How can you stream music from Ubuntu to AirPlay speakers on your network with Ubuntu?

Question

We have AirPlay speakers on our network, that can only be controlled using iTunes for Windows. As I'm booted into Ubuntu, I'd like to be able to control the music being played. Is there any way to do this other than getting a VirtualBox to boot Windows?

Solution

First, install "PulseAudio Preferences" and the PulseAudio RAOP module if you don't already have them:

sudo apt-get install paprefs pulseaudio-module-raop

Now open up paprefs via the launcher (or System > Preferences > PulseAudio Preferences). Now if you enable Make discoverable Apple AirTunes sound devices available locally, you can select AirPlay speakers like any other sound output device!

Comments

[Jonas G. Drange]

Just got this working with AppleTV and box with airplay/airfoil speakers. This answer should be accepted @stevenmc

[Dave Child]

I know this is old, but it came up for me in Google trying to solve this issue. I had to install the raop module as above, and then restart pulseaudio for this to work, with the commands pulseaudio -k and pulseaudio --start.

[Agmenor]

And for the dummies like me, don't forget install PulseAudio Preferences, of course.

[s3v3n]

And if you're wondering what's the package name for Pulseaudio Preferences it is paprefs

[Max N]

Worked for me on a fresh 19.10 but could not get it to work on an upgraded 19.10. No idea why.

[RJVB]

FWIW, I can also not get this to stream to Rogue Amoeba's "Airfoil Satellite" app running on an iPhone (supposed to support the Airplay 1 protocol). I built everything required from source so have the latest versions.

[Kevin Farrugia]

If you are using Ubuntu 20.04 and it is crashing when selecting install, you need to setup a symlink as the folder name is changed. sudo ln -s /usr/lib/pulse-13.99.1 /usr/lib/pulse-13.99 Source: reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/gvtzpb/…

[Ontologiae]

I confirm that it works on Ubuntu 21.10 : sudo ln -s /usr/lib/pulse-15.0+dfsg1/ /usr/lib/pulse-15.0

[KBN]

Audio devices listing works, still no sound though. sigh. I'm on Pop OS 21.10