What's the best way to set up this wireless, all-Apple network to stream my music?

February 26, 2010 5:37 AM

What's the best way to set up this wireless, all-Apple network to stream my music?

My songs keep disappearing from my library and I often get the stream interrupted while playing music. I believe I probably don't have my system set up exactly right.

All of my music resides on a 1TB Apple Time Capsule and this is where I have my library stored for iTunes. I interface the Time Capsule with my stereo through an Airport Express and control everything through my MacBook Pro or my iPhone Remote.

However, I keep having locations be forgotten in iTunes. This is probably because the location of my library keeps changing and I'm not sure what setting I have wrong that does this. New music I rip or import ends up in a library on my laptop, not the Time Capsule.

Hope that made sense. Thanks in advance for making my music listening more enjoyable!

Two caveats: I can't buy anything else and I have no interest in using other music software.

posted by Captaintripps to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

You need to tell iTunes where your music library is located *and* turn on the "Keep folder organized" option.

See this KB article

You also need to make sure that the network volume is mounted *before* you run iTunes, every single time you run it, or it will just make a new blank one on your hard disk.

Keeping your iTunes volume on a network share is really annoying.
posted by Mwongozi at 6:02 AM on February 26, 2010

Also - you don't mention how the network is set up - is the airport express wireless or wired to the time capsule? How about the macbook?

The stuttering could be wireless.. especially if you are using it for both devices. Can you hook the Express up to the time capsule over ethernet and use it that way?

Honestly, I wouldn't trust my music to the time capsule - I'd keep it on the macbook pro, and use the time capsule for backup only, and your problems will probably go away.
posted by TravellingDen at 6:20 AM on February 26, 2010

Mwongozi's comment might fix your ripping problems, but the stuttering problems may not be so easily soluble. I've been having problems with my Airport Express stuttering ever since iTunes 9 came out, and I'm not the only one. The proposed solutions in the linked thread haven't worked for me, but maybe they will for you.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:48 AM on February 26, 2010

If you're pulling files off a drive connected to your HD through wireless, you're almost certainly getting some stuttering due to the wifi connection. I open (non-music) files from a wireless drive all the time and I experience slowness and stutters. This is why I keep my music on the laptop. If you really have to keep the music on the external drive and can't wire up, Mwongozi has the answer.
posted by immlass at 6:54 AM on February 26, 2010

I also experienced stuttering when streaming music to the Airport Express, and my library was on my local machine. Do you experience any stuttering if you stream files residing on your laptop directly to the Airport Express? That would be a good first trouble shooting step.

Neither Apple nor I were able to solve the Airport Express stuttering issue. I eventually bought an Apple TV. The ATV solved the stutter problem, but I wish I'd bought a Mac Mini for the added flexibility.
posted by paulg at 8:00 AM on February 26, 2010

Part of the problem is probably that each song needs to go from the time capsule to you MacBook over the network, where iTunes reëncodes on-the-fly then sends it again over the wifi to the airport express. So at any given moment, discounting all other network activity, there's a lot of info zipping through the air.

Just this probably shouldn't cause the network to choke, but if as iTunes queues up songs it buffers them in larger chunks to a cache on your MacBook, that might be causing interruptions.

But I don't particularly know what I'm talking about. I've had two airport expresses, one of which would intermittely drop from the network and infuriate me. Make sure you have the newest firmware on it?
posted by kjell at 1:10 PM on February 26, 2010