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Live Vorbis Streams Over 802.11b From SXSW.com

Posted by timothy on from the decent-exposure dept.

chupacabra writes "SXSW.com in Austin, Texas has a group of computers in various music venues around town. The ices/icecast stream is sent over 802.11 to a main server at SXSW. There are 6 venues running as of this moment. Thanks to the folks at Vorbis and their CVS we are rocking. See sxsw.com/music/livestreams."

8 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Unfortunately by damiam · · Score: 5, Informative

    The sound quality sorta sucks. It not vorbis's fault - I can't really hear artifacts. It's just the mics/equipment/soundcards they're using, I guess.

    --
    It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
  2. Re:Area by Burmese · · Score: 2, Informative

    They are using WiFi to collect the streams. You can listen to them over the Internet anywhere in the world.

    --
    ~\_/~\_O Burmese
  3. Re:Whats the point? by tjohns · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think you misunderstood...

    They're not using WiFi to let people tune in, but rather to broadcast it. Since it looks like they're doing five different streams at a time, and I'm willing to bet that those places don't have the most accessible internet connections, they're using WiFi Texas to get a connection to each club. There, they've got G3 computers running Gentoo and some streaming software going. After it's encoded, they use the wireless to send it to their XServe (also running Gentoo), which streams it to the internet at large.

    Personally, I think this qualifies as being "cool."

  4. Also being re^broadcasted on Peercast. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Buffalo Billiards, Emo`s Jr. and Beerland is also being broadcasted on Peercast at the moment.

    http://www.peercast.org

  5. Re:Whats the point? by evilviper · · Score: 3, Informative
    why not use an FM transciver?

    Since when have digital FM radios been available? Can you operate them without an FCC license? Can you send lyrics, video and images in a digital FM broadcast? Can you operate thousands of digital FM transmissions from one transmitter?

    Yes, I know the poster missed the point (that's not even what they are doing), but WiFi radio has some serious advantages.
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  6. Re:not optimal by wifitexas · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, the 802.11b network only needs to carry one stream per bar or stage, these single streams are served to the remote listeners via the Ogg Vorbis gateway - and this is on a wired network. Meanwhile, the 802.11b network is carrying other traffic, email and browsing, at the same time as the streaming audio. The links are thousands of feet apart. Winamp 2.81 has the plugin for Ogg already. The target user is somewhere far from this WiFi network.

  7. How to listen, how many can listen by wifitexas · · Score: 4, Informative

    The player you need (if on Windows) is Winamp 2.81, it could be that RealAudio owns the m3u filetype, but if you can point .m3u to Winamp, it will work. The 802.11b link is only used for one stream per stage, the icecast server takes this one stream and sends it out to thousands of users at once over a wired LAN. So far, the capacity of the server has not been met. We would like to know what the limit is. If were to roam onto the WiFi network (ssid = wifi-texas), then you would actually get your streams from the icecast server, not from the stage system directly. Because of distance limits, Line Of Sight problems, and other factors, three or four wireless hops connect each stage to the icecast server. hope this helps.

  8. Re:Meet me on mercury by trelanexiph · · Score: 1, Informative

    While Icecast does support metadata, without a plugin to xmms or the source or whatnot (some poor sob typing) Ices cannot send metadata onto icecast.