Using iPlayer with Apple Airport &c.

[Nick Armstrong]

For a couple of years now, I've relied on playing internet radio via iTunes and my Airport Express through the main hifi here.

Radio 3 has always been problematic - the iTunes Radio 3 stream is at a mere 128 kbps. Attempts to incorporate the 320 kbps stream by adding specific url links haven't provided a permanent solution.

But of late, I've discovered that the best way is to use the iPlayer Radio App on my iPad Pro. This doesn't involve using iTunes - but to my delight, I found that the App features the 'Airport' logo and enables the same 'main hifi' option. Given a sufficiently fast internet connection (which I have here), this would appear to enable a full 320 kbps stream - and given that the iPad is always in the room if I am, it's much simpler. (Other apps provide a similar function - the Classical KUSC app for instance, the station in South California which is among my non-R3 favourites).

Thanks to johnb for guiding me through the various options which allowed me to arrive at the above solution


.

An auxilliary point: if after using the iPad to play radio through the Airport Express, I - for instance - watch a YouTube clip, the sound of that comes out of the main hifi too. So the iPad as a whole appears to be switched to the Airport Express option. Yet I can find nothing in the general 'settings' menu to indicate that, or allow for a general switching to and from the iPad's internal speakers. Anyone found such a general setting?

[johnb]

I think that using an iPad + Airport Express is an excellent idea. The only slight quibble I would have (if I put my audiophile purist hat on) is that it is possible that the 48kHz iPlayer data is resampled on the fly to 44.1kHz for Airport Express, which I understand is limited to 16/44.1. However, I suspect the difference is unlikely to be audible for most people.

Of course, iTunes would be doing exactly the same (i.e. downsampling from 48kHz to 44.1kHz) when playing through Airport Express. (iTunes + AppleTV would do the opposite thing - it would resample everything to 16/48.)