[Android General] Negreac:
For those of you not familiar with Rogue Amoeba they are the developers of a very popular iOS/OS X and now Windows application called Airfoil that is capable of streaming any audio source to any Airplay capable device or any device with their "Airspeaker" app installed on it.

As you can imagine they have had great success with this app. Unfortunately they have no plans to develop a version for android. This was made clear in a post in February located here:

rogueamoeba.com/utm/2012/02/18/sending-any-audio-to-android-devices-via-airplay-with-airfoil/

I also contacted Paul Kafasis (CEO of RA) and his response was the same explaining further that Android actively prevents access to it's audio making it nearly impossible to develop an app for android. I've included our conversation below as well.

ME:

I would like to officially submit my request to have the Airfoil app developed for Android.

With over 300,000,0000 android devices sold worldwide as of February 2012 (over 10 times the amount of iOS devices despite a 16 month head start) and another 850,0000 activated every day the potential here is absolutely enormous.

Please seriously reconsider your decision to not develop for android at this time.

PAUL:

Hi Drew,

It's an interesting idea, but at this time, I'm afraid we have no plans for Airfoil for Android. While Android allows for more access than iOS, it's still nearly impossible to grab another application's audio to send it out. As such, Airfoil for Android is a difficult proposition at best.

Perhaps more likely is an Airfoil Speakers client for Android, enabling you to *receive* audio on Android. We don't have any announced plans for that either, but it's likely what you'd see first, before an Airfoil for Android.

Anyhow, we'll keep our eye on the platform, and see what happens!

ME:

Paul,

Thanks for the quick response. I am not a programmer so I won't pretend to know the complexities involved with grabbing the audio output of the device and redirecting it but I wouldn't think it would be extremely difficult to redirect all audio on the device no different than when you plug in a set of headphones or send your audio over Bluetooth. This is what I believe to be the primary feature of your software. Being able to set each app individually to use airplay as a receiver would be nice but certainly not necessary for initial releases. I would hate to see someone beat you to it since you've done such a great job on your iOS, OS X and Windows applications.

PAUL:

Drew,

You wouldn't think so, no, but it is. Android simply does not make this functionality possible, and actively prevents it.

Anyway,

Where I'm getting with all this is that a lot of people would like to see an app with this capability developed for android. Especially now that a large number of devices (receivers, speakers, etc.) in recent years have started to come with airplay compatibility out of the box. People have been requesting this from Airfoil for over 2 years with no response. I was hoping to get the following answered from someone with an intimate knowledge of the capabilities of android:

1. Is it possible to develop an app that is capable of routing all audio on an android device to an Airplay device?

2. If not possible on a locked device, is it possible on a unlocked/rooted device?

3. Is this something anyone on here would be capable or interested in developing?

Thanks for all the help.