Clever Apps: Airfoil

Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil is one of those apps that you don't really need, but once you have it, you wonder how you ever lived without it.

The premise is reasonably simple: you've got audio on your desktop computer, you want to listen to it somewhere else. For example, you're running Spotify and want to listen to it as you clean around the house. Unless you're paying for Spotify Premium, there's no way to get the music out of Spotify onto your stereo short of plugging the audio of your computer into your stereo.

With Airfoil, you gain a bunch of options. When you run Airfoil, you can send the audio to any Apple TV you've got. You can send the audio to any device running the free Airfoil Speakers application -- another desktop, a laptop in another room, or even your iPhone.

Pretty awesome.

But, for me, the coolest thing with Airfoil happened the other day. I was watching some TV off of our iMac, and was trying to be polite and keep the sound low.

"Self," I thought, "why not use Airfoil and broadcast the sound to your iPhone."

Brilliant. Except, the sound was a couple of seconds behind the video. Which was incredibly annoying.

The smart folks at Rogue Amoeba have it covered, though. Turns out, the Airplay format inserts a 2 second delay. But, if you run the Airfoil Video Player, it will delay the video 2 seconds, so the sound and video are in sync. Including for web videos. So, I laid back and watched some TV off of Hulu, while listening to the sound as it played through my iPhone.

For $25, I continually find uses for Airfoil. It's easily worth it (and it works for PCs too).

iTunes Match: Two Months Later

Back in December, I wrote up a bit about what using iTunes Match was like out of the gate.

There were some gotchas that were a bit vexing at the time:

• Album Art Syncing
• Smart Playlists With "Limits" Not Working on iOS devices
• Play Counts Not Updating Reliably
• No Genius Playlists on iOS devices

Let's take these one one by one

Album Art Syncing

If you're using multiple Macs (or, presumably, a Mac and a PC), this is now about as flawless as it gets. The syncing of songs from one computer to another seems to be nearly perfect. If I update album art on one machine, it now seems to be on the rest within a reasonable amount of time. There was a period of time where that wasn't true, where random songs would be missing artwork when streaming them, but that's just not the case now. If a song has artwork on one machine, it does on every other one. So, one check in the positive column!

However, that's not the case for iOS devices. Now, for a lot of songs, your album artwork will be there. Particularly for songs you play a lot, your iOS device of choice (I'm going to go with iPhone) will download and cache the data. But, if you're playing a playlist or have your Music app on shuffle, you're going to find that a whole bunch of songs don't have album art. The iPhone will go get the album art when you play the song (so the next time it will have album art), but even that seems flaky, as the length of time that the art gets cached seems inconsistent at best.

It does look like (and I should stress that this just seems different to me, it might not be a change) that the Music app will now try to cache artwork ahead of time. In other words, if you've got a playlist, it'll go grab the artwork for the next 5 songs or so, so that they'll be there. I think it does this, smartly, in an attempt to always be ahead of you, so you'll never see the ugly no artwork icon.

But it just doesn't work that well, for a couple of reasons. First, it's just unreliable. I've seen enough times where I'll just get a few songs into a playlist and all of a sudden I'll hit a few songs with no artwork, then a batch with artwork, etc. It just seems to hit or miss.

More importantly, the caching seems to render the Music app nearly inoperable. I'm not sure if it's cases where it doesn't have a network connection, or if it has a weak one, or something else entirely, but when it starts downloading artwork for a larger playlist, you might not be able to use the UI for 15-30 seconds.

Very un-Apple like.

Given that, nightly, the iPhone uploads a backup of itself, is there any reason that, during the same window, it couldn't download all of the artwork you need for your music? My library (about 8000 songs, all in the cloud, 90% with artwork) has about 500MB of artwork. Explain why the iPhone couldn't grab that over wifi when it's plugged in charging at night.

Baffling.

Not-So-Smart Playlists

The "limit" feature that works so well in iTunes on the desktop simply doesn't work on iOS devices.

Well … that's not actually true. Those options used to work, pre-Match. They just don't work now. You'll see people online bitching about playlists having too many songs, or inconsistent songs. This is why.

Your playlist that limits to your 25 most recent songs? It'll probably just have every song you have in it.

Still not fixed. Presumably, this would only be fixed with an iOS update (it must be part of the Music app itself), but you'd think that Apple could set the cloud side of iTunes Match to simply sync over the actual contents of your "50 Best Songs" playlist, as a temporary work around.

No such luck.

There's another smart playlist feature that still doesn't work with iTunes Match on iOS devices, due to …

Play Counts Not Syncing

This is actually broader than play counts, it is really all meta data. And, like album art, it works perfectly on the desktop. I've now got this great system where I can crank through unrated music while I'm working, and when I get home, anything I've rated highly is already in my four- and five-star playlists. It's really, really nice.

But it doesn't work for iOS devices. At all. Or, almost at all.

Sometimes, the first track in a playlist that you listen to on an iOS device will update it's play count. Not it's last played date. Just the play count. And only sometimes. And only the first song. Bizarre.

This obviously contributes to the smart playlist problem. If you've got a "Radio" playlist like I do (where it'll play songs that haven't been played in a while), these just don't work. Until I listen to those songs on a desktop, they will haunt me in the Radio playlist, showing up over and over again, even though I've heard them 50 times.

No Genius Playlists on iOS Devices

Nope, still don't work.

So, where do we stand?

Well, if you're a desktop user with multiple computers, iTunes Match is flawless. It really is. Stuff. Just. Works. It's very Apple-like, which is something you couldn't say 8 weeks ago.

Actually, there's still one problem with the desktop experience …

The iTunes Match error messages suck. Flat out suck. When you hit a song that they can't handle, you don't get a good explanation why, and in the worst case, sometimes Match will sit there and churn for as long as you'll let it. In my case, that was until my iMac crashed (because I hadn't noticed it had been going for a day or so).

I do believe, though, that this is the exception. That most folks with your average iTunes setup are going to be just fine.

Back to our regularly scheduled summary …

So, as I was saying, if you're a desktop user (a laptop and an iMac, or a couple of laptops, or a Mac and a PC), iTunes Match is everything it is supposed to be when you bought it.

If you're an iOS user, there are still some problems, and I don't expect these problems will be resolved until we get a new build of iOS (5.1?). They're not necessarily load or cloud issues; they seem to be fundamental application issues that need to be resolved.

And I'm optimistic that these will get resolved. Some of them (the metadata syncing) just seem like bugs, not fundamentally unfixable issues. There's nothing on the list that jumps out as challenging engineering (other than the scale).

Even with the stuff that works intermittently, or not at all, iTunes Match is still worth it, even just as a backup of your music, a way to play music on your Apple TV without having to keep a computer on, and a way to get higher quality versions of the crappy music you ripped in 1998.

Or maybe you don't need a higher quality version of "… Baby One More Time". To each their own. I suppose.

Goals for Twenty-Twelve

After spewing out twelve posts in about 4 days to catch up on my Top 10 Songs of 2011, I thought a bit about what I'd like to get out of my site over the next year.

It's been an interesting year for me, as my site actually went through a period where it got real traffic (that's what you get when you write about a new Apple technology). My post on iTunes Match got the most traffic I've ever gotten, something like 1200 uniques to this point, which is a couple of orders of magnitude more than I normally do. 1200 uniques isn't a lot, but it is when you're used to only getting read by friends and family (hi guys!). I kind of enjoyed it, so I think one of my goals is to write a bit more about techie/Apple stuff this year, see if I can keep up that momentum.

I think it'd probably also be smart to write a bit more about music. With Spotify and MOG and Rdio, there's sort of no excuse to not be able to at least try out music, so I'll pass more of that along as I come across it.

Finally, I think it's time for ryantoohil.com to get a makeover. That's on the todo list for this year, and I'll try to post bits and pieces about my makeover as I go.

Top 10 Songs of 2011: #1 Typhoon - The Honest Truth

I really do just love this song. The Oregon-based band sounds a bit like debut album-Fanfarlo or Arcade Fire if you saw them in a tiny venue. One voice, a bunch of instruments, some plaintive lyrics.

If that's all this song was, it'd probably still make my top 10.

But that's not all there is. It's the little touches.

The quiet voices that start the song before the guitar kicks in.
The horns coming in and making the whole thing seem bigger.
How simple the song seems with the guitar and drum beat and horns all echoing the simple, repetitive lyrics.
How wrong you are to think the song is simple, as it opens up both vocally and sonically.
How the entire song is preamble to the last 90 seconds.
The first female backing vocal just tipping the bands hand.
The chorus.

The final minute of this song is one of the most wondrous minutes of music in the past few years. There's no way you don't hear this song and smile. And what more can you ask for from a little bit of music?

Amazon's little 30 second preview doesn't do this song justice, so here's a live version from Letterman. You'll get goosebumps.

Top 10 Songs of 2011: #2 Bon Iver - Calgary

Chances are, if you turned on the radio or TV this year, you heard or saw Bon Iver. The band (well, Justin Vernon) popped up performing on pretty much every late night show, The Colbert Report, etc. His songs made it from alternative radio to pop radio to everything in between. He hung with Kanye.

And it wasn't just for show. Bon Iver (the album is self-titled) was a phenomenal album. Different from the quiet folky songs of the previous releases, but no so different that it wasn't Bon Iver. The sound has evolved. It's got a few more instruments, maybe it's a little brighter; but it's still the same falsetto, it feels just as sparse at times.

"Calgary", for my money, is the track off the album, though honestly, you could have picked almost any song (it's really is a remarkable album). Here, you have the falsetto, leading into an almost 80s drum beat, on top of some synths. It feels small, even though you know it's not. But as you pass the halfway point, you get the slightly offkey guitars, and the song changes a bit. Just a bit. The 80s sound drops out and it feels like an acoustic song that isn't acoustic.

I don't know how to describe it. I think that's how I can describe a lot of the tracks off of Bon Iver. I can't tell you why they're different. I can just tell you they are.

Top 10 Songs of 2011: #3 The Joy Formidable - Whirring

The last of our female fronted bands, this is the biggest rock song on the list. It's a big and brash song that sort of starts out like a loud pop song that could have been made for Katy Perry. Then it just blows up into this insane mess of guitars, drums, bass, and everything else good that should be in a rock song. It's so driving that you can't help but play the bass drum with your foot. You will, I guarantee it. There's a 2 minute coda to the song that is needlessly excessive, but by the time you get there, the band has earned it.

This is a song that wouldn't sound nearly as good with a male vocal. It's a song built on the dichotomy of this big male guitar and drum sounds next to a female voice. And it works incredibly well on the entirety of The Big Roar, which is The Joy Formidable's debut album.

Maybe seeing is believing …

Top 10 Songs of 2011: #4 Cults - You Know What I Mean

Hey, another female fronted band (this isn't the last on the list)! Cults were sort of the music blog darlings of 2010-11, with their ridiculous good songs "Go Outside" and "Abducted". Another duo, this is 60s and 70s pop music drenched in today's production to come out with a sound that you'd be hard pressed to pinpoint in era.

It's also really good. This track stands out, in my mind, because of how blatantly it rips off "Where Did Our Love Go?" Normally, that'd be a bad thing, but it is so overtly borrowed, yet so incredibly different, that you can't help but feel like this is the modern successor to that song.

At 2 and a half minutes, it's this perfect, fuzzy, slow, sort of haunting song that has these little moments of power that pop up every 30 seconds or so. It's short enough (like most Cults songs) that it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Top 10 Songs of 2011: #5 Wye Oak - Civilian

At this point, a pattern has emerged. With St. Vincent and Florence + the Machines as predecessors (and Mates of State, if you want to pull in the Honorable Mentions), we're on our 3rd female fronted rock bands. This is also another song that fills that previously mentioned niche of starting out slow and quiet and slowly building until it breaks out.

The insane part of it, when you hear it break out, you have no idea that Wye Oak is a duo. The sound is so much bigger and fuller. The mix of this album is truly great, putting sounds and instruments in places that fill your ears and make them seem so sprawling.

The Onion A.V. Club named this album the best of the year, and I don't think that's a stretch. It's a really good record (there are a few more stellar tracks) and one that will probably get a lot more notoriety in 2012 when Wye Oak blow up.

Top 10 Songs of 2011: #6 Fountains of Wayne - The Summer Place

This song could have easily come out on Fountains of Wayne's self-titled debut album, on its follow up Utopia Parkway, or (with a bit more sheen) on Welcome, Interstate Managers. Which is to say, it would have fit in perfectly on three of the shiniest, most perfect pop albums of the last 15 years.

There are a few keys to a great Fountains of Wayne song:

• Some pretty specific details (think "Radiation Vibe", "Stacy's Mom", "Red Dragon Tattoo")
• A super hummable hook (everybody can still sing "Stacy's Mom", and I bet if you heard "Denise" once you'd know it for life)
• Shiny guitars

"The Summer Place" has all three elements in spades.

Details

She's been afraid of the Cuisinart since 1977
Now when she opens up the house
Well, she won't set foot in the kitchen

Hummable Hook

M-i-i-ind

Shiny Guitars
The song starts out with about 20 seconds of danceable guitar riffs. What more do you want?

Sky Full of Holes was a really great return to form by Fountains of Wayne. There are probably 3 or 4 more songs I could have chosen off the album. It's worth the listen.

Top 10 Songs of 2011: #7 St. Vincent - Cruel

It's taken me a while to get on the bandwagon. I had sort of lumped St. Vincent (Annie Clark) in the Joanna Newsom category, the "I sing pretty and play unique orchestral music." Which is good, but tends not to be something that I really dig.

But, I was wrong. St. Vincent is a rock star. It wasn't until I listened to all of Strange Mercy that it clicked for me. If you strip away the music, it's a really pretty song. It could completely get by purely a cappella. Then you listen closer and realize that, while she's singing the chorus, it's not just a synth she's singing over, but also her guitar. The song is a rock song, and the first time it breaks into a reasonably unexpected guitar solo, your brain switches from "this song is pretty" to "Oh, I get it now!"

It's a 3 and a half minute rock song, with strings, pretty vocals, and some really good guitar. What's not to like?

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