I have an event at the end of January and I'd like to have an live audio broadcast of the final show. I have absolutely no idea where to start. I tried to searched the forum using the words "live audio stream", there were way too many threads found so I'm sorry if this is a repeat.

Hopefully, this can be easy. But any help will be appreciated!!

Thanks!

Bump. No suggestions?

Howdy. I don't know how to do it, but when I'm trying to grasp something that I know nothing about, I always go to wikipedia first:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_radio

wikipedia is your friend!

For future reference, you may also find it helpful to provide some details about the hardware, software and bandwidth that you have available to you. I think that there are many different ways to stream bits...

HTH,

John

Welcome to you both!
Dyneq, great first post. We need members like you who can orient newer people to the right sources of information.

Cugirl, you can try setting up Jinzora on your machine. It can pretty much stream any media file, but you might want to convert it to the right format first, something that requires less bandwidth. You will probably find suggestions on this board, depending on what type of content it is.

Good luck,
Shade

I don't have much experince in these matters, but I'm sure you'd get more relevant replies if you gave more detailed information in your original post.

Do you want to set up your own stream? or do you want to connect to some stream at the end of january?
What kind of bandwidth do you have, what quality do you want the stream to be in, what operating system are you running, what do you want to do specifically?

I'm sure with that kind of information in the request you would be much more likely to get a relevant reply.

I just recommend you to google for "Oddcast"

Hi, thanks so much for the replies, and sorry for being vague. I really didn't know where to start, so I wasn't sure what specifications I was supposed to give you.

Basically it's a lecture that's about an hour and a half (2 hours max.) and I want to broadcast it while it is happening. Afterwards, I will never need to live stream anything ever again.

-Do you want to set up your own stream? or do you want to connect to some stream at the end of january?

Given that it's only a one-time thing, I'm guessing the answer is no, I don't want to set up my own stream. (Unless it's really easy.)

-What kind of bandwidth do you have?

I have 500GB/month

- What quality do you want the stream to be in

I don't really need for it to be crystal clear. It's just all spoken. I'm expecting an audience of about 20 at most.

- What operating system are you running

Windows XP

I'm going to play around with Jinzora and see what works. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Is this with a web hosting service? What a hosting service calls bandwidth isn't technically bandwidth. If I'm supplying water for a city with a water tank, the amount of water in the tank is what a hosting service calls bandwidth (the amount of data available for transfer). This isn't of much importance for streaming.

If I'm connected to the city with small pipes, I'm not going to be able to move as much water there as I could with big pipes. This is what bandwidth refers to here, the amount of information you can move in a given time.

You can't, unfortunately, use a web hosting service for streaming. While Windows Media Encoder can push a stream to a server which the server can relay to listeners, only specialised servers are capable of doing this and few hosting services offer such a service. You're probably going to have to stream directly from the computer you're recording with. Bandwidth is the critical factor here.

To go back to the pipe analogy, people listening to your stream are like people turning on a tap. The more people who start using the resource, the more demand it's going to be under. If enough people turn on their taps my pipe will start to lose water pressure and eventually fail completely. The less bandwidth you have available, the less you can allocate to each listener.

As for the streaming itself, Windows Media Encoder is probably the easiest to use. Nearly every Windows machine has a version of Windows Media Player that will be able to connect to your stream without installing anything. On the recording end you just have to download and install Windows Media Encoder, choose your stream source (probably a microphone connected to the sound card in your case) and it will give you the port it is broadcasting on. You then need to find out the IP address of the machine you're broadcasting from. Once you have the IP address and port, you can list it on your website or however you plan on telling people and they can tune in through Windows Media Player.

Note that if you're behind a router or firewall (more than likely on a university network) broadcasting may be a lot more difficult.

If I remember correctly, Windows Media Encoder allows you to take audio directly from your sound card and broadcast it to some 20 users. If you need more listeners, you need a have a separate streaming server.

this is the easiest way i can think of....

send speach to the line-in on your pc.
then use winamp, with the nullsoft line in plugin (add url: "linein://")(and make sure windows recording mixer is set to the line-in)
then use the jetcast dsp plugin for broadcasting

all is available from www.winamp.com

i dont think you would need to use more than 24kbps 16khz mono mp3 for voice

icecast and shoutcast are better, but are a bit more difficult to setup

For just voice, nothing compares to Windows Media Audio 9 encoder. I broadcast live and recorded church services with the 19kbs voice quality setting (16kbs to the end user) with near perfect sounding quality at an unbelievably low bit rate. The encoder is a free download from Microsoft.
Jake Ludington has an excellent step by step article on getting and using the encoder.(http://www.jakeludington.com/ask_jake/20051015_how_to_stream_a_live_audio_file.html).
You also need to read Bill Birney "Optimizing Low Bit Rate Audio" article. Note: The equalization in this article is not critical but it helps.
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/OptimizingLowBitRate.aspx).
Jake recommends Audio Realm hosting/server if you do not want to use your computer as the host/server, and I use them myself. If you think the cost is high, believe me, they're not compared to other live Windows Media Service providers. You'll have to spend $10 minimum. I would not recommend using your own computer as the host/server even though the WMA encoder is capable of 50 user streams simply because you have to figure 19kbs (my recommended encoder setting) per user stream on UPLOAD speed which is slower than download speed. For example: 20 user streams x 19kbs = 380kbs continuous upload speed that you will need. You would need high end DSL or cable broadband service for that, plus there is the security issue of having people hook up directly to your computer.
Hope this helps.

is there an audio test that proves that?

jetcast can stream in mp3, ogg vorbis, or wma.. so i still think its the easiest way to go, no matter what the format of choice is.

Do a "voice only" recording on a digital recorder and encode it in multiple formats at 16kbs (The 19kbs WMA setting ends up 16kbs because of overhead), then listen. See for yourself. You do not have to use a Windows Media Server to stream, but it does well with WMA files.

Sorry for another 'newbie' question on this topic, but I found this discussion through a Google search, and I'm hoping that some of you who are knowledgable in this subject area might have information that could help...

I too am interested in trying to do a live audio stream, but I don't know if my project is feasible or even possible. Is there a way to stream a live play-by-play of a sports event (like a kid's soccer game) which is outdoors and therefore no Internet access, electrical power, etc. I'm wondering if you can use a cell phone and stream the audio of the one-way cell phone conversation where the speaker is making a live play-by-play description of the game. Is there a way for a phone on the receiving end to be connected to a computer with an audio server that could then stream the cell phone call live over the Web?

If anyone has any ideas on whether or not something like this could be done, I would greatly appreciate your information. Thanks.

A (some?) mobile phone(s), when connected via bluetooth with a PC, can use the microphone and the soundcard of the latter. It would be feasible to capture this audio, and then use the tools to encode an input stream, encode it and provide it online.

I have never tried such a thing, and i can't say if it works or not, but it's a possibility.

I would first try to transmit it via radio. Seems more feasible...