Arch Linux

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Streaming "desktop" audio to an icecast server

I want to stream whatever I can hear on my machine to an icecast server.  How can I do this?

rransom

Member

Registered: 2010-04-26

Posts: 92

Re: Streaming "desktop" audio to an icecast server

What audio system do you use? (ALSA,, OSS, PulseAudio, JACK, etc.)

With PulseAudio:

- Run paman (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=9045), find and select the 'sink' you are sending audio to, click 'Properties' (in the lower-right corner) and select/copy the 'Monitor Source' name.
- To get at the audio, run:

parec -d MONITOR-SOURCE-NAME --raw |COMMAND-THAT-STREAMS-STDIN-TO-ICECAST

I think you'll have to use ices for this, not darkice.  The default output format of parec is 44100 Hz stereo, native-endian signed 16-bit; use 'parec --help' for documentation (the man page seems to be out-of-date).

EDIT: The package you need for ices is ices2 (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=24156).

Last edited by rransom (2010-06-17 10:42:03)

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: Streaming "desktop" audio to an icecast server

I use ALSA on all my machines but have been thinking very seriously about using PulseAudio for realtime effects.  Any way of doing this in ALSA until I get my PA engine started?

rransom

Member

Registered: 2010-04-26

Posts: 92

Re: Streaming "desktop" audio to an icecast server

I use ALSA on all my machines but have been thinking very seriously about using PulseAudio for realtime effects.  Any way of doing this in ALSA until I get my PA engine started?

Yes -- PulseAudio provides the 'monitor sources' by accessing them through ALSA.  I tried to give instructions for how to access the ALSA monitor source, but I couldn't figure out how to determine which ALSA device is the monitor source, and I couldn't figure out how to convert the ALSA device identifier into something arecord could use.  If you need to do this with ALSA, figure out the format your recording/streaming software expects a device identifier to be in, cat /proc/asound/pcm and /proc/asound/hwdep to look for plausible device identifiers, and find the monitor source by trial-and-error.  You might want to grab the kernel source tarball and read the 'Documentation' directory; ALSA may actually be documented in there.

rransom

Member

Registered: 2010-04-26

Posts: 92

Re: Streaming "desktop" audio to an icecast server

You might want to grab the kernel source tarball and read the 'Documentation' directory; ALSA may actually be documented in there.

That directory is now packaged in kernel26-docs.  (See also kernel26-manpages.)