Multiple source streaming - suggestions?

[audioguy]

Hi all,

OK - let me start by admitting I'm basically a newbie to streaming (serving it, anyways).

I work for a radio broadcaster. We have 5 stations, and are planning to put them online, starting with 3 of them over the next few months. Plus, we may provide some additional streams of other automated programming in the near future.

So what I'm looking at is several live streams coming from our location. (I'm assuming that sending these to a hosting provider is a better solution than buying another T1 to handle the traffic. If I'm off base there then say so, but that's not what I'm looking at now.)

Curious as to what some of you might do in my situation? Can I (or should I?) have a multichannel card in a single server to encode multiple streams? Think of, say, up to 4 stereo signals, each encoded to a particular bitrate, and having different machines feeding different bitrate streams, i.e. a 32k aac+ server, a 64k mp3 server, so that if one went down the station would still be available on another stream.

Or would I be better off dedicating single machines to each input?

I'm open to the voice of experience here. I've been Googling a lot of info, so I'm getting the idea of what's required, but at the same time I'm digesting a LOT of info in a very short time, so I'm hoping for some friendly advice.

Thanks in advance!

[Nick@ss]

a main machine and a backup machine doing all the feeds can be used as individual machines may land up expensive, and under resourced,

1 machine handling all of your streams with a back up at the ready will be fine,

alternatively check the 24/7 links below and you can do it with no machines and just upload all the content to the servers and have no machines or just a live stream machine

i hope this helps,

[Vchat20]

plain and simple audioguy, a single machine with a half decent processor in it will easily be able to handle broadcasting these separate bitrates with nothing more than a single sound card and winamp with the shoutcast dsp. and yes, i would recommend getting external stream hosts because a T1 wont be able to handle many listeners at 24k let alone a few different bitrates at once.

nick@ss, read his post a bit better. hes trying to do a live internet broadcast of a terrestrial station he works for.

[Nick@ss]

thanks for the pointer vchat but he also says "we may provide some additional streams of other automated programming in the near future"

i offered various suggestions to his question imo as the thread starter requested,

[dotme]

Guys - just for clarification, I think audioguy's question was about *encoding* multiple, different, streams (3-5 terrestrial stations). I agree that a single PC could serve as a relay DNAS for all streams, sourcing for hosted DNAS servers at a data center.

I might be wrong, but I think the question dealt with actually encoding incoming (presumably analog) signals from, say, three different radio stations before sending them to a DSP/DNAS. I'm no expert on whether this could be done on a single machine, but I believe encoding to be somewhat processor intensive.

If he has four different incoming analog signals, one sound card wouldn't do - right? In that instance, what would be best, a multi-channel sound card that could accept 4 seperate inputs and 4 winamps/4DSPs encoding on a single PC, or 4 PCs (One for each radio station)?

(I don't have the answer - just trying to clarify the question. Audioguy, am I on the right track or did I misunderstand?)

[audioguy]

Mostly, you guys are right. I need to run live streams from my terrestrial stations to a provider. So, I need to encode at probably 2 different bitrates (tentatively) per station.

Now: If we're talking a single machine (just for sake of argument) then I'm thinking a multichannel sound card for inputs, like this:

WWWW-FM: Ch. 1 & 2
WXXX-FM: Ch. 3 & 4
WYYY-FM: Ch. 5 & 6

Into a machine for encoding, then uploading the streams to the provider.

In reality, I expect to buy a few machines to handle this. I'm just trying to grasp the limitations I'm likely to run into, and what I can reasonably expect from a single machine.

Couple of questions: can you in fact encode multiple streams from a single input, i.e. take Ch. 1 & 2 and create a 32km 64k, and 128k? Is there a practical limit to the number, aside from processing power?

And, has anyone tried encoding from a multichannel card, as opposed to installing individual cards for each input? (I can imagine how this could possibly be an issue, depending on how the software wants to handle the card; although, I would be surprised if it could not simply take a multichannel input & use it as neccessary.)

3rd: would it make sense to have a separate machine to simply relay the streams, or should the encoding machines be able to handle that?

Thanks a lot for the help so far - you guys are great! Sorry if this seems really rudimentary, but I want to be absolutely sure of how best to proceed, so if that means asking really stupid questions then I'm askin'

[ravetrax]

i'm a stickler for overkill...

my opinion would be to have a small pc for each "station/genre"

it can be small, i'm sure you can pick one up for a couple hundred bucks.

by doing this, if one of your stream enocders goes down, the other genre's are still playing.

it doesn't take much to encode, not even multiple bitrates.

i have an audio encoder pc that is small... around 1ghz p3 / 512mb ddr/sound blaster live sound card, and it encodes 5 streams with no problems ... runs about 35% on the cpu.

[Hobs69]

Is it possible to stream aacplus and normal mp3 from same shoutcast with some app or transcoder?

Whats the best way to do this could someone please advise

Many thanks

Hobs

[ravetrax]

Originally posted by Hobs69
Is it possible to stream aacplus and normal mp3 from same shoutcast with some app or transcoder?

Whats the best way to do this could someone please advise

Many thanks

Hobs

i'm doing 2 aacPlus [48k & 24k] and 3 mp3 [128k, 64k & 24k] streams with the same shoutcast dsp... v1.9.0

[Hobs69]

Nice, could you tell me how? is anything extra I need to go out on different port numbers?

Cheers again

Hobs

[ravetrax]

the dsp sends a signal to a shoutcast server, your shoutcast server has a config file, all you have to do is make a config file for each broadcast/bitrate and start each one up...

the shoutcast readme should be able to help you...

and yes, each bitrate will have to have a seperate port.

[Hobs69]

Many thanks \m/

[Hobs69]

Hey Ravetrax, actually I was re-thinking what you said why dragging my ass home from paddington after work what you said.

If you have on the dsp 1 encoder for mp3 say at 64k and 2 encoder for aacplus and they both had their own ports as you said with configs etc, Still with me? if a DJ hits the server on say port 8001 for mp3s then port 8002 which would be assigned to play the aacplus would carry on playing whats on the original winamp with the dsp on it.

Is my assumption correct? so I would need a 3rd party setup to convert the the aacplus to mp3 lower bit rate or have each dj match their output to broadcast in mp3 and aacplus which would be 64k mp3 and 48k aac which maybe to much for some people? as 112k total upload.

God damn itunes and they arrogance not to play aacplus!

[ravetrax]

huminawhutdidyasay?

here, maybe this will help.

setup one server on your computer where you will be encoding from... we will call this server A and assign it some off the wall port, like 8050.

dj will stream to server a... [this is download traffic]

then have winamp listen to server a [will be 127.0.0.1:8050/listen.pls]... then using the dsp, stream this info to your public servers B [port 8000] and C [port 8002] using mp3 and aacPlus encoders [this is upload traffic]

understand?

[Hobs69]

Arh ok only problem I see with that setup is if dj dont dj then then how does winamp with a playlist play automated with that setup when no dj is on.

Ive copied all your above help so I will try it and maybe figure it out this sounds with the help of a nice btl of red wine.

Thanks for all your help though maybe i should draw this out instead of thinking the back and fourth in my head.

[ravetrax]

have a coputer setup to play as dj but with a winamp playlist [set reconnect time to like 10 seconds or something]... when dj wants to go live try to connect and then kick the source from the server. they connect do there live show, when they are done they disconnect, and the playlist jumps back on.

just make sure your server is set to not disconnect clients on the source server to quickly, like 90 or 180 seconds... [server A]

understand?

[Hobs69]

Ravetrax I fully get it now, thankyou so much for your help.

If you was in UK (london) I would buy ya a beer

Cheers

Hobs

[ravetrax]