HOWTO to broadcast MP3 audio streams to Icecast or Shoutcast servers using Winamp under Windows

Written by Mike Harris for RadioVague.com, $Revision: 1.9 $ ($Date: 2008-11-03 18:32:39 $)

Latest version of this document

Note this HOWTO covers streaming MP3G format streams to Icecast1 and Shoutcast servers only. Radio Vague only supply Icecast2 servers and recommend OGG as the preferred format for audio streams. Hence this HOWTO is useless for streaming to Radio Vague! Visit this page for instructions on streaming OGG format streams to Icecast2 servers using Winamp.

Contents

• Prerequisites
• Getting and installing the software you need
  • Installing Shoutcast Plug-in for WinAmp
  • Installing Shoutcast Plug-in for WinAmp
• Enabling the Shoutcast plug-in
• Using the Shoutcast/DSP plug-in for WinAmp
  • Configuring the input source
  • Configuring the encoder
  • Configuring the streaming server
• Note on WinAmp versions

Prerequisites

This HOWTO is for Windows users and is not apt for Linux or Mac users. You should have a computer with something like at least a PII processor and 64MB of RAM and be running anything from Windows 98 or later. If you're running Windows 2000 or XP, then you really should have a faster processor and about four-times that amount of RAM (this is the cult of the upgrade you know). You should also have a sound card, and preferably a good one at that. Essentially if doing streaming under Windows, then you should have a machine purchased in 1999 or later.

You will also need to have details for a Shoutcast or Icecast compatible streaming server that you are authorised to stream to. You'll need to get the following information from the administrator of the server you decide to use:

• Server name (e.g. live1.radiovague.com)
• Server port (e.g. 8000)
• Server password

Without these you won't be streaming anything and following these instructions any further will ultimately be a waste of time for you, so make sure you have everything you need before continuing.

Still with us? Great! Then let's begin ....

Getting and installing the software you need

Download WinAmp version 5 from http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp5112_lite.exe. The Lite version of the free player is adequate for streaming audio to Radio Vague. If you're after more exciting functions for your WinAmp player, then visit www.winamp.com and select your download.

Download the Shoutcast plug-in for WinAmp from http://www.shoutcast.com/downloads/shoutcast-dsp-1-9-0-windows.exe. If you root around the Shoutcast web site, you'll see that it mentions that this is for version 2 of WinAmp. Don't worry the plug-in also works with version 5.0, but for more information refer to the note on WinAmp versions at the bottom of this article.

Installing WinAmp 5

Step-by-step instructions follow:

1. You should have the winamp5112_lite.exe file downloaded to you Windows desktop. You should double-click this to start installation. You'll see a screen asking you to accept the licence. Do exactly that by clicking the 'I Agree' button.
2. On the next screen you can choose the components to install. I'd just go with the default install (Lite). Click 'Next'.
3. On the next screen it asks you where you'd like to install WinAmp. Just click 'Next'.
4. On the next screen it asks you about file associations and links to create. You could just go with the defaults by clicking 'Next' really, but if want to customise this at all, go for it, I can't really give you any advice on that.
5. The next screen is about your Internet connexion. Unless you know what's going on here, I'd just go with the default settings by clicking on the 'Install' button.
6. WinAmp then installs.
7. At the end of the installation the programme asks you about registration. I'll leave this up to you. However, if you decide you don't want to register, make sure you check the 'Do not ask again until next install' checkbox so that the programme doesn't keep hassling you about registration in the future. Click 'Send' or 'Later' as you've decided.
8. WinAmp will then start-up automatically. Close it as we have to install the plug-in next....

Installing Shoutcast Plug-in for WinAmp

You should have the shoutcast-dsp-1-9-0-windows.exe file on your Windows desktop. Double click this. Then when the installer window appears go with all the defaults by clicking 'Next' three times and the plug-in installs. When asked at the end if you want to view the read me file, just answer 'No'.

Enabling the Shoutcast plug-in

Now you're ready to run WinAmp and stream. So find it's newly installed icon and double-click it.

1. Fire up WinAmp, you should see something like the following, with perhaps an equalizer and a playlist windows also:
   
2. Now hover the mouse over the very top left of the main WinAmp window and click to get a pop-up menu, go to 'Options' and then click 'Preferences':
   
3. You'll get an options window appearing (you can also get here by hitting the P key whilst holding down control on your keyboard). From here visit the 'DSP/Effect' option under the 'Plug-ins' option on the window's left hand side.
   
4. On the right hand side, you should see a list of two items as shown in the screenshot above. Select the one titled 'Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP v1.9.0'. As soon as you do this, a new window will suddenly appear:
   
5. This is the plug-in for WinAmp that you installed. It works fine, but isn't all that intuitive for a first-time user, so for the rest of this document I'll explain how to use it.
6. Oh by the way, having enabled the plug-in, you can close the WinAmp options window by clicking on the 'Close' button of this window :)

Using the Shoutcast/DSP plug-in for WinAmp

The plug-in features four tabs or panes called the following:

• Main: this is purely for monitoring your outgoing stream(s)
• Output: this is where you configure the streaming server(s) to send to.
• Encoder: this is where you configure how you encode the stream. (i.e. what bitrate, format and compression you use for it).
• Input: this is where you configure your input source for the stream.

Before we go any further, I should explain two concepts of the plug-in, which are slightly different from some of the other streaming programmes available.

• The plug-in lets you choose between whether to take it's input for the stream from the computer's sound card (via microphone or line-in) or from WinAmp's own play-list.
• The plug-in lets you set-up multiple encoders and multiple streaming servers for your stream, although you only ever have a single input. This gives you the ability to do things such as:
  • Stream your stream using the same encoding but to multiple streaming servers. So for example you choose to send you 32Kbps stereo stream to a server in Poland and a server in Spain.
  • Sstream your stream to the same streaming server but use different encoding parameters to provide different quality streams. So for example you might decide to send a 64Kbps quality stream for those in the world lucky enough to have an ISDN, ADSL or leased-line connexion to the Internet and another 24kbps poorer-quality stream for the ears of the large quantity of modem users out there.
  • A mix of the above.

For our example here and in the interest of keeping things simple we're only going to have a single encoding to a single streaming server.

Configuring the input source

The default setting is to stream out the audio files in WinAmp's play-list. At this juncture I recommend you find a few MP3s to stream out for a test and we'll go for that.

You may prefer however to stream input from your soundcard, in which case select 'Soundcard Input' from the 'Input Device' menu. A whole load of new options then appear:

There's really only two things you need to choose here. One is under the 'Input Setting' menu, which really is a setting for the sample rate and whether the stream's going to be in mono or stereo. For our example, and practically for most streams, selecting the first option of '22050Hz, Mono' is utterly adequate.

The other option is under the 'Soundcard Mixer' section, where you can select between inputs . 'Microphone' is obviously for the microphone and 'Line Input' is for the line-in on the back of your computer. If you do choose not to use your play-list and go for one of these, then you'll need to click the 'Open Mixer' button so that the defult Windows mixer appears for you to adjust your input levels. You want the 'Recording Control' window here and the faders for 'Line-in' and 'Microphone'. You need to click the checkbox below the slider for the input source you're using and then use the slider to adjust it.

Our 'top streamer' recommendation would be to use a mixing desk to mix microphone and music together and then take the output from this into the line-in of your computer. This however is another HOWTO document in itself, so I won't go any farther with this and assume we're streaming out MP3s from WinAmp for this example.

Phew, let's look at the encoding now ...

Configuring the encoder

Click on the 'Encoder' tab. From here you can see that the plug-in allows you to have up to five different encoder configurations. We're just going for one here: a 32kbps, 22.05kHz, mono MP3 stream. Here's a screenshot:

As you can see, you need to first select 'Encoder 1' from the 'Encoder' menu, then select 'MP3 Encoder' from the 'Encoder Type' menu and '32kbps, 22.050kHz, Mono' from the 'Encoder Settings' menu.

That was simple, now onto the streaming server set-up:

Configuring the streaming server

Click on the 'Output' tab. Once again you'll see that the plug-in allows for up to 5 fiver different streaming servers. Here we're going for just one. Here's a screenshot again:

So from the above, you can see that you need to do the following:

1. Select 'Output 1' from the 'Output' menu.
2. Enter the name of your streaming server in the 'Address field'. You have got a streaming server haven't you?
3. Enter the 'Port', which should nearly always be '8000', but check with your streaming server's administrator in case they err from the norm.
4. Enter the 'Password' that the server administrator gave you.
5. Select which Encoder to use. In this instance, it should be '1' - the one you set-up in the Encoder section above.
6. Check the 'Automatic Reconnection on Connection Failure' checkbox and leave the 'Reconnection Timeout' at the default of 30 seconds.
7. Having done that, you then simply click the 'Connect' button and you should start streaming.

From the graphic (which shows the 'Main' tab, not the 'Output' tab) you can see that on the left I'm playing an MP3 file from WinAmp and on the right, the plug-in is showing that it's connected and how much data has been sent so far.

And that's about it for now. If the above works or doesn't work for you, then please email your feedback to the author.

Note on WinAmp versions

There was probably once a version 1, but the most popular was version 2 and for this version there was the Shoutcast plug-in, which worked fine. Then there was version 3 of WinAmp for which the Shoutcast plug-in didn't work. Then there is version 5, for which the Shoutcast plug-in also works. As version 5 is the latest from Nullsoft, we recommend you use this version. However if you've already got the old version 2 installed, then that'll work for you to. If you've version 3 installed already, then upgrade to version 5. There doesn't appear to have been a version 4. If you happen to have it, please let the author know and then upgrade to version 5.

Validate this information.

Article copyright (c) 2005 Psand Limited. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".