[Re: [icecast] icecast2 ??]

[gtgbr at gmx.net]

Aaron Gaudio wrote:
> If icecast.org is so broken, then someone ought to do what was
> suggested on the list in November (looking through the archives):
> put it out of its misery. Why are there no "official" releases?

I already told you, there *are* official releases (or, to be exact, one
release), but icecast.org hasn't seen an update due to problems. Don't
you think that Michael Smith, for example, would be happy to finally get
his hard work on Icecast2 "out there" so people can find it in a more
prominent place? These are problems neither you nor I can help with,
Xiph.org does that, when they have the time. Believe it or not, there's
more important stuff than Icecast2 - and those who want it can get it,
they just have to bother themselves a little more than usual.

> That may be, but if the only "official" source I have to retrieve it
> from is CVS, then it is not ready for prime time, no matter what its
> stability may or may not be. First of all, grabbing the latest CVS

You're just trolling. Who cares? Would you trust a network engineer with
decades of experience, or would he have to buy himself a shiny
certificate for $1000? This "official"-blah is pointless, it's the
product and the fact that it's released that matter.

Do you *demand* that you get something for free, officially?

> versions, then I don't know about them... why? because there's no
> documentation of what to actually get from CVS.

http://www.xiph.org/cvs.html - check out the 'icecast' module. If you're
having trouble (CVS checkout hangs), either upgrade your client or don't
use the -z parameter (I prefer the latter solution).

> for quite a long time, but they never called it released until 1.0
> came out.

I never said that it's a final release, I said "alpha release". It's not
feature complete. It's not been in beta, yet. It does, what it does,
with great reliability and performance. It does enough to be useful for
most potential users at this point already.

> The problem is, without having enough people running it, such stories
> are allegorical. And there cannot be many people running it, judging
> from the lack of servers listed in the icecast.org directory server
> (unless everyone just suddenly became shy).

There's no directory server supporting Icecast2 servers. I also wouldn't
ever announce my stream on such a server, but maybe that's just me.
(When I stream, then it's just a couple hours for friends that I know
personally)

> > I suggest you give it a try. Streaming Vorbis is fun. If you happen have
> I'm not all that interested in streaming vorbis at this time, because
> I have more mp3s than I do oggs. It's simpler for me to stream mp3s.

Unless you're owning only low-bitrate MP3s, you'd still get more quality
per bitrate with Vorbis (e.g. by re-encoding from 192kbps MP3 to -q 1
Vorbis (~80kbps) or lower). Especially if you're targeting at low
bitrates (lower than in my example).

> Does icecast2 only stream vorbis? If that's the case, then icecast1

It does both Vorbis and MP3. I don't know about its MP3 streaming
features, but stuff like metadata etc all works for Vorbis.

> will never be obsolete so long as people want to stream mp3s (without
> reencoding to ogg-- which introduces more loss into the stream). From

Well, I wouldn't re-encode from, say 24kbps MP3 to 24kbps Vorbis. That
makes no sense - but if your MP3s are of sufficient quality, this
shouldn't matter much.

> my little understanding of what exactly icecast2 does (hobbled together
> from searches through the list archives, since there is no useful
> webpage information).

Icecast2 does nothing but relay. It doesn't re-encode from Vorbis to MP3
or vice versa, that's the source client's job. For example Ices2.

> > Uh, does any directory server still work? The Shoutcast people didn't
> yp.mp3.de still works, although it does not display as much detail

Nice, I wonder if Icecast2 can announce a Vorbis stream there. :)
Probably worth a try ... I don't know if Icecast2's directory server
support works in the first place, since that's what I always disable
(standard values don't work (yet) because of known reasons) first. Hmhm.

<p>Moritz
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