At the end of 2007 I found my old AirPort Express. Looking down on it I remembered why I put it away; Audio Drop Out. What a big mistake buying that thing. Well, I desided that I had to use some time to solve the problem and start using this fantastic nice gadget. 
The first thing I did was to look into the information at Apple’s own site to see if they had written anything about this issue. And yes, they have. a firmware update should solve the issue (firmware update)… BUT it did not.
So I had to search the net to look for help. Whow, it seems that a lot of people is experiencing this problem. There is a lot of fancy and odd solutions and I tried everything I ever came over:
- Firmware Update
- Changing wlan channel
- Using network robustness
- Moving microwaves and wireless phones around
- Upgraded the network from 802.11b to 802.11g
- Using multiple speakers
- and more…
Here are some links:
Nothing helped. So I then had to figure out what actually happend with my computer during the drop out. I looked at 2 things; Network traffic and CPU usage. What I found out whas that the network traffic was ok, nothing odd with it. But, when I looked at CPU usage, I found one correlation with the drop out. Whenever my computer was working or had a CPU usage that was more than typically a couple of %, I got a drop out.
So, what did I do?
When streaming music to my AirPort Express I shut down all other applications, typically MSN, Firefox, Word etc. This solved the problem. No drop outs.
My conclusion is that there is no problem with the AirPort Express, the problem is related to the client that streams. AirPort Express drop out is not a problem for me anymore I just have to focus on the music not doing a lot of things at the same time 
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Did not work for me!
Doesn’t work for me either.
I think you were just lucky. It’s firmware – I just wish Apple would recognise the issue and fix it.
It didn’t work for me, either.
Yeah probably luck. Seems Apple has a problem with this product, talked to a lot of people with the same problems.
I’m using the Airport Express solely for AirTunes. As a router I’m using a WRT54GL with Tomato, and let the Express join that network. No problems with drop-outs whatsoever.
I remember I had the problem mentioned at a time that I used the Express as an Access Point.
This “tip” may not help you at all, since I guess most people will actually use the AP-part of the Express.
Here’s a fix for random drop outs that worked for me. I have an airport express and I’m running itunes on a PC with windows vista. My AX required a firmware upgrade before it would work with itunes 8.0 (itunes reported an error code if I tried to connect to remote speakers). I could connect following the firmware upgrade, but I experienced audio drop outs approx every 60 seconds. I noticed in windows update today that an optional update was available for my Belkin MIMO network adapter. It had been available since about Oct 2008 but had not installed automatically since it was tagged as ‘optional’ rather than ‘important’. Installed the update this morning and all my drop out problems have disappeared. I hope this is some use to forum members.
Here’s another fix for anyone who’s still struggling with the audio dropouts from iTunes8 to Airport Express . . .
iTunes7 worked fine with my AE but after upgrading to iTunes8 I experienced random dropouts. Long story short – I changed the Beacon Interval from 100 to 25 in the ‘Wireless LAN’ settings of my router and this has finally fixed the problem.
Hope this helps someone else!
Top Man Paul! Changing the Beacon interval has done the trick for me too!
Paul, I owe you a beer! Changing the Beacon Interval finally did the trick for me too.
i had a question about your computers hardware, because it may have worked for a few people and not others because of the CPUs capacity i was just wondering wat your CPU was RAM was and other things like that that can improve your CPUs capacity
This is something that solved my problems with the airport express.
When cresting net work, under the wireless tab, the “Wireles Options” reset the multi cast rate and turning on interference robustness.
The CPU was the issue on my end. I was running VisualHub compressing a movie in the background and had all kinds of drop-outs via AE wirelessly, even though I could play locally just fine. Once I stopped the compression and let the CPU settle down, the tunes magically started in the other room.
Couldn’t agree more on this post. It’s a nice thing to show off to your mates but embarassing when you end up having to mess around with resetting iTunes/computers when you are trying to chill with friends.
I have a Windows based network working from a BT home hub. I have had various problems with the Airport Express and one main area had been around it dropping, almost constantly, after 5 minutes. If we were downloading or syncing with my apple tv you may as well forget working Airport Express at the same time. The only option I found when using the Airport Express with my own wirless network (not as an extender) was to downgrade the security from WPA to WEP with 64 bit security. Confusingly the AE has no setting for 64 bit – only 40. After trying this with 128 I couldn’t find the AE. The only option was to have the network on 6 bit and the ae on 40 bit. I have been successfully streaming my music now for two hours…..no dropped network yet.
This seems to be a major issue with the Airport (there are hundreds of messages all over the web !) – Apple should be doing more to resolve this problem; the product is NOT doing what it says on the tin. Like many others on this forum I have tried most of the suggestions to repair, with little success. It is still randomly dropping out (spoiling the listening experience)- I’ve gone back to WIRES…aaaggghhhh!!!
Finally! I’ve made the decision to put the Airport Express away for good. I got it to work with a old version of Itunes (think it was 7 or something). But with 9 it’s just a bad product. I’ve tried every tip i’ve found on the net without any success.
I can’t believe they make a product this bad, or a product where you have to be a engineer to make it work. Bye bye Apple!