For many years now, Apple have been selling the Airport Express, a small portable unit which can plug into a power point to create a simple wireless network.

One of the most popular uses of this device is to stream an iTunes library wirelessly from a desktop or laptop to a home stereo (potentially at the other end of the house / building).

This is a setup I enjoy at home myself, but getting it to work correctly is not always as "plug and play" as you would hope. My stable setup these days is the result of many bleary-eyed, late night Google searches for ways to improve signal strength and decrease dropouts.

If you are reading this post with similar trouble, hoping for some guiding light, I won't even begin to cover off all the potential solutions that have been offered over time (which you would likely have read to exhaustion already!).

However, other than the usual suspects of improving line of sight between your sending and receiving devices (minimizing distance and walls between the two), checking you have followed correct setup procedure, ensuring security settings are consistent between sending and receiving devices, not having your microwave running or any other electrical / magnetic interference nearby, etc etc, there is a less hit and miss opportunity to improve your streaming results...

The Channel your WiFi connection is transmitting on can be easily crowded by other communications nearby, including neighbour's WiFi networks and other equipment. The good news is, free tools are available to help check which WiFi channels provide greatest strength and least noise in your area. I have successfully used iStumbler for Mac though there are several other options including Windows-based solutions such as NetStumbler.

In summary these tools will scan and discover the wireless devices and networks having an impact on your own signal strength, giving you a quantifiable reason to choose one channel over another rather than trying each transmission channel in turn and hoping it makes a difference!

After a recent conversation with someone who had tried everything but never heard of this avenue, I thought it would be worth mentioning here.

Hope this helps you keep the music flowing nice and cleanly from your desktop / laptop to your remote speakers. Nothing is more frustrating than wireless audio dropouts!