Airfoil: Expanding the capabilities of the standard AirPlay

The AirPlay, of course, a very handy feature streaming audio and video content from your iOS-devices on the Apple TV, or send audio track from your iPhone to the connected AirPort column. In all cases, it works fine and does not require additional configuration. Nevertheless, there are always those who want a little empower standard transfer music to your Apple-device. In this case, we'll discuss the utility Airfoil.

Airfoil - application from the company Rogue Amoeba. "The strange name. Best software "- the developers say about themselves. Well, first we accept, and the second - check. The utility allows you to stream music between your devices. For example, you can put the audio stream from your Mac to the Apple TV or a router AirPort. Important in the application that the stop broadcasting on your Mac it will not be as long as you do not disable it. In addition, if you want to do some sort of 3D-effect in a room, you can send the stream and on the other computers, no matter under what kind of operating system they are working - customers are there for Windows and Linux.

In the most utility, you can control music playback: change the volume on different devices, manage the built-in equalizer, and most importantly - you can broadcast sound from virtually any application. In addition to the standard library iTunes, you have the option to choose the source of sounds. For example, if you open Safari and to include in it the concert viewing on YouTube, then Airfoil you can specify that you need to transmit sound directly from the browser (requires a separate plug-in). This is quite handy if you do not see the video itself, and want to listen to high-quality performance with the acoustics of your columns instead of the standard MacBook.

As an additional feature in AirFoil built a simple browser, with which you can output sound to other devices. Supported services YouTube, Hulu and Netflix, as well as the output audio from local files on your device or a DVD-ROM.

Apart from the main Airfoil utility software company made and supportive - Airfoil Speakers for OS X and Airfoil Speakers Touch for iOS. It can be used to transmit audio from your Mac in addition to iOS-devices. In some cases, it may be useful - I did for myself and did not find, but I admit that to someone it may be necessary.

Unfortunately, the official app for iOS has long abandoned and have not yet been optimized for iPhone 5 / 5C / 5S. But it's free and still copes with its tasks. But there is another - Airfoil Remote, which is more functional, is still supported, but is worth the money.

Airfoil itself is priced at $ 25 for Mac or Windows-version ($ 40 - for a bundle of both versions) and 169 rubles for the version for iOS.

Official website (trial version)