Airfoil

What works

Installation completes, application runs, accepts registration code, and checks for updates.  The user interface is fully functional and properly skinned.  It can receive input through a recording channel on a sound card and play it through a remotely discovered speaker or locally.  AirfoilSpeakers is properly discoverable from a remote computer and plays sound through to the local system.

It is also able to detect other Wine applications that are running and to attempt to relaunch them to hijack their output (which fails).

What does not

It is impossible to hijack any Windows applications due to lack of Wine support for the tricks it uses to steal their audio streams.  It does not see non-Wine applications.

Workarounds

What was not tested

I tested every feature of the application I am aware of.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

AirFoil Speakers is available for Linux, so I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on that application if all you want to do is play sound from somewhere else to your local machine.

There are native Linux utilities that can accomplish communication with an AirTunes device:

• Justeport
• Raopplay

These projects appear to be inactive, but they are both able to send a single audio stream without redirecting all of your audio to the remote speakers and do not depend on your local sound card's driver features.

What to Expect

It's possible to get this application to properly discover speakers and play through an audio input. Thus, if your sound card can redirect wave out through a recording input, you can redirect sound to external speakers.

Installation

It's probably best to use a separate wineprefix for this application because it will require installing Bonjour for Windows, which cannot be removed properly, and .NET Framework 2.0. It cannot currently interact with other applications to "hijack" their audio so there is little benefit to installing it in the same wineprefix as anything else. For this example, I will put everything in ~/.wine-airfoil.

To start off, you should install the .NET Framework 2.0 in your wine installation using winetricks.

$ wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-airfoil sh winetricks dotnet20

After this process completes, you should download and install Bonjour for Windows. Make sure to install this inside your prefix and "reboot" wine after the installation completes:

$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-airfoil wine BonjourSetup.exe
$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-airfoil wineboot

Now, download and install Airfoil.

$ unzip AirfoilWindows.zip
$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-airfoil wine AirfoilSetup.exe

After the installation completes, you should be able to launch Airfoil using your Desktop icon or Wine Applications menu. You can also run it directly from the shell:

$ cd ~/.wine-airfoil/drive_c/Program\ Files\Airfoil
­$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-airfoil wine Airfoil.exe

Operation of Airfoil

The application will work as usual, but you won't be able to Hijack applications because Linux applications can't be seen by Wine and Airfoil cannot peek into or interfere with the audio streams from other Wine applications.

If Airfoil does not find any speakers, try restarting the application. It seems to correctly find the speakers at least 50% of the time. I suspect this is a race condition between the Bonjour startup and the speaker discovery attempt.

You should, however, have the ability to select Primary Sound Capture Driver and perhaps some other options. If you use gnome, check your Volume Control (Applications > Sound & Video > Volume Control) and try to find a Recording option that takes your sound output as an input. For example, the emu10k1 driver for the SoundBlaster Live! has a "Wave Capture" record input which passes any normal sound output by applications at line level to recording applications so you can mute the computer's output safely to avoid hearing the sound through both devices. You will probably have to experiment with settings to find if your sound card can accomplish this. Don't forget to toggle on the recording input and remember there's a delay in AirTunes transmission, so changes may take a few seconds to be noticeable.

Important: If you are sending your output through Airfoil, DO NOT select to route sound through "Computer" as well. This will result in a delayed sound loop, and the sound will keep playing back through your remote speakers every time Airfoil hears it again, which may be very loud and unintelligible.

Operation of Airfoil Speakers

Airfoil Speakers should work more or less correctly, but may claim to crash as soon as something connects to it remotely. I've found audio to be choppy, but the application continues to operate in spite of the error dialog box. If you click the "OK" button the application will exit. If you ignore the dialog, you can interact with the application and it will function until closed.

Note that Airfoil Speakers is available for free for Linux. You should probably not bother using it in Wine unless you have a really good reason.