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PC FM Tuner Streamed Over a LAN?
ooglek asks: "FM radio seems to be falling out of favor, with many stations putting their streams online. Unfortunately, many choose bad codecs and low bandwidth feeds, which make them practically unappealing. There seem to be a fair number of PCI-based TV Tuner cards that come with a built in FM receiver, and I'm interested in what it might take to stream my local FM stations to the Windows, Unix and Mac boxes in my house over my LAN, as well as my TiVo and Slim Devices SqueezeBox. Is this merely a pipe-dream?"
Doesn't anybody else have a receviver these days?
instead of stereo into the computer I happen to have it the other way around, and if I really wanted to listen the local rock station all I have to do I press a button.
I might be missing something but what is the point of having your computer play your radio, unless you plan on recording the banter of the DJs....
Capture the FM audio with your tuner card on a Mac. Then use Nicecast to stream it. Nicecast can basically stream any audio on your Mac.
The thing is, the radio station has a clean signal to work with. Compression algorithms will work relitively well with that, but if you use the audio that comes from F.M. it will introduce alot of noise. This won't work as well as with the clean signal and in the end you'll probably have use more bandwidth just to broadcast the same audio at about the same quality.
I bought a USB Radioshark, set it up under Linux, and used Icecast with Liveice to setup realtime streaming.
I then setup a cgi to change stations. Works like a charm.
I'd got snapped up from my astronomy position in the UK to come and contract for a couple of months in the US, I'd been developing software like mp3serv/liveice/icecast. But, I didn't want to leave behind UK radio - like the Essential Mix, John Peel or The Breezeblock - the BBC website offered low quality real audio. I left my radio plugged into my computer at the observatory and streamed all the UK radio across the atlantic to my office in the US....
Sadly... I don't have an office in the UK any more so I guess my best bet now is Sirius radio.
1. A Mac Mini (you'll understand why in a minute.)
:-)
2. A USB FM Tuner (that's supported by the Mac). Google. There's a few out there.
3. NiceCast, (or Air Foil) from Rogue Amoeba. www.rogueamoeba.com
Simple. Seamless. That's the beauty of the Mac.
I assure you it sounds fine. Well, you might want to move it slightly away from your PC to avoid interference. If you want to listen in many rooms buy a radio for each one - they're pretty cheap. Or buy a portable radio that you can carry with you.
-- SIGFPE
You could try EsounD. It's standard on Linux Gnome desktops, and I believe there's windows stuff out there for it. I know there's a WinAmp plugin for it.
This is actually an interesting question and so were some others in the past.
I think the submitters should be force into developing a simple webpage that details what they did based on the knowledge slashdot gave them.
Heck, they could put it on ehow.com they have a wiki how to website http://wiki.ehow.com/Main-Page
Disney was ad-free, now its not. AMC was ad free, now its not. Except for the handful of movie channels, the vast majority of cable channels (cable-only, non-broadcast) are loaded with commercials. You pay to get them, and they have commercials.
Even with satellite radio, not all of the stations are commercial free.
You pay to go see movies, and they have more and more product placement.
Make no mistake - 95% of media companies plans for new revenue streams involve getting people to pay more for what they already have.
1. eliminate fair-use
2. introduce new tech regularly to obsolete old, requiring you to re-buy everything
3. DRM, so you have to buy the same thing repeatedly for different devices.
4. DRM introduced to over the air broadcasts so you cant record even though the law permits it
5. increases in length of copyright of already produced works - stealing from public domain so they can charge long for work created in 1929
4. reinterpretation of copyright law to disallow fair use of music snippets even a fraction of a second long - people have to pay to sample a simple "bleep."
5. locking down cell phones plus #4, so you have to buy the 3 seconds of your favorite tune for a buck a second for a ringtone rather than xfering it yourself.
6. self-destructing DVDs
7. fighting google's indexing of books (even though it wouldnt enable you to read the whole thing) because publishers plan to introduce a pay-per-page program of their own.
8. attempts to ban sales of used CDs and books.
The list goes on and on. The head of the RIAA even admitted several years ago that their goal is pay-per-play - you will no longer buy an album, you will pay every single time you listen to a song.
EVERYTHING is moving towards a subscription-based model, simply because it increases the eventual cost to consumers a hundredfold, yet is relatively easy to pass off to consumers.
This space available.
Right now, I'm doing this with my XM receiver (shh... don't tell them) to tune and stream audio throughout the house. I used to do this for FM as well but the server that was running it crashed and I haven't gotten around to redoing that part yet.
Why do it for XM? I like to listen to music anywhere in the house and I don't want to pay multiple subscription fees. Why for FM? The main reason was to get the audio into the computer and converted to MP3 so that I could record a few programs that I like and listen to them later. Streaming was just an added bonus for me at that time.
The basics of what you will need are:
1. An FM tuner card
2. Software for tuning (depends on card)
3. aumix for twiddling mixer settings
4. Darkice to read audio from the card
4a. Lame, or other CODEC of choice (optional)
5. Liveice to stream audio to clients
6. A little bit of fiddling to make it all work.
Oooh, looks like there's going to be trouble since your Digi-Chill 5000 is very similar to my Digi-Cool 6000. Of course, mine must be better due to the higher number.