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Redirecting Audio from PC to PC?
Atlantis-Rising asks: "I have two PCs in my standard setup- one is a 1U server (Running windows XP), and the other is a Windows XP Media Center PC. When I purchased the server, I didn't think I'd need a soundcard, and so I made no provisions for this when I was planning my system, and so it has no audio. After buying the server, my main desktop died and I decided to use the server as my main desktop machine, and I'd really like audio. However, my Media Center PC is hooked up to a wonderful speaker set, one that I'd not like to duplicate. I therefore wonder if anyone on Slashdot knows of a way to play the audio from one PC on another? I know about buying a USB sound-card, and I'd rather not do that. I also know that I can use RDP to connect the media center PC to the server, but I'd rather not do that either, for graphical performance reasons. Are there any other solutions out there, Slashdot?"
As a virtual soundcard, and then stream it to some other computer using Shoutcast or something similar... but it's really not going to be the best experiece. I'd just buy a soundcard or USB thing and run a long cable over to the other PC.
Netcat can do wonderful things that should never be done over a network.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Relevant thread: Free workaround for listening to server audio from client
Then there's the possibility of setting your server up as a SoutCast-like server.
I've got no personal experience with it though...
I would've bought a cheap sound card...
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
You should give esound a try.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Just get the Windows Media Encoder 9 Series and you can broadcast the streaming media over the networkr ies/encoder/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9se
Hey there,
,it takes a bit to figgure out and get working properly, but after that it works great and sounds like what you need, as all you really seem to want is a way to remotely change songs.
For a while I used http://www.streamsicle.com/
whodunnit
A good question to ask is, whether you want to play music over the network, or if you want all sounds streamed (music,events,games,etc). The first is going to be vastly easier for you to accomplish. Off the top of my head I can think of audioplayers/jukeboxes, like mpd (although that may be unixesque systems only).
The second option is going to be a lot harder to accomplish, especially if you need to play sounds without a lot of latency. I only know of unix type software (esd,mas), and even then they are notoriously hard to get working right.
If you can live with just music, I'd go that route.
They'll think I've lost control again and leave it all to evolution. -- Supreme Being, Time Bandits
Isn't that just loud as hell? When I configure rackmounts in my office, I usually use earphones bacause they are so loud. Oh, and drowing out noise with more noise is not a good idea hearing-wise.
I had a similar situation a number of summers ago when both my brothers and my own computer occupied a KVM switch with one set of speakers. I'm assuming that you already share files over your network, because otherwise this solution is useless unless all your music is on the media center PC. This Winamp plugin will allow you to control Winamp on your media center PC through an internet browser. Simply type in the internal IP and you're all set (once of course you set up the plugin to begin with; a fairly easy task). Since playlist files need not reside on the local computer (ie the media center PC), but just at an accessable location (anywhere on your LAN), your entire colection can stay right where it is (be it on the server or the media center). It might not be the most elagant solution, but it works.
Try Windows Media Connect. You can install it on any Windows XP system. It isn't perfect, but it does allow you to stream media files over a network. Depending on what sort of setup you are looking for, it might be just what you need. It won't help if you're trying to stream audio from games over, though.
Maybe VLC will do what you want.
On my home net, my ancient laptop serves files, including oggs. There's no point in streaming the audio--I just mount the filesystem from my PCs and mythtv box and play them as though they were local--the point of a networked filesystem. I can't imagine why you'd not be able to do the same thing in your setup.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I am listening to a music stream from that old laptop in the corner (which is running mt-daapd) to this newer one running Rhythmbox. Works like a charm!
This will work fine... Since you don't have a sound card you will need a virtual soundcard http://www.ntonyx.com/vac.htm works great. Then you set up a shoutcast server http://shoutcast.com/ and a copy of winamp with the shoutcast dsp encoder. once you get shoutcast running and broadcasting over your network you just tell it to take it's input from the virtual audio cable. You need to fiddle with the windows mixers to get all the sounds sent out the vac. on the speaker machine tune into your stream with winamp and that should be all you need to do. Use a low bit rate so the encoder doesn't tax your CPU. I recommend the aac+ @24k. This sounds great and won't tax your cpu much at all. good luck! -DJTempest>
Using JACK I regularly stream realtime audio (iTunes, QuickTime) from my PowerBook running OS X Tiger to my Debian Linux server where my speakers are attached with minimal latency.
There's a good port of JACK available for OS X and jack.udp readily compiles on OS X. I use Audio Hijack Pro as my JACK source to grab audio from applications and send them to JACK which then uses jack.udp to send via the network.
Of course if you're running Linux on your workstation, everything you need should be included in your distro's repositories already. I have no idea about Windows support.
It would be quite easy to achieve what you want on linux, thanks to various sound drivers that are designed to allow streaming to another computer.
On Windows however, the sound drivers are discouraged from doing things like that. In fact, some applications will refuse to output sound if the driver isn't "approved" by Microsof, pretty much specifically to block this kind of setup.
Still, if someone was buy the DDK and write an unsigned virtual sound driver for windows, most applications out there would accept it for now (except for DRM-enabled things.)
for my own situation, i have two machines side-by-side. one is a rackmount linux server and one is a windows game-playing machine (also using a monitor switch to dual-monitor the windows box). if both sound-cards use spdif connexions, then i highly recommend taking the spdif-out from one box and wiring it to the spdif-in on the sound card that has the speakers. alternately, if you have sound cards that only have one-eigth inch headphone jacks, take the line-out from one and get a patch cable to the line-in or mic jack on the other.
if you patch it in through a mic jack, make sure you turn off the decibel boost on the mic jack or otherwise you'll get hideous distortion. if you're running it to the line-in, then go into the mixer and set line-in between half and three-quarter volume at first. then adjust the line-out on the slave machine up to it's highest and see where you're at.
in my case, i seldom use the server for full audio or video playback (but will occasionally), so i tend to leave the line-in closer to halfway because i mostly want to hear the sound events from the server, but have the option to use it to watch a movie while i play a game.
I usually use MPD (Music Player Daemon) on my Linux and NetBSD boxes so I can play audio remotely (or locally too). MPDv2 is suppose to support Windows, but it isn't out yet. Another trick that I've used for Linux/BSD -> Windows is that I ran a esound server (esd -public -tcp -port 6666) on the Windows computer and used mplayer (mplayer -ao esd) to send the audio output to the remote windows computer. It's very fun to send Avril Lavigne songs to the university's clusters' computers to piss off your hard working friends :).
Anyway, a quick google came up with PlayerPal, which runs on Windows and seems to be what you want. In fact, it seems to do a lot of things that MPD and its various clients do. Good luck.
iTunes (the version that runs on your own PC, not the download shop) uses the DAAP protocol to act as a music server. Fire up iTunes with your music collection on one PC, then fire up iTunes on another PC on the same network and you can see and play each other's music across the network from within iTunes.
Better yet, there's DAAP servers available that mean you don't need a GUI based tool such as iTunes to share the music around. I run mt-daapd on a cheapy Linksys NSLU2 disc server (which runs Linux under the covers), and it works perfectly - every PC in the house can see every piece of music in the house, by running either iTunes or another DAAP client such as GetItTogether. Next purchase is a Roku SoundBridge, which is a hardware box that can attach to the main stereo system to play DAAP-sourced music. All up, it's a simple, powerful, elegant solution that's been rock solid in my experience.
Unlike a lot of other household IT projects, this definitely merits the Spousal Seal of Approval - all the household music CDs (~700 at present, give or take) get ripped once, copied to the NSLU2, then filed away in crates under the house. No clutter, no empty CD cases or orphaned CDs left out to get scratched, no furniture needed to store purchased CDs beyond 1 x $5 plastic crate per ~100 CDs. The NSLU2 and attached 2 disc drives actually sit on top of a kitchen cupboard, and is shown off by my SO as a tribute to my "IT genius" to both her friends and my geek buddies - you can't top that!!!
Use a stereo audio cable, line out to line in. It can't get any simpler.
Why so?
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
What kind of latency does this introduce? Would movies or games be useable or does the encoding, buffering and decoding of audio introduce enough of a delay to make this a headache?
Bleh!
Trying to stream from one PC to another is not a good idea. Latency will be an issue, for a start.
The simplest solutions are the best. Get an audio switch box. You can get one that has six phono plugs for surround sound, or even just make one. If you have digital audio, even better... No latency, good sound quality, easy to switch over. Hell, get a basic mixer if you need both on at the same time.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Maybe Slimserver http://www.slimdevices.com/ is what youre looking for. They have real nice clients in hardware which are also available in software and you can also use it to play streams. Great piece of software and its free!
The folks over at http://www.htpcnews.com/ are incredibly knowledgable and friendly. Most forum posts are answered within hours. This is exactly the type of thing that is asked there a lot, so there may even be some older threads that you can search for.
Don't worry, those of us with NVidia cards have exactly the same problem. :)
Since you have been modded to max, I respectfully say this. Sir you are one fucking genius geek - WNWorthy
Check out remote desktop to the system that has the sound. There is an optrion to redirect sound. You need to be logged on to it and then remote desktop into is as the same user. We use this for one guy in HR. His normal location is at another plant and his system is just so-so but that's where his telephone is. When he is on-site here he uses a really good system and he can play voice mail on his usuall systemn he is remote desktoped into.
zenray
Alright, he has two computers. One is a rack-mount server with no audio. The other is a HTPC with a nice set of speakers. The only thing I can figure with this is that he had a third computer that he was using as his desktop. Additionally, he doesn't want to purchase a USB sound card.
He doesn't want to use RDP due to graphical performance issues which leads me to believe that he is intending to play games rather than listen to music (Since listening to music does not require graphical performance).
I hate to say it (since it contradicts his intentions), but I think a USB sound card would be the optimal way to go. If he just wants to listen to music, there is no need to ask Slashdot (Just stream it or use RDP to control the playlist). If he wants to play games with awesome sound, he should just use the HTPC.
If the problem is no sound card, external USB sound cards are $20. Thats what we call "no excuses". I got mine at a geeks.com sale for $12. 24/96 and 8 channel output. What more do you want? Wait, your computer doesnt have USB? Try upgrading from a 486. Cant do cabling? Now we have an issue.
Look, there's no way in fucking hell you're going to get windows doing this. We all want our Pinto's to fly and do 180 on the highway, but its just not going to happen. There used to be some esound-based virtual sound card, it looked like a normal sound card and it streamed out to esound daemons across network, but it wasnt updated since the Win NT 4 days. The site was gone when I went looking for it again last year and the year before. Dead.
Since that time, MS has started charging for the device driver development kit. it used to be free. people used to be able to make cool hacks. those days are over now. there's a couple costly apps (Virtual Audio Cables is basically taht app) which create fake sound card devices, but harvesting these to make streaming connections to other machines is not simple. Shoutcast is your only bet, and good luck getting anything less than a 1s delay on that front.
This one question IS very interesting, it just so happens that the particulars of the question are quite boring bordering idiotic. We might not get flying pintos, but by-george slashdot will do its damnedest to whip up a flying car. "Where are my flying cars?" The "news for nerds" under the title is the hint that we're going to take your boring "give me software to do it" Suit-wearing question and mix it up to a "what CAN we do", "what IS possible" question. The answer's left wearing leftover's 90's grunge, but you know what, at least its a real answer. Which is something Windows cannot deliver. We've crushed the technical problem best as possible; mission accomplished.
I would've written your frakking software for you too, had windows continued giving away the device developers kit free.
Myren
Because he's an asshole...
I bet /. will pay more in bandwidth to answer this question than it would cost to buy a soundcard
Just buy a super cheap sound card and run the audio out to the line in on the entertainment box. you'll get better performance that way anyways
Could you have a few more silly I don't want that because in the question? You are tying slashdot's hands because you were too cheap to get a $25 sound card for that sled-server. The graphics considerations? How about a gigabit LAN? I use Nero 6.6+'s media server no problemo. Since you probably would not want speakers for whatever reason how about some Bluetooth headphones; 40 ft. ;259 channels scrambled and no wires.
Oh yeah...why are you not using the media center music server?
My last idea I swear is to turn up the volume on the Media Center PC and rock out, damn the neighbors
Relax, aren't you lucky that it is only my Opinion?