Airplay - good/ok/problematic/rubbish?

ok. Just to be clear this is a bit of a rant, but not aimed at anyone on here. Just venting my frustration and possibly encouraging some feedback or help in my case.
Firstly, I have used airplay for a number of years, with varying degrees of success.
As of today, I am totally and utterly fed up with the increasing drop-outs I am experiencing.
I have:
iTunes on a 2007 iMac running Snow leopard ( Can't upgrade OS due to Windows XP).
Apple TV2 - just upgraded firmware today.
Airport Extreme
Airport Express
Playing music to my Hi-fi via the Apple TV, as I said is now sporadic.
I wish I knew why.
Some days it's perfect, days like today, I just turned it all off and did something else.
I am running a 5Ghz network to try to eradicate any interference.
Is anyone else as frustrated as I am, or is it just me?
If I can find a solution I would be very happy, otherwise I will have to find something that works most of the time.
Discuss (Please)

I can't be certain, but the weak link there looks to be the 2007 iMac. How much RAM on that? How full is the HD? Possibly it needs (and I don't normally recommend this, but for this particular case) a defragging?

Any other computers on the same network stealing bandwidth?

Hello Chas_m,
iMac has 50% of it's 500Gig hard drive free, and has 4Gig of ram.
By a lot of people's standards, this iMac is very lightly used.
As I said previously, it has worked fine in the past, but as of now it's terrible.

Exactly every airplay issue I have had has been because of the device where the media originates. Your network throughput is likely more than sufficient to handle the stream but the sending device has to send it properly.

Just my experience.

It's worth running iStumbler to check for nearby wifi conflicts. It's quick and free and if nothing else will rule out something else.

mrplow said:

It's worth running iStumbler to check for nearby wifi conflicts. It's quick and free and if nothing else will rule out something else.

Click to expand...

Hi MrPlow,
If you mean channel conflicts, then I believe I am OK. I am running a 5Ghz network on channel 100 and nobody round here uses that channel.