Ethernet Wireless Hard Drive Music Server


Is anyone using an ethernet hard drive connected to their Airport Base Station to act as a wireless music server? I'm thinking of doing just that but wondered if the speed of the Airport interface delivering an ethernet connection wirelessly is going to be fast enough to provide uninterrupted music? I'm pretty sure I have the most recent Airport Base Station, or at least know it's 802.11g compatible. Not sure of the actual transfer rate though. I'd be using an ethernet hard drive such as this Lacie ethernet hard drive. With ethernet the transfer is limited to 100mb/s. I'm not sure what the minimum streaming rate for itunes files are, and whether or not that rate varies with the file type (I use WAV and Apple Lossless). I would think that the critical, limiting link would be the wireless streaming rate. Is there somewhere in the Mac OSX.4 operating system to check the actual rate your Airport is streaming data?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Marco
jax2

Showing 1 response by mlsstl

Your maximum streaming rate from an uncompressed CD is 1.4 Mbps. Even the old 802.11b speed (10 Mpbs) is adequate so the g is more than fine. If you wish to play any of the lossy compressed file formats you're even better off since those bit rates tend to run from 128 to 320 Kbps.

Of course, this assumes two things. First of all the device that receives the music data stream should be buffered. This would allow momentary hiccups (due to other traffic on the connection) to be handled. The second item is that you are not running a massive amount of other traffic on the network. Of course, that could also interfere with a wired connection. However, I've got six devices sharing my home network and have never had an interruption issue while playing my SB3.