Macintosh compatibility

[Mariana]

Hi again,

Does anybody have any experience of how the iAudio equipment and software plays with Macs?

Does it work well?

and would it be possible to stream a music library built for the X5 wirelessly from the Mac to the amp when the X5 is on the road?

Thanks.

[Martinp]

My M3 works fine with a Mac - I tested it just 4 weeks ago on one of those white little iBooks.

As for streaming wirelessly - what you mean by that? FM transmitter?

[bradavon]

What about firmware upgrades etc . . . ?

[Martinp]

Firmware upgrades for the M3 and X5 work fine with the mac seeing that the player upgrades iteself and no-software is required. You only need to extract a file to th firmware directory and start the player with the power adapter. It's simple as.

[bradavon]

Nice. I like it when things are kept simple.

[Mariana]

My M3 works fine with a Mac - I tested it just 4 weeks ago on one of those white little iBooks.

As for streaming wirelessly - what you mean by that? FM transmitter?

Sounds good as I saw somewhere that the M3 would not be able to use jet audio supplied software when using the mac.

My other question was about if you had a music library built on your mac that was synched with the X5 would you be able to use the airport express to play the same music library.

So instead of one library on for the computer to play through the amp and another library for synching with the X5 you could have only one that would do both??
so that when the X5 is gone off somewhere with the other half, I could still listen to music at home.

(I'm going for home entertainment ultra minimalism. no cds, no cd player, no dvd player, no photo albums lying around all digital libraries controled through the computer.....eventually)

[bradavon]

Airport Express???

[zaphanathpaneah]

Airport Express works very ...very well.

[bradavon]

Airport Express???

[tsayin]

Airport is a little block that plugs into an AC socket and serves as an 802.11 access point. It also has an ethernet jack, of course. The express version adds an audio out and streams music off of a computer attached to one of the two networks that is running itunes. I believe isong slection is controlled from the computer, as opposed to something like a squeezebox that just uses a computer for external storage. I don't understand how this relates to an m3, though.

[bradavon]

So you could listen to music wirelessly?

Thanks but I'm a little confused.

[tsayin]

Think of it as a bridge between your computer running itunes and your stereo on the other side of the room. It could even be in another room, but the controls are still on the computer, so it would be a pain.

Like I said, I think a squeezebox (or one of a bunch of similar products) would be a lot better, as it also pulls the music files off of your computer (though it probably isn't compatible with the Itunes Music Store) but has the controls on it, so the sound system can be on a different floor and completely usable.

[notguilty]

I5 here, and it works perfectly on a Mac mini (Finder > Explorer), but maybe not firmware.

A Squeezebox (may as well get the Squeezebox 2) would be an awesome compliment, as you can even browse w/ the remote, if you want (or any PC, anywhere--depending on your own firewall settings, and your ISP's blocks, anyway). Or from a PC, or a PDA, certain cell phones, and a couple universal remotes (real ones, though).

Works great on about any OS, as well, and the wireless version would allow you to listen to anything wirelessly, with no need for iTunes (and you can use basic tag fields for browsing, too).

Slimserver does allow you to use iTunes with it (and use iTunes library instead of a directory, which helps if you update a lot, I guess), as well; so the iTMS stuff should even work (you may need about 14mbps free network bandwidth, though, as I would not be suprised if it must explode the protected files into a full-size stream).

So I don't know about the Airport Express, but if you want a set-top digital music player, the Squeezebox or Squeezebox 2 should fit the bill and then some.

Also, Mariana, if you get that stuff going, either make a RAID 1, or make hard-copy backups of your music (even Taiyo Yuden DVDs are cheap enough for the space, now). Parts fail. Never have a single point of failure, if you can do anything about it.

[bradavon]

Thanks. I'll have to do a Google search to find out what a Squeezebox is.