Using AirFoil to Wirelessly Stream Music and Video

In a previous article, I talked about how easy it is to stream iTunes music (and movies) about the network using AirPlay. I didn't cover mobile devices such as the iPad or iPhone, and I'll be dealing with them in a third article. They're good as remotes and we need to talk about AirPlay with those devices as a source of media. Before we cover that, I wanted to explain how you can stream Spotify and other non-iTunes music around the network too.

I'm going to use a great little program called AirFoil to do this (from Rogue Amoeba). It is available for Mac and PC. It's not a free app, but is very reasonably priced given the hole it fills in the previous investment that I've made in Apple AirPlay compatible hardware. You'll also want the AirFoil Speakers application to run on your iPad/iPhone or other Mac/PC systems on your network. This part is free.

Running the AirFoil application on my Mac means that I can capture the audio stream coming from any application on the system (including, interestingly iTunes):

The drop down shows the possible audio sources. I've only added Spotify and iTunes as audio sources.

You can choose the speakers that you wish to send the audio to from the list. This includes Apple AirPlay devices, including AppleTV and AirPort Express devices. It also includes any running instances of AirFoil Speakers that might be on your network.