How to stream music in my home network?

lucmove · 01-11-2012, 06:20 PM

My friend's desktop runs Windows and is connected to a good sound kit of amplifier and loudspeakers. But her music collection is kind of disappointing.

My notebook runs Linux and has an excellent music collection, but it's just a notebook hooked up to nothing and sounds like crap.

Can I stream music from my notebook so her Windows computer can play my music through the good speakers? How? What software will do that?

realbluntz · 01-11-2012, 06:36 PM

Not the 'streaming media' solution you may be asking for but possibly a better solution:
http://www.hackorama.com/network/samba.shtml

lucmove · 01-11-2012, 08:51 PM

I think Samba is indeed not quite the kind of solution I want.

After much searching, I am testing gnump3d. It's half good. It runs as a daemon on my notebook and lets my friend browse my collection and play music. That's nice.

But I think I would rather do the opposite and "push" the songs, i.e. my friend's machine would run some media player "tuned" to my "radio station" all the time, and I would DJ the songs from my notebook. Imagine me on the couch with laptop on my legs broadcasting the songs to the desktop and amplified loudspeakers. I still haven't found a good way to accomplish that.

Any more help, please?

Dark_Helmet · 01-11-2012, 08:57 PM

Setting up a Windows network drive with Samba is a quick and easy way to deal with it.

If you are dead-set on a streaming solution, there are two that come to mind:
gnump3d
icecast

I have a little experience with both, but there are others, I'm certain.

Gnump3d gives a web-based presentation. You click through the filesystem and can stream individual songs, entire directories, and I think it had playlist support last time I looked at it.

Icecast is more of a streaming "radio station" as I recall--less direct end-user control. You can set up multiple "stations" at the server and there might have been some sort of control mechanism without having to fiddle with the server--not sure. Again, that was my impression the last time I messed with it.

EDIT:
LOL - I was typing my post while you were typing yours. And it's a bit funny that you hit gnump3d... and then asked for a "radio station." Heh... where's my wallet, I need to buy a lottery ticket... unless you're going to buy one as well

lucmove · 01-11-2012, 09:59 PM

I am about to pull my hair here!

I have installed and configured icecast2, it seems to be running fine, I can view the Web-based admin interface both on my computer and the remote computer. I have also read three HOWTOs and configured icecast2 all good and proper.

Now, how the hell do I STREAM music into it so it is broadcast? All documents I run into seem to just absolutely take that for granted and brazenly SKIP that part of the explanation.

See, for example, this official documentation:

Quote:

There are two major components involved: the streaming server (icecast in this case) and the source client. The icecast server will be the place where all listeners of your station will connect. The source client (in general) runs on a separate machine than icecast, but does not necessarily need to. Source clients send the content to icecast and provide the stream data (encoded audio) that is then relayed out to listeners by icecast.

It is important to note that not all source clients work with icecast2. You will need to check to make sure that icecast2 is supported by your chosen source client.

(...)

Now that the icecast server is started you must now configure your source client. The information you will need for the source client is the following :

IP address and Port of the icecast server - both of these come from <listen-socket>
source password - from <source-password>

Additionally, you will need to choose a mountpoint and specify this in the source client. Icecast does not need to know about each mount point (although you can configure settings for specific mountpoint - this is covered under Advanced configuration) there are, however, some points to mention regarding mountpoints. All Ogg Vorbis streams should have mountpoints that end in .ogg (i,e. /mystream.ogg). This is due to the lazy way most media players infer the type of stream. MP3 streams usually do not contain an extension (/mystream). Mount points also should not contain any spaces or odd characters (again due to the lazy way many of the media players are coded).

Once you have configured your source client, you should be able to connect it to the icecast server. Verify that it is connected by hitting the stats.xml URL that was mentioned above.

Now that you have the source connnected, listening to the stream involves simply opening the appropriate following URL in a browser: http://yourip:port/mounpointyouspecified.m3u.

SLEIGHT OF HAND! The documentation is pretty sly, begins to ellaborate on this so-called "source", then blah blah blah, then suddenly makes it sound like the this magic "source" thing is all set, fine and dandy, ready to crank out the tunes. But never does it mention:

- WHAT source?
- WHERE?
- HOW?
- UH?!!!
- What the...?

Can someone please help?

Dark_Helmet · 01-11-2012, 10:02 PM

Give me a few minutes (or more

)

It's been a while, but I downloaded and reinstalled. I'll see what I can do about getting it running and share config stuff once I do.

As I recall, a "source" is defined in the icecast2 config file. Again, my memory is fuzzy since it's been a while, but the syntax of the source element may define a playlist/directory, or something of that nature.

Like I said, I'll be back once I get it going again...

Dark_Helmet · 01-11-2012, 11:13 PM

Yeah, now I remember. Icecast was a little funky to setup.

Ok, a source is just that... an audio source. When I first installed icecast, I figured it would handle that itself. Well, not so much. Icecast handles the distribution/client connections--not the music itself.

To that end, icecast needs a "source" to supply it with something to stream to clients.

Enter various utilities (you can see some descriptions here)

I assume your collection is full of mp3s. So you would need a source generator that supports mp3. On that list, two I saw that support mp3 are Muse and Icegenerator. I saw that Muse is included in Debian's package manager--icegenerator was not.

That said, icegenerator was easier for me to download and configure. Muse installed (along with Qt dependencies--which were not small), but would not run properly for some reason. Icegenerator ran first-time.

Anyway, Muse appears to have a nicer interface, but like I said, I couldn't get it to run. So I have no idea how well it works.

Icegenerator takes a relatively simple xml config file (separate from Icecast's). There is a sample config provided that is simple to follow. Just make sure the password for sources (that you set in icecast's config) is consistent between the two programs. Give one or more directories in the path to mp3s, run icegenerator with "-f /path/to/icegenerator.conf", and when you go to your icecast server's web page, you should see that it's "broadcasting." Connect with whatever client you want...

EDIT:
And BTW, if you use icegenerator, you'll need to install the "-dev" packages for whatever libshout you have. For me, on an Ubuntu 10.04 server, "sudo apt-get install libshout3-dev" and then do the ./configure, make, make install...

EDIT2:
As an alternative, you might try a shoutcast server: download page
I have no experience running a shoutcast server. In addition, that download page uses language such as:

Quote:

With the FREE SHOUTcast broadcasting tools you too can start your own SHOUTcast Radio station and become part of one of the largest directory of radio stations on the web.

I don't know whether the software gives you the option NOT publish in the online directory of stations or not. I would hope so, but again, I've never used it.

EDIT3:
Last edit, I promise... Just in case you're overwhelmed with configuring icecast2, icegenerator/Muse, and getting a client to connect... you can run multiple instances of icegenerator, with each instance pointing to a different config file, which would allow different streams of music.

And a simple way to connect a client (e.g. Winamp), go to the icecast page on the server, and there should be a section displayed for each stream. For each active stream, there should be a "M3U" and "XSPF" link. All I had to do was click the "M3U" link and a popup should ask what you want to open the file with (e.g. Winamp)

Hope this gets you what you were looking for.

EDIT4:
Ok, so I lied about the last edit. Just FYI: I took a look at the code for icegenerator and... wow. I'm not one to criticize other people's code--especially code identified as pre-release--but it could be cleaned up and improved quickly. I thought an extremely simple way to improve it would be to add the ability for icegenerator to invoke an external program to provide the full path for the next song to play. Once you do that, then a your source can get creative with dynamic play lists. I'm going to see about making some changes.

lucmove · 01-12-2012, 01:58 PM

Geez, Dark_Helmet, I am really grateful for all the work you had to write this up for me. You are one generous and helpful fellow forum member.

But I guess I will just have to give up on the whole thing. I spent the whole day today reading docs, compiling stuff and making the idea work somehow. And I failed. Here is the sob story:

- I have icecast2 probably properly configured, and running. I can see it on the Web interface at localhost, and I can see the same Web interface on the remote computer. But I still need the so-called "source client" that will actually play music, the content.

- I could get Ices 0.4 to compile. But I can't figure out how to use it. The manual is looooong... That will be my last hope.

- I found a .deb binary for MuSE. It runs, but I couldn't figure out how to make it stream anything, even after reading a lot of documentation. At any rate, this version I got will only stream Ogg Vorbis files, which is useless for me. I only use MP3 files, period. I actually resent it whenever anyone tries to shove the .ogg format down my throat.

- Icegenerator: refuses to compile. It throws a long list of error messages all complaining about "streamer.cpp: undefined reference to shout_something". I already had libshout3 and libshout3-dev installed. That didn't help. So I downloaded, compiled and installed libshout2 from the icecast site, but that didn't help either.

I HATE compiling stuff, they don't work most of the time, I have no patience for stuff that is distributed broken like that. I feel like someone is making a fool of me and laughing at my vain attempt to make it work.

- Darkice: it is available in the Ubuntu repository, but how does it work??? I run it and it complains about the lack of a configuration file /etc/darkice.cfg, which is not installed. Instead, it installs /etc/default/darkice, which is extremely small and is not enough to make Darkice run when copied as /etc/darkice.cfg. The content of 'man darkice' is incredibly small too, I can't learn how to use it with such little documentation.

- Googling tells me that streaming with VLC should be quick and simple, but I have been unable to make it work.

Bottom line: after one day and a half of intense searching and experimenting, I just can't find any pleasure in the project anymore. Just screw this. It's too much work and no reward. I don't really need this crap to listen to some music.

But still, I really appreciate the help.

Dark_Helmet · 01-12-2012, 02:25 PM

I can understand the frustration.

I'll try to install ices 0.4 and give you a sample config file.

Dark_Helmet · 01-12-2012, 03:19 PM

Piece of cake!

This will be step-by-step just to make sure we don't lose coordination.

When compiling ices, make sure you have the "-dev" packages for libxml installed. For my Ubuntu system:

Code:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev

You might also want Python/Perl dev packages installed if you want support for those extras. Honestly, I don't know what they provide, but my guess would be they could be used for smart song selection. For me:

Code:

sudo apt-get install python2.6-dev

Note: You technically don't need to install any of the above (from what I can tell). You need the XML support to read in ices configuration files in XML format. If you don't have XML support, the program appears to default to a basic "playlist" mode and searches for "playlist.txt" in the directory you launch ices from.

Back to compiling... Unpack the ices sources:

Code:

cd /tmp
tar xvzf ~/Downloads/ices-0.4.tar.gz
cd ices-0.4

configure the package. I almost always add a "--prefix" option to install locally to a user directory. Not required though

Code:

./configure --prefix=${HOME}/local
<output snip>
Compiling with:  -I/usr/include/libxml2 -I/usr/include/python2.6 -g -O2 -Wall -I/usr/include -pthread
Linking with:  -L/usr/lib/python2.6/config  -lshout   -lxml2 -lpython2.6 -lpthread -ldl  -lutil -lm -lpthread -ldl  -lutil  
Features:
  XML     : yes
  Python  : yes
  Perl    : no
  LAME    : no
  Vorbis  : no
  MP4     : no
  FLAC    : no

The above shows the last bit of the configure script given the "dev" packages I installed. Yours may be different.

Another note: LAME being set to "no" simply means that the ices program will not be able to resample the mp3s when it ships them off to icecast2.

At this point, make && make install:

Code:

make
<snip lots of warning messages>

make install
<snip a few "install -c -m blah" and entering/leaving directory messages>

There's a sample config file included with the program located at PREFIX/etc/ices.conf.dist. Copy that and edit the copy. For me:

Code:

cp ${HOME}/local/etc/ices.conf.dist ${HOME}/local/etc/ices.blink182.conf

Below is the modified config file. Values I changed are in red (five total and three of those are "cosmetic").

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ices:Configuration xmlns:ices="http://www.icecast.org/projects/ices">
  <Playlist>
    <!-- This is the filename used as a playlist when using the builtin 
	 playlist handler. -->
    <File>/tmp/Blink182_playlist.txt</File>
    <!-- Set this to 0 if you don't want to randomize your playlist, and to
	 1 if you do. -->
    <Randomize>1</Randomize>
    <!-- One of builtin, perl, or python. -->
    <Type>builtin</Type>
    <!-- Module name to pass to the playlist handler if using  perl or python.
	 If you use the builtin playlist handler then this is ignored -->
    <Module>ices</Module>
    <!-- Set this to the number of seconds to crossfade between tracks.
         Leave out or set to zero to disable crossfading (the default).
    <Crossfade>5</Crossfade>
    -->
  </Playlist>

  <Execution>
    <!-- Set this to 1 if you want ices to launch in the background as a
         daemon -->
    <Background>0</Background>
    <!-- Set this to 1 if you want to see more verbose output from ices -->
    <Verbose>0</Verbose>
    <!-- This directory specifies where ices should put the logfile, cue file
	 and pid file (if daemonizing). Don't use /tmp if you have l33t h4x0rz
         on your server. -->
    <BaseDirectory>/tmp</BaseDirectory>
  </Execution>

  <Stream>
    <Server>
      <!-- Hostname or ip of the icecast server you want to connect to -->
      <Hostname>localhost</Hostname>
      <!-- Port of the same -->
      <Port>8000</Port>
      <!-- Encoder password on the icecast server -->
      <Password>ItsSecret</Password>
      <!-- Header protocol to use when communicating with the server.
           Shoutcast servers need "icy", icecast 1.x needs "xaudiocast", and
	   icecast 2.x needs "http". -->
      <Protocol>http</Protocol>
    </Server>

    <!-- The name of the mountpoint on the icecast server -->
    <Mountpoint>/ices</Mountpoint>
    <!-- The name of the dumpfile on the server for your stream. DO NOT set
	 this unless you know what you're doing.
    <Dumpfile>ices.dump</Dumpfile>
    -->
    <!-- The name of you stream, not the name of the song! -->
    <Name>Blink stream</Name>
    <!-- Genre of your stream, be it rock or pop or whatever -->
    <Genre>Alternative</Genre>
    <!-- Longer description of your stream -->
    <Description>Blinky blinky</Description>
    <!-- URL to a page describing your stream -->
    <URL>http://localhost/</URL>
    <!-- 0 if you don't want the icecast server to publish your stream on
	 the yp server, 1 if you do -->
    <Public>0</Public>

    <!-- Stream bitrate, used to specify bitrate if reencoding, otherwise
	 just used for display on YP and on the server. Try to keep it
	 accurate -->
    <Bitrate>128</Bitrate>
    <!-- If this is set to 1, and ices is compiled with liblame support,
	 ices will reencode the stream on the fly to the stream bitrate. -->
    <Reencode>0</Reencode>
    <!-- Number of channels to reencode to, 1 for mono or 2 for stereo -->
    <!-- Sampe rate to reencode to in Hz. Leave out for LAME's best choice
    <Samplerate>44100</Samplerate>
    -->
    <Channels>2</Channels>
  </Stream>
</ices:Configuration>

The last three only affect what is shown on the icecast2 web page. The first specifies what file to use as the playlist. The second is the password which must match the source password set in your icecast2 config file.

At this point, I added some songs to the playlist (using absolute paths) for the ices source to play--one song per line.

To start the source: PREFIX/ices -c <config file>. For me:

Code:

${HOME}/local/bin/ices -c ${HOME}/local/etc/ices.blink182.conf

Now, keep in mind that this will cause the ices program to run in the foreground (i.e. it will will not detach and free up the terminal started from). You can Ctrl-C to kill it when you are satisfied it's working. Then add a -B to the command line to make ices do the background thing...

You can check out the ices man page for more info. If you installed without a --prefix, you can access it like normal (man ices). If you did the --prefix thing like me, then something like:

Code:

man ${HOME}/local/man/man1/ices.1

As an aside, that can be fixed by adjusting the MANPATH environment variable, but I digress...

lucmove · 01-12-2012, 08:55 PM

Ok, pal. You really helped. I finally got the music to stream acrosss from one computer to the other. Thank you!

Just let me note, however, a couple of nags about this arrangement:

1) I have to write the full paths to all the songs into the file specified in that <File>*</File> section of the ices config file. Problem is, I have to know beforehand what songs will be streamed. I can't, say, play this one, then play that other one, then... hummm... let me see... that other one. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of what I wanted to do.

2) That list of full paths to the songs is played in random order. I have no idea why.

Dark_Helmet · 01-12-2012, 09:43 PM

I can address both points

But reverse order because the second is quicker to answer.

Quote:

2) That list of full paths to the songs is played in random order.

That is controlled in the ices2 config file. Specifically:

Code:

    <!-- Set this to 0 if you don't want to randomize your playlist, and to
	 1 if you do. -->
    <Randomize>1</Randomize>

If you set the value to 0, then ices will send the songs in the order they are listed in the playlist.

Now, for the more difficult questions to answer...

Quote:

1) I have to write the full paths to all the songs into the file specified in that <File>*</File> section of the ices config file. Problem is, I have to know beforehand what songs will be streamed. I can't, say, play this one, then play that other one, then... hummm... let me see... that other one. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of what I wanted to do.

First, you can't avoid giving ices the full path to the mp3. Ices has to locate the file to be able to play it.

I will come back to that in a second, but before that, you don't need a static playlist. It turns out ices has exactly what I was mumbling about adding to icegenerator earlier: the ability to call an external program to decide the next song to play. There's a configuration directive to call a program in the ices config file (taken from this page). I have not tried to use it yet, but I'll give it a go.

Before I do, understand what this will do. It gives you the ability to be as creative with your automated song selection as you want. You can write a shell script, C program, or whatever you want to decide which song should play next. If you know how to do file-access in the script/program, you could have it check whether a file exists, read it, and submit the listed songs next before going back to "normal" operation. You could even create a small "playback control" shell-like environment (e.g. with "play X next", "skip X next time", "play X in 10 minutes", etc.) The problem is you will have to implement it because only you know how you would want the program to behave (or find someone else that's written something you like). If you don't have much scripting or programming experience, getting fancy features might be daunting.

Getting back to the whole path issue... if you have an external program, you could set it up to recognize shorthand references (e.g. "Blink 182 Dumpweed") and it could then expand the reference to /path/to/Blink182/Dumpweed.mp3 when it sends the next song to play. But again, that "intelligence" needs to be coded.

Now, all that said, if what you're really interested in is having XMMS/VLC/whatever running on your laptop, finagling song arrangement through that program's interface, and having the sound shipped to the other computer, then your best option would be to set up a direct audio source rather than messing with playlists and/or external scripts. You can do that with ices as well. Refer back to the earlier link and look for the "audio device input modules" heading--it will relay anything sent to your laptop's audio device through the stream. Just mute the sound on the laptop's speakers to avoid the echo or time delay.

273 · 01-12-2012, 10:01 PM

Is IDJC of any interest? I've used it to stream to shoutcast servers and I think you can just stream from it direct also.

Dark_Helmet · 01-12-2012, 11:24 PM

I never came across IDCJ before. Though, I have to say that the GUI looks like it's probably what lucmove originally had in mind.

Thanks for mentioning it!

lucmove · 01-13-2012, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark_Helmet

That is controlled in the ices2 config file. Specifically:

Code:

    <!-- Set this to 0 if you don't want to randomize your playlist, and to
	 1 if you do. -->
    <Randomize>1</Randomize>

If you set the value to 0, then ices will send the songs in the order they are listed in the playlist.

Duh! Slap on my forehead... That is fixed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark_Helmet

First, you can't avoid giving ices the full path to the mp3. Ices has to locate the file to be able to play it.

I will come back to that in a second, but before that, you don't need a static playlist. It turns out ices has exactly what I was mumbling about adding to icegenerator earlier: the ability to call an external program to decide the next song to play. There's a configuration directive to call a program in the ices config file (taken from this page). I have not tried to use it yet, but I'll give it a go.

Before I do, understand what this will do. It gives you the ability to be as creative with your automated song selection as you want. You can write a shell script, C program, or whatever you want to decide which song should play next.

Well, for the time being, I am using DJIC, as suggested by fellow forum member 273. It is working more or less well. There are glitches, but it works.

But I will definitely have to look into that scripting idea with Ices. It sounds just like what I want.

I can script. I already do something like that to listen to my music currently. I have a Tcl/Tk program (with a GUI of sorts) that indexes all my music files and can thus find and play any song from a string search in an instant. It can send commands to Audacious, Aqualung, XMMS, mocp or any program that supports getting commands while it is playing. You probably know what I mean. If I can do the same with Ices, I am all set. I will just have to make minor adjustments to my existing code.

Thank you again. I will get back with my final solution, specific to Ices, or holler for more help if I get stuck again. :-)