Internet Radio

[andrewca2]

Hi, In short what do you need? and how do you do it?,preflaby on the cheap guys cheers

[Judge Mental]

Depends on how many listeners you aim for. You can do it right off your connection using the winamp shoutcast plug in.

There's a tutorial on the official JJboard in the broadcasting section. Thats dead easy to set up but my knowledge ends there.

[FuzzY-LogiC]

Hi Andrew.

What kind of plan for an internet radio is it exactly you have in mind?

1) Run an 24/7 Internet Radio station?

2) or have the possibility of streaming to a couple of friends whenever you need to?

How many listeners are you planning on having simultaneously?

You need to know your upload capacity of your internet connection, so you can calculate how many listeners you can have without the stream starts skipping.

To quote the official Shoutcast 'settings file':

"Compute a reasonable value for your available upstream bandwidth (i.e. if you have 256kbps upload DSL, and want to broadcast at 24kbps, you would choose 256kbps/24kbps=10 maximum listeners.)"

The actual set up of the applications is quite easy, but can be a bit tricky for firsttimers, so don't give up if it doesn't work the first time around.

I've been shoutcasting for 8 years on different OS's and i still run into problems now and then... nothing unfixable though

So... to take the easiest road, i'd choose Shoutcast as solution. (others like Icecast is brilliant too, but can be a bit more tricky to get working).

If you're running Windows, all you need is to download and install 2 applications. (3 if you don't already have Winamp installed).

All 3 apps can be downloaded from http://www.shoutcast.com/download/

'Winamp'

'Shoutcast DSP plugin'

'Shoutcast Server'

Install them in the above order, and go with the default server settings (just remember to change the password).

Start Winamp and bring up the 'Preferences' (ctrl+p). under Plugins, -> DSP/Effect, choose 'Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP'

On the 'Output' Tab, put in 'localhost' as Address, '8000' as Port, your chosen password and encoder, which you can set up on the 'Encoder' Tab.

That should be the basic set up of Shoutcast.

Feel free to send me a PM if you need help (check my profile for ICQ and MSN).

Also be sure to check out the Documentation for more detailed information http://www.shoutcast.com/support/docs/

Good luck and happy streaming

PS. if you're running Linux, PM me and i'll walk you through it on MSN/ICQ... as it's a bit more complicated

PPS. If you're running Mac, you might be better off having someone else helping, as i don't have much experience with Mac's

[Quadrant]

What a helpful response. I know nothing about Internet broadcasting but I imagine that'll help you out a bit, sir Andrewca2!