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Play Audio over network
Hi Peeps,
I'm new here and I have some noob questions and the like to ask.
Though this one is something I've genuinely looked into and can't seem to solve.
Is it at all possible to use traktor and my Vestax VCI 100 on my laptop and send the audio signal via wireless to my main sound system which is connected to a desktop PC.
As when people are around my place I want to be able to have the laptop on a table in my courtyard instead of having to try DJ inside connected to a wall computer.
Is this a pipe dream or is it feasible?
Mikey
AUST.
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Yes it's possible by streaming. Virtual DJ (which I used to use when I began) had a Network Streaming option, there where you can also record what you are mixing. I think Traktor got the same option otherwhere. If you set it up that your laptop is streaming, you need to enter the LAN (internal Network) IP of your Laptop in VLC or any other Media Program that is able to receive streams.
I think you know where you can find the IP of the Laptop, if not you can look it up by pressing start -> execute -> enter "cmd" -> enter "ipconfig" (in windows).
P.S.: I forgot to mention that streaming mostly got a certain latency, but if you set the right codec and settings for the stream you can minimize it
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Heya,
First of all welcome to the forums :)
Ive actually read that there are problems with steaming high quality audio over a lan, so it would have to be compressed on the fly some how which would solve the issues.
Ill assume that you do not want to use the inbuilt audio streamer aka Icecast in Traktor and are perhaps using Traktor in Ableton. So you will need all stand along programs to do this with... which is nifty cause this will cover all programs that have a decent audio routing options.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ - Yeah.. its for video, but it also does Audio streaming :)
Install http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ on both computers and route your audio into VLC and stream it to your server.
Audio piping is pretty tricky in general and doing over a LAN certainly throws an extra twist, theres alot of things you need to take into consideration. You will need asio4all to help battle against latency issues.
Theres also bandwidth issues with wireless when it comes to high quality streaming you might want to make sure your sending a compressed audio stream.
VideoLan is quite the powerfull program and it would take an article bigger than "Smart Mixing Traktor in Ableton" article(see signature) to explain how to do this properly. Though maybe if you read that article you might be able to get your head around audio routing when it comes to using these sorts of programs :)
So no its not a pipe dream, its actually quite possible.
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Im not sure how I would do this but ill throw some ideas and see what other members suggest.
I think this will work better with the following hardware.
A 802.11N router because its faster and can handle more bandwidth than a 802.1G router. This type of router can handle video streams so audio should be easy as 1-2-3
Now I know the airport express from apple is a 802.11N router and it also has a built in audio stream feature (read more about it in the apple website) the problem is that it can only do it thru itunes and not any other program. I believe a hack is around that allows you to stream any audio coming out of your computer.
Thats all I have for right now ill do more research.
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It is still quite possible to get the audio signal at cd quality over an 802.11g router/AP using on the fly compression that should add no latency to the mix. I have read this adds little network traffic too, just make sure you compress the stream and you will be fine. As long as you are using a quality encoder there should be very little to no audio degradation.
Luv2xra's option is more suited to production where the artist wants to work with raw audio data as opposed to compressed audio. The advantage of working with raw audio is that it does not have to be compressed/decompressed on the fly saving a some cpu power while keeping the highest audio quality possible. If your only playing mp3's though id say this is unneeded. Though if your working with .wav files you might want to keep that bit of extra quality they hold and use an uncompressed audio stream. Nowadays with variable bitrate encoding, the only way anyone is going to be able to tell the difference is with detailed analysis software... not their ears.
There is lossless compression but this tends to add use more CPU, you could try the FLAC audio which will reduce the bandwidth about 50% without any loss of audio quality.
Personally i have never had a reason to do this myself so i cant say what for sure what would work best, but my first stop would probly be some of the mpeg audio encoders like LAME.
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My parents bought home something similar to that wifi device and it causes all manors of havoc on my local wireless network lol. If you do choose this option make sure its not on the same frequency as your wireless connection !
