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Audio Conferencing Using Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the assembling-your-virtual-office dept.

Jon Scobie asks: "I work for a small consultancy company with no fixed abode. Our guys are generally based at a clients premises or at home. We try to use technology to make the business work but one stumbling block I've come up against is the ability to do audio conferencing without buying expensive hardware solutions. Basically, we have a Linux server on the net which provides us with web facilites, email, groupware etc. but I can not find a solution on Linux for providing software audio conferencing. It doesn't have to be free, just a resonable price. There is only one solution which I can find (from a company called CUSeeMe) but the price is outragious. Is there something out there which I can't find or is there a gap in the market here for someone to exploit?" If just basic communication is what is necessary, why not run an IRC server, instead of hacking together a (potentially) expensive audio conferencing solution? You can use any internet connection and IRC software for a wide variety of platforms is available, and you can communicate to your co-workers from wherever you can dial-in from. With that suggestion aside, what audio conferencing software is available for your flavor of Unix?

9 comments

  1. The required links . . . by jcausey · · Score: 3

    You know, I really love ask slash for the insightful stuff that is usually put up here (a little sarcasm intended). I've been reading ask slash for almost 1 1/2 years now, and have seen at least one rant per story about how the submitter should have run a search first. Well, here's my turn:

    http://www.google.com/search?q=audio+conferencing+ linux

    Don't mean to be an ass, but the search turns up a lot of good stuff. (You should check freshmeat too . . .)

  2. what about 3-way calling? by Jose · · Score: 2

    what about just using 3-way calling on the phone?
    I would imagine that 3-way calling could be expanded to be n-way calling for a few more bucks a month.
    that way you don't have to depend on various internet connections just to talk.

    --
    The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
  3. A hack to shoutcast protocol? by mini+me · · Score: 3

    It should be possible (don't know how easy though) to modify shoutcast (meaning one of the open source servers, as I don't recall the "official one" being open source) to handle multiple incoming streams, and then mix the streams, much like how esound does with different audio apps running at the same time. Each user on the conference would then send a stream to the shoutcast server from thier microphone as well as listening to the stream which can easily be done with many of the existing programs that work with shoutcast.

    Bandwidth is obviously a concern but if you stream with the bitrate to suit the lowest common denominator you should be alright.

    Also I might add, PCM encoded files are smaller than the equivalent MP3 for voice communication so if you can get PCM files to stream over shoutcast you might be better off, then again maybe you want full stereo sound?

  4. Hmm... by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 2
    About 120 years ago, something was invented which just may solve your problem.

    You've probably used it a few times already.

    They make small portable versions of this thing now, which might be useful for employees in the field.

    You can also find them on most streetcorners and on the walls of gas stations and other buildings.

    I'll be god-damned if I can remember the name at the moment though...

    - A.P.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
    1. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're refering to the telegraph right?

      We tried that, but we kept getting the signals all wrong... One user would send an SOS but at the same time someone else would send APPLE so what we were getting was SOAP which obvioulsy didn't make sense. And that was just 3-way morsing! So we got smart and thought we would use this new fangled "internet". We discoverd the morse program for Linux and it helped us along the way to making the whole thing work well. Below is a description of how we did it.

      First off since we are out in the middle of nowhere we could not find an ISP, good thing for RFC1149. So we would first write out our message and save it in a queue for sending later. Then we would run: cat queue/message.txt | morse | pigeonware -s; This would then print out the PPP message generated by pigeonware and we would attach it to our carrier pigeon and it would then be sent to the destination. And so on....

      Oh, you didn't by chance mean the telephone did you?

  5. Audio Conferencing Tools by PatJensen · · Score: 2
    I can name a few Linux-based audio conferencing tools, depending on how your networking infrastructure is laid out. If all of your consultants share a common provider, a multicast solution would work well. It would feature a decent quality of service and communication, be fast, and use less bandwidth.

    There is a suite of free university-developed multicast enabled tools that are time tested and have been in use since 1992. Research rat (robust audio tool) and sdr (session directory) on Freshmeat or Google.

    There is also a suite of point-to-point H.323 audio conferencing tools called openh323 which you can find more information out at www.openh323.org. It provides great interoptability with Windows products (Intel, iPhone and Microsoft NetMeeting) as well and can use cisco Systems Voice over IP gatekeepers if you want to link your phone system trunks in.

    That should get you started! Have fun!

    -Pat

  6. Robust Audio Tool? by crazney · · Score: 2

    http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/software/r at/index.html This is a very cool audio conferencing tool, runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, SunOS, Irix, FreeBSD, NetBSD... and is open source. have fun!

    --
    stuff
  7. Open Source Voice Chat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Goto http://www.spreakfreely.org Win32 and Unix/Linux ports here. Works great. I use it with my windoze friends. GPL'd. Enjoy.

  8. speakfreely.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Heck.. iirc, speakfreely should do what you need