[Icecast] Config and other areas of struggle

[Damien Sykes-Lindley]

Hi there,
I am relatively new in the field of server administration, so please do bear with me if my question has an answer which seems blatantly obvious.
I recently installed the latest Icecast onto my machine and read the documentation in order to find out how to configure the server. Both the information in the docs, and even the example config file, seemed reasonablly self-explanatory.
After successfully configuring and starting the server I decided to see if I could get something to stream. I started up my streamer and was able to successfully connect.
Then I decided to see whether I could connect to the stream as a listener. Here's where the problems started. My media player refused point blank to connect to the stream.
I then tried accessing the stream directly from the url and found to my surprise that the stream was working. Since my browser has stream playback support, it started playing straight away.
Once I was pretty sure that I could connect, albeit in a nonstandard way, to my stream and server interface on localhost, I then decided to see if my stream was being broadcast to the world. Unfortunately that failed in all areas. Despite having forwarded my ports through my router, tried all sorts of combinations, with many more references to the documentation and server/streamer restarts, I could not access it through my domain address whatsoever.
I then attempted to reconfigure the server hostname to my domain and the streamer to point to my domain, but that failed. The streamer wouldn't even connect.
At this point I’m out of ideas and am beginning to feel, if I may use this expression, crushed by the ice!
So, I'm wondering:
1. Playback: I initially thought this was to do with extensions, but since I was encoding in mp3, I didn't think an extension was needed. Could there be any other reason as to why my browser is playing but my media player isn't?
2. Mountpoints: I noticed that when configuring, mountpoints were only either used for Shoutcast compatibility or for more advanced control. Does the server simply create the mountpoint specified in the stream settings?
3. Format: Again, I noticed that the server has no way to specify what format it needs to use. Is that also defined by the stream somehow?
4. Outside world: Is this something to do with bound addresses and the like? I can't imagine it somehow, because I think all those are to do with your hosts file and again, the documentation said this was an advanced topic. If not then what else, if anything, am I missing?
5. 32 v. 64 bit: I am running a 64-bit system but could only find a 32-bit Icecast. Does this matter?

System configuration looks like this:
OS: Windows 7 64-bit (SP1 Build 7601)
Browser: Mozilla Firefox 47.0.1
Icecast: 2.4.3
Streamer: SAM 3.8.3 alongside Station Playlist Studio 5.11
Media player: Winamp 5.7.3323

Any help appreciated.
Thanks.
Damien.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast/attachments/20160722/3c60700e/attachment.htm>