Preferred solution for adding Airplay (2) to existing speakers?

Hardware
1

Hey there – does anyone have a preferred hardware dongle solution for adding Airplay 2 to existing speakers? I have a number of high quality older speakers I’d love to use with Airplay, but I feel like products in this space are particularly fraught with bigs and problems. Has anyone had good success with anything?

2

I used to plug in powered speakers to Apple Airport Express routers and send to them using Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil software. But I had problems with the Express devices after switching to an M1 Mac.

But today I see there is a recent support document seemingly for updates to Apple’s networking hardware that I thought they had abandoned in 2018. Hmmm…

3

A bit more than a “dongle”, but if these are speakers in need of amplification, the Sonos Amp is a solid and reliable solution.

4

I use an old AirPort express via Airplay from my Mac Studio into a Denon receiver. Works well for me.

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5

The Wiim Mini is a pretty nice little puck, with support for Airplay 2, Spotify, and a whole slew of other protocols. The on-board DAC is not very good, so you’ll probably prefer to use the optical out. I’ve had one for a year or so, and it’s been solid.

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6

I also do this from my Mac, however the problem with this solution is that it doesn’t support airplay 2. Which makes playing multiple devices from your iPhone or iPad impossible.

7

Yeah, I was replying more to @karlnyhus than to the OP. I know that Karl had recently posted about no longer using Rogue Amoeba tools, so noting that is was possible with just Airplay might be of interest.

But I should have made it clear that this was not an Airplay 2 solution.

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8

Thanks for thinking about my situation but I’ve got an old Mac Mini on order from OWC that I hope to use as a file server, Time Machine target, and stationery audio hub for playing music while jacked into an old stereo system connected to speakers in two rooms.

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9

if all else fails: Raspberry Pi Airplay server

10

Back before the iPod was a thing, I did this with PowerMac G3. I actually painted it black, added an IR receiver to use with a remote, hooked up a XM Radio software controlled receiver, and put it in my AV stack, the TV being the monitor. I also used VNC to control it from my home office Mac. Good times.

I recently looked into this some months ago, to send music to another room. Finding a Raspberry PI proved to be problematic though.