Audio live streaming options?

September 24, 2011 12:15 AM

Live Audio Broadcast Options: I want to broadcast a live music performance of mine to friends and family abroad. What are my options?

I have access to a WiFi connection in the concert hall that gets 350-800kbps up and I have a Macbook Pro with a Snowball USB microphone (which is mono). I've tried livestream for an audio-video feed, but it produced a pretty crappy feed, and the audio was the first thing to go when it got bad, so I'd like to set my priorities to the audio. Given the mono microphone, we're not talking about all that much data here, so surely there's a decent way to get it out to the masses.

I've tried Nicecast, which seems to work nicely at home, though I haven't yet checked if it will work on the hall's network, or if it takes more bandwidth for each additional listener, since it doesnt use external servers. Any other options, ideally one with a central server?

posted by sdis to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

If you don't absolutely require video, Icecast or Shoutcast may be what you want. Icecast is, more or less, the GPL version of the proprietary Shoutcast format. You'll need a server with boat loads of bandwidth off-site to serve the audio to your listeners, and a broadcast tool like BUTT on your local machine to broadcast to the server. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with what it takes to host/run an Icecast server (I've connected to one to jam for friends, that's the part I know), so you'll have to look into that..
posted by Alterscape at 1:02 AM on September 24, 2011