Arch Linux

MrNiceGuy

Member

Registered: 2013-12-30

Posts: 2

system sound playback to android?

I would like to be able to stream my system sound output to my android phone. the closest I have found is an app called Remote Audio which is intended for linux, and works by using cat and /dev/audio over ssh???? (I already have a working ssh server). while I do have the device, even piping for example /dev/urandom into /dev/audio does not work because /dev/audio is "busy" even in a tty without an x server running or my pulse-audio running.

either way the above seems like an exceedingly roundabout way or doing things and I was wondering if anyone knew about an audio server that did this? The only other option I came across was SoundWire, an app with its own server that supposedly does exactly what I would like it to do, but when I go to it's website to download it, http://georgielabs.net, I get forwarded to an ad server.

any help is appreciated, thanks!

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: system sound playback to android?

I think that there is a port of pulseaudio for android.  I have never tried this or needed to use it, but I remember seeing something about it before.

ackalker

Member

Registered: 2012-11-27

Posts: 201

Re: system sound playback to android?

No need to use Pulseaudio on Android, its audio streams can be played(*) by any decent Android player (for instance MX Player) that handles rtp:// URLs.

Please have a look at this Wiki page for general information on Pulseaudio network streaming, and this Wiki page about RTP streaming in particular.
Forget about the need to use tcpdump to get the multicast address and port number, after you have loaded and setup the 'module-rtp-send' module, all you have to do is run:

$ pactl list source-outputs

Look for the source output which has 'Driver: module-rtp-send.c' at the top, in its 'Properties' section you will find all the info you need.
Then on Android, in your media player, enter the stream URL like:

rtp://224.0.0.56:46200/

(change the numbers to yours, of course), and you should be good to go.

(*) Don't expect too much from RTP streaming raw audio over WiFi, it takes enormous gobs of bandwidth. Even with a high-end wireless router/AP with a powerful signal I haven't been able to get more than stuttering audio out of it. Your best bet is probably to setup a proper media server (like Rygel, which works well with Pulseaudio) to transcode the raw audio to something like MP3 and stream that instead.

Last edited by ackalker (2014-01-13 05:19:13)

ackalker

Member

Registered: 2012-11-27

Posts: 201

Re: system sound playback to android?

Please also check this page (Ubuntu-oriented but not too difficult to translate to Arch) and this topic (Arch related) for help with setting up Rygel with Pulseaudio.