Airport Express for Airplay when no long primary router

[Libertine Lush]

Hello everyone,

Up until recently, I used the Airport Express as the primary router, and used its Airplay audio support (the 3.5mm audio in port) to enable Airplay support for a stereo system that doesn’t have it built in. I now have a new mesh WiFi setup and so I no longer user the Airport Express for WiFi. However, is it possible to still use it just for the Airplay feature?

I tried connecting an ethernet cable from the Airport Express’ WAN port to one of my new router’s WAN/LAN ethernet ports, but that does nothing.

Is there someway to salvage the Airport Express for Airplay in this scenario or should I just get an Airplay audio adaptor?

Thank you.

 

[skyhawkmatthew]

Yes, in AirPort Utility, there should be a configuration option "Join a wireless network" or similar. I've had an old Express set up like this at my parents' place for about a decade.

 

[Libertine Lush]

I don’t see such an option in AirPort Utility, but while searching for it I tried turning on Bridge Mode for the device, and that, to my surprise and delight, suddenly enabled Airplay. So this router will get yet many more years of usage. And thank you for indirectly helping me arrive at this discovery.

 

[Ray2]

Bridge mode does it. I have 3 cabled to a mesh network for audio. Decent DAC's are icing on the cake.

 

[Libertine Lush]

Bridge mode does it. I have 3 cabled to a mesh network for audio. Decent DAC's are icing on the cake.

I’d like to take this chance to then ask, what is bridge mode exactly?

That sounds wonderful. A mesh network, of just 2 devices, is precisely what I just recently setup, and now what the Airport Express connected to.

 

[Lioness~]

Love my Expresse's that I use for 2 different set-ups of speakers, and hopefully they have quite some years left of service.
But have started to get into the HomePod’s that is a lot better, where I also can connect and play more speakers together, which is very nice.

Having different choices of outputs is good. Long live the Expresse's 👍🏼

 

[jmw1480]

I've used an Airport Express as an additional device on a eero wi-fi network for a while, but recently I'm having to reset the AE about every other day due to it suddenly being 'unable to connect" via Airplay 2. After a reset, it seems to work again.

Any recommendations on why this would be happening, or settings to check/change?

 

[forzagaribaldi]

Love my Expresse's that I use for 2 different set-ups of speakers, and hopefully they have quite some years left of service.
But have started to get into the HomePod’s that is a lot better, where I also can connect and play more speakers together, which is very nice.

Having different choices of outputs is good. Long live the Expresse's 👍🏼

I may be misunderstanding “play more speakers together” but in case not, the later (gen2?) Express supports Airplay 2 and so can be used in sync with other speakers for e.g. multi-room. I have a couple that I picked up cheap second-hand as well as some homepod minis and they're great.

 

[MajorFubar]

It's a good idea in principle but a bad idea in practice. About five/six years ago (accidentally coinciding with when Apple discontinued the AirPort product line) I bought an AEX 2 device for solely just this reason: link it to my home wifi, connect it to my hifi via its line-out, and stream music to it from my iDevices.
It started off well, but the more time passes, the poorer the experience is, and I think this entirely the fault of successive iOS updates (because nothing else has changed). Sometimes, connection cannot be established at all without rebooting the AEX, even though my iPhone can see it on my wifi and its LED is green. But mostly the issue is the frequent dropping of the connection between the AEX and my iPhone. I literally can't get through three songs without connection dropping.

I'm thinking of giving up on it and buying a cheap BlueTooth receiver. Yes it would be lossy, but BlueTooth is more reliable than AirPlay, and even more importantly, the rest of my family could at least connect to it (they are all Android users now, as are most people I know.)

 

[forzagaribaldi]

That's interesting to hear @MajorFubar. I've not had any such issues in my setup, it seems very stable. So it could also be something related to your network maybe?

 

[MajorFubar]

Could be. Fact is BlueTooth is just way more reliable for me as a connection protocol, while AirPlay is flaky, the hardware is obsolete (AEX2) and it hasn't received firmware updates to address bugs since Adam was in nappies.

 

[forzagaribaldi]

I guess I'm just lucky with my setup as we moved over from Echo devices to HomePod Minis and the aforementioned couple of AEX2 about a year ago and everything to do with Airplay is way better for us than bluetooth. Multiroom, easy handoff, audio for TVs, etc. All just seems to work here. Obviously Siri has its limitations though!