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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?

2 of 9 comments (clear)

  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. 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?