stream.sh

A quick-and-dirty solution for streaming audio over TCP/IP between Linux computers with ALSA (and pulseaudio).

usage

The architecture consists of a server (Computer With Speakers) and a client (Computer With Crappier Speakers But We Have Media On It). The script is self-contained, so you can distribute the same version to client and server computers.

On the server, run

./stream.sh server 1337

... and then, on the client, run

./stream.sh set
./stream.sh client 10.21.37.1 1337

This is enough to get you started, you should start hearing audio from your local applications on the remote computer. By default, stream.sh uses WAVE in a RIFF container - this provides a high quality, low-latency solution. In case your network isn't fast enough to support raw audio data, you can specify a codec and bitrate:

./stream.sh client 10.21.37.1 1337 libopus 64

If you're insane enough to use pulseaudio on a daily basis, you can use paprefs to enable RTP Multicast (don't forget to check the "fixed port" checkbox) - it should work out of the box.

debugging

stream.sh has a built-in benchmarking functionality that tries to guess the correct timings for your hardware. If this is inaccurate and you hear pops, or the audio drops off completely every ~60s, you may want to run

./stream.sh benchmark ffmpeg

and modify the delay variable in the USER-CONFIGURABLE VARIABLES section of stream.sh

building

./pack.sh > stream.sh