Icecast Streaming Media Server

[emjay]

Okay, this situation is a little complicated ...

The person that set us up running Icecast on Debian Linux is no longer with us and no one here really understands how it works. But we have numerous interfaces we can access to troubleshoot it.

Here's what I know:
1) Everything has been working fine for years.
2) Last week I switched out the UPS unit and maybe touched a few wires while doing so, but I didn't seem to unhook or loosen anything.
3) Now everything works as before, except we're broadcasting dead air.
4) We know audio is going into the Icecast server and dead air is coming out of it.
5) You can log onto the stream, but its dead air.
6) All the external connections seem fine.

Suggestions???

[karlH]

If you are getting data but it's coming out as silence then it won't be down to icecast, it will be down to the source client. Usually when this happens, it is because you are capturing from a soundcard and the mixer capture settings are wrong. eg catpure of Mic instead of Line etc

karl.

[emjay]

[karlH]

icecast does not change the audio signal, so if silence is coming out then you'll have silence going into icecast from the source client. How do you know the audio is good going into icecast?

I don't know the scale of changes on the system in question, I can only go by what you have reported.

karl.

[emjay]

We're using a RCA to USB converter to get the audio from the source client to the Icecast server. The converter has a headphone jack where you can listen to the input and its fine at that point.

I also plugged some headphones into the jack on the Icecast server computer and hear the audio fine as well. But when I monitor the output from Icecast, its dead air.

[karlH]

It actually sounds like the converter is before the source client. The source source converts the audio signal from say a jack socket to say ogg vorbis and you haven't said which source client you are using and what it is using to capture the audio signal.

karl.

[emjay]

[karlH]

The source client is the application that takes your feed (dsp/playlist etc) and sends it to icecast probably [re]encoding it into vorbis/mp3 etc in the process.

karl.

[emjay]

Is there a simple way I can determine this? Again, none of us currently using this configuration actually set it up. I do know the stream leaves the Icecast server as ogg vorbis.

[karlH]

Look on the admin page of icecast, it should report the source client and IP address where the source client is running. One such example of a source client producing vorbis streams is ices2. It may be one the same machine as icecast but you would need to check the ip and the process list if it's on the same machine.

As soon as you have found the machine running the source client, run a mixer application on there to change the settings for capture.

karl.

[emjay]

Okay, its running DarkIce. Still haven;t figured this out yet.