[Icecast] Just need sound and/or a stream

[sci-fi at hush.ai]

Hi,

On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 23:44:22 -0500,
Scott R Ehrlich <scott at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> Well, now that I've got Icecast2 and Oddcast v3 apparently
> talking, and Oddcast's sound meter shows a level from my
> scanner, I'm trying to get the audio to stream.

For the laptop, you didn't mention a model or platform.  I have
vague awareness of some x86 hardware in that there may be BIOS
or o.s. settings to control how 'high' the mic input is set, so
it maybe _can_ become a 'line-in' jack, and of course you'll
still need the physical connection cable (and adaptors if any)
you're using.  For Mac laptops as well as desktops (towers), I
am *very* sure the standard 1/8-inch jack is indeed line-level
input and nothing lower (not more sensitive) -- on older Mac
models you can use Apple's specially-designed (semi-amplified
powered) microphone which has a longer 'tip' on its 1/8-inch
plug, but that's not what you're doing so I digress...

> Winamp on the server won't connect.  Quicktime on my Mac will
> connect, but there is no network activity after the connect,
> nor any white noise (quelch is open for audio testing).
> 
> Once these are fixed, I think the server will be complete.
> 
> Help/insight welcome.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Scott

I can try helping with Quicktime Player.

I'm not sure what kind of audio compression you're trying to
feed into IC2 ("encoder" doesn't quite explain it: there _is_
loss in most encoders ;) ).

Quicktime Player might need a kludge to play some types of
streams.  Apple's docpage for this is at 
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QT6WhatsNew/Chap
1/chapter_1_section_58.html>:
"... you must substitute 'icy://' for 'http://' in the URL of a
stream.  Do this only for streams, not for .pls files."

The latest Xiph QT plugins _will_ let us listen to ogg streams
with the 'http://server:port/mount.ogg' type URL -- OTOH
QTPlayer gets terribly mixed-up if you make it read the .m3u or
..pls file for such streams.  At any rate, QTPlayer simply stops
playing when the track-info changes (the little QTPlayer window
title no longer matches the song-name etc.).  But iTunes still
won't work either way at all with ogg streams (~sigh~).

Forget using any QT-based player for AAC[+] streams (yes
including iTunes).

With the working streams, I like to use the QTPlayer *Pro*
feature Cmd+J "Show Movie Properties" to show me the buffering
going on inside it while playing.  This might help to figure out
what sysctl settings to change on both ends (server & player).

But despite Apple's "kitchen sink" approach in QT, and since the
open source projects are getting better & better, I use my own
recent (SVN) builds of mplayer & ffmpeg and all associated libs
etc. (liba52 for AC3, FAAC+FAAD for AAC, and so on) to test and
monitor streams.

When I was netcasting the LiftedRadio live gigs, I used jackd
(sometimes jackdmp) and darkice on PowerMac towers to grab the
audio and feed into IC-2.3.1 in various formats (mainly mp3 via
LAME, and Ogg/Vorbis, never could get AAC working quite right,
but it might be because mplayer was buggy in that area back
then).  Yes again I built the binaries myself from source, it's
really the only way to go even tho it's a lot of work.  ;)
(p.s. the FM station was sold-off, the LiftedRadio DJs are still
doing gigs but not anywhere we can get a live feed...).

I hope this helps somehow.





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