Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with audio and streaming

Multimedia-filter: Looking for help from all you Network and digital media Gurus in making my first house totally awesome. Movies, Televsion, Music, Wifi, Streaming Content and 50mgbt broadband within.

Cogentesque — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:03:13 -0800

Multimedia-filter: Looking for help from HDTV, NAS, Media Servers and Network Gurus' in making my first house totaly awesome. Movies, Televsion, Music, Wifi, Streaming Content and 50mgbt broadband within. Ok guys, this is my first new message on metafilter, so thanks for everything thus far - to business.

The Premise:
In two weekends time, my girlfriend and I are moving into our first house together in Southampton (UK).

Thankfully she is very accomadating and shares the same views with me reguarding the wonder of technology and allure of gadgetry and thus: we have decided to go down the "cyberhouse" network route - all be it slowly.

What we currently have
50mgbt line and a Television package from Virgin.
2 relatively high-spec PCs downstairs (in the lounge) (XP/Vista soon upgrading to Windows 7 im sure)
A new TV - to be bought - (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/154997/show_product_reviews?offset=10&review_type=both&review_order_by=RLF - ebuyer's own)
1 ipod touch
Host of parts to make a low spec PC.

What I would like in my cyber house
DVD's playable on the TV
Normal channels (Virgin package) playable on the TV
Video (films, episodes) from PC's playable on the TV
Music, both downstairs and upstairs: DAB radio/Cd's/Downloaded Music/Online Radio (last.fm etc would be great)
The ability to change the music remotely (ideally, different sources for different rooms)

Some ideas I've been looking at so far
KVM Switch and a long HDMI cable for my computer to use TV as alternative screen - enabling videos from pc to be played
NAT Storage hiding somewhere in the network
Popcorn Hour to play video from PC
Sonos music system to play upstairs and downstairs
Media pc configured to do the job of sonos and popcorn hour (apparantly this is very tricky?)

What do you think metafilter? Remember that we are definately "on a budget" but I much more trust your collective ideas and conceptions than my own - so what would you reccomend should be my immediate course of action?

Turn up the radio

CodeMonkey — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:25:24 -0800

What is the best software for recording streaming AM radio stations? There are late night shows on, some that have podcasts but some that don't. I want to 'set it and forget it' and have the results in an mp3 format.

Best device for playing mp3s in my kitchen

therubettes — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:58:34 -0800

What device would allow best access to playlists of mp3 at home? Doesnt need to be portable, must not be laptop... Ì have about 25 gigs of music on my laptop in mp3 format and many more cds yet to rip. I would like a music playing solution which ticks all of the following boxes.

1 - All of my music resides on a single device (100gb should do it).
2 - I dont have to turn on my laptop (I am trying to wean myself off)
3 - I can have unlimted playlists which can be easily selected to suit the mood (Dont mind is these have to be assembeled on the laptop first)
4 - I would like a small remote control (not a deal breaker)
5 - I wont be listening on headhpones but sound quality is actually not that important.

I am happy to feel dumb if someone can tick all of the boxes above for under $150. I should add that I have a nice cd/tape/radio hi-fi which has a remote. I only listen to music in the evenings at home while cooking, hanging out. I don't need an iPod as such the device will never leave the house.

I have read 3 pages of streaming tagged questions to no avail. Thanks for helping out someone bamboozled by all the audio options.

What do I need to know to stream a TV station to between 500 and 100 people?

asnowballschance — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:29:44 -0800

How do I set up a server to stream media ? A client has contacted us about developing a website with a streaming TV station and a streaming radio station. The stations will run 24/7 with a great deal of duplicated content. Content items will run from 15 minutes to 2 hours. The client wants to set it up as a broadcast, so that if someone tunes in at 8am, he sees the same program as everyone else, just like with regular stations. Because of the need for playlists, it looks like progressive (http) downloads won't work; however, if there are alternatives to setting up a streaming server, I'd love to hear about them.

Right now, I'm getting a handle on hardware and coding requirements so that we can put a team together. We're in West Africa, so the budget is thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars. We're also looking at a maximum of about 1000 simultaneous users, but hoping to average between 100 and 500.

What kind of hardware should I be looking at for (managed dedicated) servers? And where can we find the Terabytes of bandwidth we'll need?

What do I need to know about compressing media (into Flash)? Best practices?

Anything else I should generally be aware of?

Licensing, content, and profitability are not my problems. Putting together a plan, a budget, and hiring people to do this are.

Help Me Create a Live Video / Audio Stream for our Company Meeting?

jmprice — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:44:50 -0800

How do I broadcast a video or audio announcement to our remote employees? The last Friday of the month we have an in-office happy hour. Before the drinking get rolling, we have about ten minutes of company announcements.

My boss would like me to broadcast these announcements live to our 6 remote employees. Are there any web services that would accommodate this? That would create a public stream?

Are there any cameras in particular you can recommend? I have some time to dash off to Best Buy.

Also, I don't know if this helps, but I have a Rock Band USB microphone that I am willing to use as a Plan B if I can't get video streaming to work. Or simply to complement the camera which might not capture audio so well in our loud conference room.

Trying to stream at work

Juicylicious — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:28:40 -0800

How can I listen to NPR on my office PC when audio/video streaming is not allowed? I cannont get streaming audio from npr.org. Nor can I get video from the usual sources, cnn.com, etc. Oddly, I can get streaming audio from Project Vibe by setting the "listen now" properties to "Hi Bandwith (FM quality)" and "Stand Alone Windows Media."

How can I replicate this process so that I can listen to NPR?

MLB Gameday Audio Mobile on unsupported phone?

DandyRandy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:19:59 -0800

Are any of you baseball fans subscribing to MLB's Gameday Audio Mobile and using an unsupported device? If so, how does it work, both quality and ease of setting it up? Piggybacking on an earlier post today, I'm already subscribed to MLB's Gameday Audio, and have a much-too-complicated setup to stream the audio from my home computer to my phone. I'd much rather use their Gameday Audio Mobile service, but their list of supported devices excludes mine (Dash running Windows Mobile 6 Standard on T-Mobile). They say more will be supported in the future, but they've been saying that for a couple of years now.

Is this a service provider issue or really a device issue? Are any of you subscribed to the mobile service with a device/service provider that's not on their official list? Does it work well? Easy to set up? Is this too many questions for a single post?

Streaming audio service recommendation?

papafrita — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:37:08 -0800

Recommend a streaming audio service, please? A couple clients of ours have asked us to provide not only web hosting, but streaming audio of their radio stations as well. We use Ritech Hosting for all our hosting services, but their prices for streaming audio are too high.

Googling around, I've found some providers that charge as little as $21/mo for 56k quality and 200 listeners, which sounds quite reasonable, but not only have I never heard of them, I can't find any reviews either. Has any of you used the services of a company you could recommend?

Equally helpful would be if anyone could point to a forum or site with user reviews of such a service.

Thanks!

Streaming Arab Radio

grahamux — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:16:04 -0800

I'm looking for a streaming radio station playing the latest in Arab pop music. There used to be a fantastic one called Beirut Mood Radio a number of months ago. Sadly, it disappeared without a trace. Something in the vein of Hifa Wehbe would be fantastic. A shoutcast (or icecast) stream would be preferable. Windows Media doesn't work for me. Many thanks.

Interception and redirection of streaming audio on an office lan?

ph00dz — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:29:14 -0800

Prankfilter: interception and redirection of streaming audio on an office lan? Too many people on too narrow of a connection at work means that the tech crew has to keep tabs on who is using more than his or her fair share of bandwidth or they'll screw up the entire network for everyone.

Getting a grip on who is doing what is no problem -- we've got the full range of linux stuff available and the DD-WRT firmware on our main router. So, since DD-WRT uses plain old iptables, blocking people from streaming wouldn't be a problem either.

But it's kinda boring. Geez... I mean, we might as well wander over to their desks and tell them to knock it off.

We'd much rather replace the stream that someone is listening to with something else. Something better.

So, maybe you're listening to yahoo radio. Instead of the latest dance hits, you get our station of fart noises or something. (We'll think of something clever later.) Doing this with streaming MP3's is well within our abilities, but is such a thing possible with RTSP?

Does anyone know if RTSP can be redirected with location headers just like a web browser Is there something simple we can do to deploy a RTSP that serves up the same wildcarded content, regardless of what page/stream is requested?

Can this be done?

What's with Real streaming?

jwhittlestone — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:10:32 -0800

Hi, wondering if anyone's had any experience with audio distortion with real player? After roughly 20 mins, sometimes less, of listening to perfect audio quality when streaming, i get a poor quality, poor resolution sound that is uninterrupted. I am on a fast internet connection and there is no reason why the player should buffer.

I made a recording of it here

It's really odd and baffling! I have tried uninstalling my latest copy of Real and reinstalling. Still the same.

I have also tried installing previous versions - 8, G1 and G2, still the same.

If anyone can help, you'd be my best friend!

thanks in advance

jonny

Streaming audio server statistics

bhance — Fri, 19 May 2006 13:06:15 -0800

ObscureStatisticsFilter: Help me find usage and market adoption statistics for major streaming audio servers. I'm looking for usage numbers for streaming audio servers to help me estimate each one's marketshare. Icecast vs. RealMedia vs. ShoutCast vs. Windows Media Server, etc.

Terrestrial, internet-only, hobbyist, pro, whatever: something like: "In 2004, X stations were serving audio with RealMedia, Y stations with ShoutCast, and Z stations with Windows Media Server" and so on.

I'd like to see some sort of one-versus-the-other breakdown - or links and cites to help me ad-hoc something along these lines.

Video and Audio streaming

bright77blue — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 14:07:42 -0800

I want to use a hosting account (e.g. 1&1 or godaddy or similar) and stream video and audio. Do I need a special service? And how does Google Video do it? What is the best format for Video streaming? Thanks!

Streaming media

Pretty_Generic — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 07:41:10 -0800

How does IE decide whether to stream a media file or download it fully before opening it? How can I get players other than Windows Media Player to properly stream mp3s with a browser click?

Streaming MP3

SweetJesus — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:07:39 -0800

MP3 Filter: I've got a large MP3 collection at home that I would like to be able to access from my office. I'm too cheap for an IPod, and it's too big of a collection to be able to mirror on my office computer without taking up gigs of space. I've been looking for a program to stream my mp3's from my home computer to my office computer... [MI]

Streaming Japanese Radio

tirade — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 20:31:24 -0800

I'm looking for streaming Japanese-language talk or news radio. Specifically, I'm looking for a live feed rather than short clips (the latter of which I seem to find tons of), and preferably low-bandwidth audio-only rather than video. I don't read Japanese, so searching is difficult.

Streaming audio client - can you name it?

alumshubby — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:44:23 -0800

There used to be a pretty good streaming audio client, possibly powered by Real.Com but I'm not sure if that's right or not, that had a large selection of streams, stuff like "Funky Holiday" and "The Piano" -- does this ring a bell with anyone? I'm striking out on Google. I thought it was "RadioOne" but that's not it. Any suggestions?

What's the best software for streaming live radio on the internet?

darainwa — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:30:24 -0800

What is the best software for a radio station to use when streaming live audio via the internet? Similarly, what piece of software do most individuals use to listen to webcasts? [MI] Background: After receiving some negative feedback about RealAudio/RealPlayer, the radio station I am currently affiliated with has been discussing a move from our current Real-based setup to some other format. While I am not a fan of Real myself, I was under the impression that a majority of people used RealPlayer to stream audio over the internet.

Personally, I would like to go with whatever software will allow the largest number of users to listen to our stream. Further, our RealAudio setup costs us nothing to maintain, as our bandwidth, the RealAudio encoding software, and support of the computer doing the RealAudio encoding is provided to the station free of charge. Being a non-commercial station (read: quite poor) any alternative to Real would need to be inexpensive, and rather low maintenance.

That said, is there another (low cost) encoding format that would allow a greater number of listeners to hear our broadcast via the internet?

How can I rip a RealPlayer streaming video?

inksyndicate — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:00:11 -0800

What are some ways to turn a RealPlayer streaming video file into a ripped, usable file on your hard drive? I've seen stuff for the audio part, but not so much video.

Are there external wifi-receiver devices I can plug into an iPod?

timyang — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 22:53:31 -0800

Are there external wifi-receiver devices I can plug into an iPod? If so, can you please direct me to some choices?

Saving RealAudio as mp3?

jonmc — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 12:27:56 -0800

Does anybody know a fairly easy and preferably free way to convert (like the one's here) into mp3's that I could save to my hard drive?