Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PC FM Tuner Streamed Over a LAN?

Posted by Cliff on from the better-quality-sounds dept.

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?"

6 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. I Don't Get It by Criliric · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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....

    1. Re:I Don't Get It by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 3, Interesting

      i listen to howard stern daily. a radio won't work in my office, but i could easily stream from home and tune in with xmms over the net

      --
      vodka, straight up, thank you!
  2. USB radioshark + icecast + liveice by zfalcon · · Score: 5, Informative
    I just set this up the other day so I could listen to local sports broadcasts when out of town.

    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.

  3. Kinda OT: I remember doing this many moons ago by szyzyg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  4. Put a radio on top of your PC by SIGFPE · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  5. Currently doing it with XM by irrelevant · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.