Streaming sound in OpenSim

Revision as of 10:56, 14 May 2023

Intruduction

To stream music and sounds to OpenSimulator, you need two software components :

• A broadcaster : It takes a sound source and sends it to the streaming server.

• A streaming server : It accepts sounds from your broadcaster and delivers it to the audience.

Additionally, you may need :

• A mixer.

• A virtual audio devices to route audio between applications.

Broadcasters

Butt (Broadcast Using This Tool)

The simplest broadcaster. It takes sound from an audio device and sends it to the streaming server. Using a virtual sound device, you can stream from any audio application.

Category : opensource

Platform : PC, Mac

Link : https://danielnoethen.de/butt/

Mixxx

Geared to DJ's. As name implies, mixes music then broadcast to server.

Category : free

Platform : PC, Mac

Link : https://mixxx.org/

Virtual DJ

Popular DJ software.

Category : commercial

Platform : PC, Mac

Link : https://www.virtualdj.com/

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)

Although a video streamer, you can also use it to broadcast sound.

Category : opensource

Platform : PC, Mac, Linux

Link : https://obsproject.com/

Mixers

Voicemeeter

Audio mixer. Combine with Butt and your preferred music player to do live streams. Insert audio conferencing feeds (Skype, Zoom, Discord), even other PCs and even smartphones over the LAN to build a full-fledged radio studio.

Category : donationware

Platform : PC

Link : https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/

Virtual audio devices

Also known as 'virtual audio cables', they connect two audio applications. Application A is configured to output sound on the virtual driver. Application B to input sound from the same driver. Instantiate a driver for each 'cable' (e.g. music player to mixer, mixer to broadcaster). To use a virtual audio driver, application MUST be able to select input/output devices.

VB-CABLE

Category : donationware

Platform : PC

Link : https://vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm

SoundFlower

Barebone audio driver. One 2-channel device and one 64-channel device. You may have some difficulty finding the version that matches your OS version (code signing, etc)

Category : open-source

Platform : Mac

Link : https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower

Loopback

Unlimited number of devices and channels. Highly flexible and easy to configure.

Category : commercial

Platform : Mac

Link : https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/

Streaming servers

As your broadcaster sits on your personal computer, the streaming server is better hosted on a server on the internet. Setting up a streaming server is a demanding task, involving dealing with configuration files and understanding the intricacies of streaming. As an alternative, you can subscribe to a free or paying streaming service.

You need to configure your broacaster to talk to your streaming server input (host + port), then declare the output of the streaming server into About Land > Sound > Music URL.

Streaming audio incurs a latency of aroud 30 seconds. Internet radio and DJs have to deal with in live event.

Icecast

Icecast is readily available in most Linux distributions. (apt install icecast2)

Category : open-source

Platform : PC, Mac, Linux

Link : https://icecast.org/

Soutcast

Popular streaming server. Mostly commercial but a free version exists. You have to carefully assemble the parts.

Software :

• http://download.nullsoft.com/shoutcast/tools/
• http://mirror.lchost.net/download.nullsoft.com/shoutcast/tools/

Documentation

• http://wiki.shoutcast.com/wiki/SHOUTcast_DNAS_Server_2
• http://wiki.shoutcast.com/wiki/SHOUTcast_DNAS_Transcoder_2

See also

Streaming_Media_in_OpenSim