Stream Music and Movies across Your Home - iConnected: Use AirPlay, iCloud, Apps, and More to Bring Your Apple Devices Together - page 45

the status light is green, and your speakers are attached to it with an audio cable and that they are
also switched on.
Stream audio from your iOS device via AirPlay
While you probably want to stream audio from an app like Music or Podcasts on your iPhone,
iPad, or iPod Touch, you can also send all your iOS device's audio to an AirPlay receiver. You won't
hear system sounds like e-mail alerts over AirPlay, but any sound generated by apps you run or mu-
sic you play will be sent to the connected AirPlay device. This approach can be handy if the app you
are using doesn't offer its own AirPlay output option or if you are switching among a bunch of apps
and want the audio to continually stream to your AirPlay speakers.
It's worth noting that there is a slight delay in streaming audio via AirPlay, often more than three
seconds thanks to high-tech goings-on between your device and the speaker, so using apps that re-
quire the sound to be as immediate as possible (such as music apps or games, for example) might not
be ideal.
Also, AirPlay lets you stream to just one speaker at a time. If you want to stream your iOS
device's audio to multiple AirPlay speakers, there is a workaround using Airfoil described later in this
chapter. And the Remote app, also covered later , lets you play to multiple speakers from a computer's
iTunes library.
Stream audio from iOS apps
If you want to stream audio from an app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you first need to
make sure your app supports AirPlay streaming. (If not, use the multitasking dock's AirPlay control
instead.) The AirPlay button ( ) normally appears near the volume control for an app, as Figure
3-2 shows, or in its settings pop-over and allows you to select the device you want to stream audio to.
AirPlay is most frequently used in audio apps such as Spotify and NPR but more and more apps
are using the feature. For example fitness apps may provide AirPlay support for personal training, so
you can work out while listening to instructions via a speaker, or cooking apps might use audio to ex-
plain recipe steps.