Airfoil Satellite 4+

I’ve been using Airfoil on and off for about 15 years, and it does a great job syncing audio to speakers in different rooms. Better than any other non-wired solution I’ve tried. Listening to the same thing as I walk around the house without needing to wear headphones is really nice! It’s also great for parties. And being able to change which speakers are playing and their volume settings from the satellite app is super convenient. Also, the app is lightweight enough that I’m using some old hardware (iPad Mini 2, iPhone 6s) to run satellite speakers.

All that said, it’s not perfect. The speakers occasionally get out of sync just enough to be annoying. The only way I know to fix this is to disconnect & reconnect. And sometimes the sound is distorted in a way which makes it sound like the orchestra didn’t tune before playing! Also, while the old hardware usually works great, the software crashes sometimes out of the blue, or refuses to connect even when it can see the server (neither of these happens on my newer iPhone).

If you work with audio and need to quickly test how something will sound on other devices- this is THE app for you. It functions perfectly, plus I find the interface intuitive. There is latency, but that’s to be expected. I don’t think there’s a way around that, and it doesn’t matter for the app’s intended purpose- quickly testing audio on multiple devices. I absolutely love this app. It’s hard to imagine what I’d do without it.

I had purchased the full program several years ago but never got it fully implemented. I have rediscovered how awesome it really is. I have kitchen iPad/Alexa, bedroom iPod, main living room, patio, garage all being served by Airfoil. Pretty excited for this.
FYI, the Alexa is connected via Bluetooth to my Mac Mini, which is serving as the master receiver/server, works great!

My only complaint would be about the amount of delay between pressing play/stop/next on the source device and hearing it throughout the Airfoil network. It may be due to the very old Mac Mini(2008) serving everything. The delay may cause someone to hit the button again thinking they didn’t press it correctly.