Share sound over local network

StuMx · 2010-12-31 06:20:03

I have a little trouble with an idea:

I have an old desktop pc so i decided to use my laptop as my main computer and use my desktop pc as server for storing files and music. As the laptop speakers sucks, instead of playing music directly from my laptop, i conect to my desktop trough ssh and play the music with moc. The problem is that when i want to play videogames or see a movie i have to use the laptop speakers since i dont have an amp (my old desktop pc has an internal amp).

What i want to do is to setup a server on my desktop pc, and connect to it from my laptop, then i want the server to play all the sounds from the client. I have tried making an audio stream from my laptop and then connected to it from my desktop, however the sound its laggy (it has like 2 seconds of delay) so it's not a good solution since i want it to play the sound from movies.

Do you know any other way of doin this?, i know that there are some very cheap amps and speakers but i would like to get this working, just for the lulz xD.

Thanks for your help, and sorry if i misspelled something, im not good with english.

EDIT: I have googled a bit more and found that this can be done using pulseaudio, however my laptop is a macbook and i didnt find any info about using pulse audio on a mac.

Last edited by StuMx (2010-12-31 07:06:30)

rowdog · 2010-12-31 23:28:10

I haven't used it in years but MPD will do what you ask. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mpd

StuMx · 2011-01-02 04:28:05

I've been reading about mpd, but i cant find any way to play sound from a remote location. I installed and setup mpd following the archlinux wiki, but i didnt find info about playing the sound from another machine. After a quick search on google i found this http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Configuration#libao_.2F_JACK

If you want to play your music on another host (perhaps becuase the computer with the speakers doesn't have enough hard drive space for your music), this seems to work:
audio_output {
type "ao"
driver "esd"
options "host=jurp5-desktop:16001"
name "esd"
}

However i dont understand which host must be specified and how should i grab the audio from the client (the one that will be playing the music/video).

What i did and actually worked was mount a nfs and specify the music directory on it, but i dont want to play only music files, i want to play all the sound from the machine.

Last edited by StuMx (2011-01-02 04:28:36)

lifeafter2am · 2011-01-02 04:40:01

I am pretty sure with MPD it would only work with music, not other audio streams, though I could be wrong. I know you can do it with Pulse audio though.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio

StuMx · 2011-01-04 01:14:39

I can't use PulseAudio since the machine playing de sound will be running OS X or Windows, the only machine using linux will be the one with the speakers.

After a little search i found a project on Google Code that seems to allow me to do what i want, but i haven't tried yet. I'll put it to test and tell you how it works.

EDIT: Forgot the link to the project xD http://code.google.com/p/speakershare/
EDIT2: After some tries i'm still getting a some lag in the audio stream, i guess that its not possible to get this to work without lag.

Last edited by StuMx (2011-01-09 17:46:46)

Themaister · 2011-01-10 19:39:38

Shameless plug, you might consider using RSound. It supports servers and client on Windows, Linux, *BSD and Mac OSX. It has plugin for ALSA, patches for MPlayer, VLC and MPD. It works well with movies as well (as long as you're on LAN).

StuMx · 2011-01-15 22:06:02

Im trying to compile RSound, i had no trouble compiling on linux, but on os x i get this error:

gmake[1]: se ingresa al directorio `/Users/stumx/Downloads/rsound-1.0/src'
mkdir -p /usr/local/{lib/pkgconfig,include,share/man/man1}
install -m755 librsound/librsound.dylib /usr/local/lib
cp -P librsound/librsound.so librsound/librsound.so.2 /usr/local/lib
cp: librsound/librsound.so: No such file or directory
cp: librsound/librsound.so.2: No such file or directory
gmake[1]: *** [install-lib] Error 1
gmake[1]: se sale del directorio `/Users/stumx/Downloads/rsound-1.0/src'
gmake: *** [install] Error 2

I have tried with make and gmake, but i keep getting this error. Also i tried to search for help on the RSound web site but it seems to be down.

Themaister · 2011-01-16 02:09:05

Ah, I see... Seems like the OSX port wasn't complete after all. I don't have access to an OSX machine so I couldn't test properly, but I pushed a fix to the git repo which should fix that specific install issue.

BurntSushi · 2011-01-16 05:41:36

Maybe I'm missing something, but why not use Samba and expose your music to the LAN that way?

StuMx · 2011-01-17 21:56:09

Because i don't want to share the music but the whole sound, for instance, i want to play a movie and hear its sound on the speakers attached to another PC.

I managed to compile RSound on OS X using the code on git, noy the problem is that i don't know how it works xD. I readed the man pages and made a pair of tries but it didn't work. Tonight ill be give it another chance.

Themaister · 2011-01-19 19:20:26

If you will send audio from Linux to Mac, it can be done nicely.

In RSound folder, go to patches/alsa. make && sudo make install should install ALSA plugin for you. You can then set up a device like this in .asoundrc.

pcm.rsound {
  type rsound
  host "ip of your server"
}

Then it's just a matter of doing mplayer -ao alsa:device=rsound or something similiar.

If the server runs OSX you might want to check which audio driver you're using. The best choice would be to use OpenAL I suppose. Try to avoid libao driver if you can as it cannot measure latency (videos will be off-sync).

If you want to send audio from the Mac, you have to rely on per-app support. There is a buildable VLC plugin in patches/vlc, but I doubt it will compile as-is on Mac. Also, there is an mplayer patch in patches/.

StuMx · 2011-01-21 23:38:56

I want to send the sound from the mac to linux, i'm searching for a way to compile the VLC plugin on mac, i'll let you know if i can make it work.

ChoK · 2011-01-29 00:00:34

Maybe you can set a linux system with pulseaudio in a VM on your mac?

StuMx · 2011-02-05 20:55:38

The trouble with using a vm is that if i play a movie i'll to play it inside the virtual machine and it will run with few fps

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-31 06:20:03

Share sound over local network

#2 2010-12-31 23:28:10

Re: Share sound over local network

#3 2011-01-02 04:28:05

Re: Share sound over local network

#4 2011-01-02 04:40:01

Re: Share sound over local network

#5 2011-01-04 01:14:39

Re: Share sound over local network

#6 2011-01-10 19:39:38

Re: Share sound over local network

#7 2011-01-15 22:06:02

Re: Share sound over local network

#8 2011-01-16 02:09:05

Re: Share sound over local network

#9 2011-01-16 05:41:36

Re: Share sound over local network

#10 2011-01-17 21:56:09

Re: Share sound over local network

#11 2011-01-19 19:20:26

Re: Share sound over local network

#12 2011-01-21 23:38:56

Re: Share sound over local network

#13 2011-01-29 00:00:34

Re: Share sound over local network

#14 2011-02-05 20:55:38

Re: Share sound over local network

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