AirPort Express audio drop out – how I solved it.
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 
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!