Icecast Streaming Media Server

[Anonymous]

Hm, I spoke too soon on questions about securing the ports on an installation. Thought I had Icecast2 and Darkice humming along based on some preliminary successful admin screens from Icecast2. Alas... while everything looks tip top, NO SOUND.

Here is a snippet of a post in the Ubuntu forums. Mebbe someone can break the ice, pun intended, on my installation??


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Having poured over scads of tutorials, HOWTOs, etc, I have been able to successfully (I think) install an Icecast2 server. It runs as a daemon, accepts a stream, am able to view the admin screen, it shows a mount point when a stream is pointed at it, shows when I attempt to connect to it with a browser that a client has connected.... and.... I installed Darkice, am able to play an audio file, it connects to the Icecast2 server, and all appears hunky dory.

Except, there is no sound. The client app (have tried several incl XMMS, VLC, and so on) all keep trying to reconnect to the stream. I think what is happening is that Darkice is not capturing the audio source properly, so when everything else appears to be connecting or syncing, if there is no audio in the stream, the behavior is as if everything is working, but no audio. I am not studied enough in this yet to know if this is indeed what is happening... but am continuing to try and learn what part of my configuration is not working. I do think it is DarkIce.

So... anyone able to point me to a Tutorial or Howto that they followed, and it worked?

Also, the server side is on a live server connected to a public IP. The port is whitelisted of course, otherwise I would not be able to send a stream to it, or I would not be able to view the admin screens for Icecast2.

The client machines has been both a laptop and a desktop running v7.10 with everything current as can be.

Darkice is configured having followed several examples and Icecast2 does report the mountpoint, and this all appears correct. Just... no sound. I have been trying to discover what the alternatives are for the 'device = /dev/dsp'

I have also started to try MPD as this has come up as a working alternative.

Anyone have any suggestions here? I've worked through a ton of cool apps in Ubuntu, but this is the first one that has brought me almost to my knees. Or at least to drink a few beers, tho I would do that anyway.

Help?

[karlH]

From your description, there is no problem with icecast as you say the mountpoint appears on the status page. You don't say the error log is reporting a problem in that regard. If the source client is reading from dsp and all you get is silence then you probably don't have the correct mixer settings for the capture. Change the mixer settings to capture whatever you want to capture with darkice.

karl.

[Anonymous]

KarlH, thank you *very* much for your quick response.

I too have been seeing mentioning of 'mixer settings' in the Darkice .xml file. What I haven't been able to find, mainly because of my n00b status, is what the possibilities are, or how to go about this. Where might I find a table or list of possibilities, or is this something that I can glean from any /proc information?

This has turned out to be a grind as I have always been able to muck my way through to success, but I have to admit, while some may find this aggravating, personally I find the discovery of the solution, fantastic.

I'll tell ya why this is also a cool pursuit. Years ago I was able to muck my way through creating an icecast server and generated a stream for our local classical radio station. Back in the stone age, like mid 90s. My wife worked with the station. Years later, after some really unfortunate life left turns, my wife has had to endure 2 total shoulder replacements, 2 total hip replacements, and 10 days ago, a total knee replacement. Massive pain for a long time. She has a huge, strong voice. Classical, pop, a lot of range. What I have proposed is to try and get a stream working so she and some musicans can go into a local coffee/art gallery, put together some music, and perform after 18 years. And I want to stream it so her old fan base can participate again. I know you are thinking... why the hell did he just write all that? Well, this clunky pursuit is to be able to stream her voice and musicans from this little place... and am getting basically really psyched to discover the solution so it can all come together.

Anyhoo, I appreciate your response. If I can find out what alternatives are for these fields, I will press onward...

[karlH]

the source clients are not responsible for mixer settings, you'll have a separate application for configuring your sound card. The exact setting will depend on what you want to capture (mic/line-in etc), the level and or course the driver/card capabilities.

karl.

[Anonymous]

I *think* I get this. I need to find what mixer application may be grabbing the output yes? Argh... is an area not familiar to me, but will bang through it...

[karlH]

no, the mixer app will just be used to control what is actually set to be captured by the dsp. The typical default is the Mic input. You can actually change the mixer settings while the audio is being captured, but be aware that silence compresses really well if you are using a variable bitrate stream.


karl.

[Anonymous]

Ok, I think I have an idea of what this means now. Will go give it a run and report the findings. Once I figure it out,. I know it will be a no brainer...

[Anonymous]

Ok, here is what I have attained...

Icecast2 is answering on Machine B, the server. When I point darkice to it (from Machine A - where the sound orginates), the mount point appears on Machine B, all of the metadata is transferred, everything looks cool. Bytes are reported traveling to the icecast2 server, and it grows logically. On the client side (Machine A), I have a unmuted all of the mixer bars and turned their levels up to approx 70% (so as to not send freaky volume out the other end).

When I connect to the mount on a separate system (Machine C), two things happen. I get a connection. Metadata is transferred down to the audio application (have tried xmms, vlc, bmp, movie player, for starters). You can see this metadata in the appropriate boxes. But, there is no sound. Interestingly, when xmms tries to connect, it issues a popup box stating "cannot connect to abcxyz.com". So I have started looking into why this is. None of the other audio applications report anything like this.

Finally, I have tried three variations of the mountpoint from darkice: test, test.ogg and test.mp3 I have seen reference that it needs to be test.ogg from the darkice side, but that has the same results as the other two...

Am still plugging away at it. It has to be a syntax error on my part, but have poured over example config files and am not able to crack it.

If I am still unsuccessful later, I will send config files along, hat in hand, asking for advice. Everything wants to work it appears...

tx

[Anonymous]

Finally got it. Ended up using IDJC as the streaming client and it finally created a connection that worked. ices2 and darkice didn't want to sync up no matter what syntax I threw at it, mostly syntax pulled from working examples. Am perplexed, but oh well....

IDJC has abuglet in this version that cannot stream mp3, but .ogg does fine. So finally, some joy...

tx