Slashdot Mirror
Personal Use FLAC Streaming Solutions?
Kulaid982 asks: "A friend of mine has challenged me to put together an internet music server for him. Ideally he'd like to stream music from his apartment to work. I'm aware of mod_mp3 for Apache, and Shoutcast seems to be a great streaming option, however, most of his music is FLAC or WAV. Obviously, .wav files are only streamable over the fastest networks, so is there an option for on the fly encoding to MP3 or FLAC to stream it? This will be a dedicated music-streaming box for his own personal use. I'm sure someone out there has already done this or something similar, so please share; how'd you pull it off?"
"Some technical specifics: The box is a P3 800 with 512MB of RAM, so I'm thinking Linux over Windows; his internet connection is 3 Mbps down, 256kbps up; and his collection is ~400GB, and is a mix of WAV, FLAC, and SHN (SHORTEN) formats."
migt be good but windows over linux? why?
-Windows 2000 or XP
-Winamp 2.92 (yes i know its old but it supports shoutcast)
-SHN and FLAC Winamp plugins
-Winamp Shoutcast DSP plugin
-Windows Shoutcast server
The DSP enocdes to MP3 on the fly, and really dosn't use much in the way of system resources.
The only problem i cna think of is remote control.
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
Try this http://supercast.sourceforge.net/.
Get it here
Runs great on my server, which is almost identical system to the one specified. It should handle everything you need, including multiple formats and transcoding.
Their hardware is not required (but as an owner of one, I can say it is cool).
Have you looked at SlimServer? It's an open source Perl server designed to power Slim Devices' MP3 players.
I used it for a bit, but ditched it in favor of Lincoln Stein's Apache::MP3. My SO still uses SlimServer to stream from home to work, though. The two coexist well on my little Debian server. I don't know if SlimServer supports FLAC; Apache::MP3 does.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
When Winamp runs the Shoutcast plug-in, it decodes the music, no matter what format, then recompresses it before sending it out to the server. FLAC won't faze it.
I will not Ask Slashdot without trying Google first.
I will not Ask Slashdot without trying Google first.
I will not Ask Slashdot without trying Google first.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I've been wondering if this can do it. I think it would work by adding the right mime types, but I never got it working and haven't messed with it for almost a year.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
I will not dismiss a question with "Ask Google" without giving keywords.
I will not dismiss a question with "Ask Google" without giving keywords.
I will not dismiss a question with "Ask Google" without giving keywords.
This is not worthy of an Ask Slashdot question. You did NO research and should have Asked Google first. Try searching for "stream mp3" and shoutcast is the FIRST RESULT.
The player (Usually WinAmp) decodes the content, transcodes it to MP3 or Vorbis, and streams it to the Shoutcast or Icecast server.
FLAC only compresses to about half the size of the corresponding WAV. That doesn't seem that much of a difference to me, especially going over public internet.
I can tell you from personal experience (since it's what I have) that a 256k uplink is not enough to reliably stream a 128kbps file. It is just baaaarely enough to move 1 MB per minute, which is about what a 128k mp3 winds up being, and given real-world network conditions, you will never get a reliable enough link to even play one song without pauses. So, the next step down is 112k or 96k.
.wav, and if FLAC gives 50% compression, 96k files--the largest you might expect to stream smoothly--is still 1/6 the size. So that 400 GB can shrink to about 60 GB (at which point, a 60 GB iPod becomes worth considering as well*) so there's not much reason not to just compress the whole collection to 96kbps mp3 or AAC or OGG and use that compressed copy as the source of what gets served/streamed.
At that point, the files are getting pretty small. A 128k mp3 is 1/10 the size of a
* an iPod would solve a lot of problems while creating very few. The main problem is the cost. OTOH, it doesn't depend on network availability. It can be used in a lot more places than a computer can. It will play mp3, aac, wav, aiff, and Apple's lossless codec. And it can store files and do other cool things.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
http://www.ampache.org/ - It's a LAMP-based server, easy to use w/ some good features.
Currently the following file formats are supported.
* MP3 (Id3v1 & Id3v2)
* OGG
* WMA
* RM
* M4A/AAC/MP4 (Itunes files)
* FLAC
* MPC
I have a music server setup at my parents' home with tons of music encoded as flac, and I live at another place by myself and I listen there over the internet, so I don't even have to keep a single CD myself.
What I did may not help you directly, because this is a UNIX method, but if you do have UNIX, then try running nfs over those 2 points (Yes, if you really want to, put Cygwin on Window machines and you can mount them just fine or there is Service For Unix from Microsoft for free.)
Nfs is the best network filesystem that preserves the bandwidth over network imo (I run 100mbps up/down on both location and it keeps the bandwidth just fine over nfs. smb and rest just somehow cuts down the bandwidth, but may still run enough bandwidth for flacs)
But you can also try to put VPN against those 2 machines (if you got a WinXP Pro on one side, I think you can set it up as VPN server, that is if your network at your work allows the traffic), and have the home local drive exported as Windows share and mount it on the other side.
If you still can't have it done, maybe the easiest in terms of getting it up for the network is running Apache web server at home.
Once you get Apache running and have the music folder viewable from outside (maybe you want to put some password protection or something), you can just launch foobar2k or winamp and make it access to your server via global ip and have it streamed.
This is only like accessing another web server in the world, so it is very unlikely that you get network restriction.
If your IP is dynamic, you can consider getting a service like www.no-ip.com so you can have a consistent name along with your changing IP, so you can access without problems.
Hope one of it works for you.
http://slimdevices.com/
I use SlimServer alot. It comes with a software version of the SqueezeBox 2 (which supports ssl tunneling), it can also transcode on the fly to a lower bitrate (must install lame). This is a fantastic feature. I rip my music to mps vbr and transcode to a suitable bitrate for my outbound streams. SlimDevices also has a great support list and most questions are answered in short order.
Meddle thou not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and with most anything.
FLAC, WAV, OGG, SHN, APE, WMA, MOV
As long as a command line tool to decode the audio exists which can direct its output to standard out, it can be transcoded and streamed using SlimServer.
"From my cold, dead hands you damn, dirty apes!" - CH
Why not use a . . . wait for this . . . RADIO OR A PORTABLE MP3 PLAYER!!! Rotate your collection once in a while. Why must there be a complicated answer for everything!?
I have almost that exact setup with the BrowseAmp plugin for Winamp which lets you control everything from a password protected web interface, it's pretty sweet.
A friend of mine has challenged me to put together an internet music server for him
So, I challenge you to give me $50,000!
I have a shoutcast stream which is done as follows.
I have a shoutcast server which is feed by winamp ruiing on a windows box. It plays back my files in random mode, and with the shout plugin for winamp shouts the stream into the shoutcast sever. The shoucast server then broad casts on the internet. Been up and running for 3 years now zero issues. It just works.
I have also added a freeware product called wwwinamp from Halo 8 productions (The original was actually made by the winamp/shoutcast guys as well, but they droped it and the Halo 8 guy picked it up). The wwwinamp allows be to contol the feed over the internet from a browser.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I got tired of dicking around with this codec nonsense, having to deal with keeping a personal server up and running, and dealing with buffering problems caused by ISP uplink throttling. I finally just forked over the $10/mo for Rhapsody, which has a nice-sized library and can be streamed to any PC that has internet access. Problem solved.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.