stream mp3's with winamp

[ripken204]

how to i stream mp3's with winamp over the internet so i can hear my music from a remote location? any detailed guides would be highly appreciated.

[CoffeeFiend]

Shoutcast is one way (the only way I've tried or know of using winamp, but there's others like JetCast - never tried them though). Just run the winamp plugin and server, and you're pretty much done (forward port 8080, VPN in or whatever you want to connect to it over the internet)

As for guides, I don't think you'll need any, it's pretty straightforward (and google can surely find lots of stuff).

As long as you have enough bandwidth to spare (if you have too many listeners, then you need a multicast server with enough BW)

Edited January 17, 2007 by crahak

[ripken204]

its not straightforward, thats the thing. i try to run the shoutcast server but i cant get anything to connect to it, im just trying to get localhost to connect to it for now.

if i type the url into my browser i get

ICY 401 Service Unavailable icy-notice1:
SHOUTcast Distributed Network Audio Server/win32 v1.9.7
icy-notice2:The resource requested is currently unavailable

and if i try to connect with an audio player i get this in the server box

<01/17/07@06:25:27> [dest: 127.0.0.1] server unavailable, disconnecting

Edited January 17, 2007 by ripken204

[CoffeeFiend]

Alright. Here's a 5 minute guide (written as I reinstalled it):

-Install SHOUTcast Server

-Install Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP (Winamp plug-in)

-Start SHOUTcast Server

-Start Winamp

-In Winamp, Options > Preferences > DSP/Effect, select Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP (and close config screen)

-In the various tabs of the Source DSP, select the options you want (we'll use output 1 for everything):

In this case we'll assume a single stream so we can select a fairly high bitrate (one user, fast-ish connection), so under the "Encoder" tab we pick 128/44.1/stereo (less if your connection can't handle it, or if you just like bad sound quality)

Go back to the Output tab (still under the source DSP), change credentials if required (should not be needed unless you changed something in the server install) and hit connect.

-Hit play in winamp (whatever you want to stream)

Tada! You're now streaming. The status should have a counter with a number of bytes increasing.

Now open Winamp on the PC that will do the listening. Under playlist, hit add > URL > ip_of_computer_doing_the_streaming_here:8000

Try to play it - should work fine.

That's all there is to it! Well, you might want to change default passwords, various settings and what not, but that's all one has to do to get it working on a basic setup.

And yes, there will be lag between both PCs (this is why I don't use it anymore, I was kinda hoping to use it for whole-house audio at first, but the lag was WAY too bad for that). You can also use a DSP stacker to continue using whatever DSP you might have been using in the first place (like DFX) - I've been using MuchFX2 for ages and it's works great.

BTW, there are many other streaming solutions which are quite simple too (like Windows Media Server 9 if you've got a Win2003 box i.e. mms:// protocol, using WMP or such as a player)

Edited January 17, 2007 by crahak

[ripken204]

thank you so much! and ya i notice the lag, kinda sucks but hey, it works. its only about a 5sec delay, but thats while im running it on localhost, its prolly alot worse over the internet.

whats even sweeter is that i found this xhtml module which puts all of the songs in the playlist to an xhtml document and i can click on a song to play off of the xhtml and it will play. so i can pick which song i want to play when im not home

im also going to try to find a solution using apache... anyone know a way? all i can find is linux modules for it.

Edited January 17, 2007 by ripken204