in.All in all I say, what a platform!!!?? Compare this to Microsoft… who have had so many false starts here, with big splash promises that just never measured up when put to the early adopter stress tests… but they have their Xbox I suppose… as if!As for Apple, I just can’t wait for the APIs to mature and for the community of nifty software developers to catch on and build out a great set of exeriences…But mine isn’t all glowing… being who Apple is, I see two potential impediments to world domination in this space…

1. How much will Apple bind the experience to iTunes and protected AAC contents?  If it’s more open - platform and library agnostic… you have the makings of something really interesting.


2. Another caveat is that I don’t know of any high throughput WLAN in urban environments anymore. I am not sure WLAN networks will give the kind of QoS needed to maintain robust synchronized multi-point wireless audio instances… I’ve all but given up on WiFi in NY. Too crowded… too many APs fighting it out… tough problems, no doubt.

Apple’s under the radar approach is a nice way to hedge against exposing the system infrastructure risks… and in the meantime, they can quietly build out the user-level application functionality in a nice way… it may be that to truly realize their vision, they’ll need new dedicated wireless audio transports to work this out… for reals… time will tell.