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MP3s on your Intranet

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

There’s

no escaping the MP3 wave. Tons and tons of sites on the Net offer MP3s for

download. You can convert CDs and audio cassettes into MP3s within minutes.

In fact, the MP3 mania has hit intranets as well. You can now have an MP3

server running on your network, and have everyone tune into it. The software

is called Shoutcast, and is a mere 70 kB download from www. shout cast.com.

It’s available for a large number of platforms including Windows, Solaris,

FreeBSD, Linux, DEC OSF, Irix, etc. Here, we’ll give you step-by-step

details on how to set up Shoutcast.

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The first thing you need is a

machine with a static IP address that’ll act as your MP3 server. You don’t

need a high-end machine for this–in fact, we ran our server on a desktop

with P/200 MMX. You’ll also need the latest version of Winamp (version 2.2

and above will do) installed on your machine. To check your version, start

up Winamp, right-click on it, and choose Nullsoft Winamp, which will show

you the version. If you have an earlier version than the one specified, you

can download it from www.winamp.com.

You also need to ensure that

you have the correct MP3 compressor to broadcast your MP3s. To check this,

go to Control Panel and click on Multimedia. Next, click on the Devices tab.

Click the "+" next to "Audio Compression Codecs", and

look for a line which says "Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec

(advanced)". If you don’t have this line, you can install Microsoft

Netshow Tools, which contains the correct codec. These are available for

download from www. microsoft.com/msdownload/netshow20 /0400.htm.

After installing the proper

codec to broadcast MP3s, you need to install the Shoutcast server. For this,

simply run the executable file and install the server. You’ll also need a

very important file called dsp_ sc.dll, which is available on the Shoutcast

site. This is a plug-in for Winamp, which allows it to send the audio to the

Shoutcast server, so that people connected to the server can listen to it.

Once you’ve downloaded this file, put it in your Winamp plug-in

directories. The default is c:\program files\winamp \plugins.

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Configuring the Shoutcast

server

Start the

server by clicking the file sc_serv.exe. Click on Edit config.

This opens up a file called

sc_serv.ini in Notepad. This might look like a very complicated file, but

you just need to look at a few things and leave the rest alone. Scroll down

to network configuration. Here, you can specify a port or you can leave it

at 8000, which is the default. This is the port listeners will use to listen

to MP3s from the server.

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Now, scroll down to server

configuration. Here, you can specify the maximum number of users you want

connected to your server. The maximum is 1,024 and the default is 32. The

larger the number you specify, the more the bandwidth required, so don’t

set it too high, or listeners will experience skipping.

The rest of this file can be

left alone. However, there’s an explanation for what each line in this

file does, so if you want to experiment, there’s no stopping you.

You can now move on to

configuring the Winamp plug-in that we’d mentioned earlier–sc_dsp.dll.

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Configuring the Winamp

plug-in

Start up

Winamp. Right-click on it and choose "Options" and

"Preferences".

Under Preferences, click on

Plug-ins, and choose DSP/Effect. On the right side, you’ll see Shoutcast

source for Winamp, which you need to configure. Click on Configure.

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Now

let’s see what each field means.

In the Shoutcast server

field, put in the IP address of the MP3 server.

In the port, enter the port

number that you specified in the sc_serv.ini file. The default is 8000.

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In the password field, write

down the password as it is in the sc_serv.ini file. The default here is

"changeme".

The Server Information fields

are optional, and can be used to provide additional information you want

your listeners to see.

In the Encoding format click

on "Change". This will open up a window called Format Selection.

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Leave the format as MPEG

Layer-3. In the attributes, you can specify the rate at which you want the

MP3s to be broadcast. A higher value means more quality in the broadcast,

but it’ll also mean that you require more bandwidth. The range here is

from 8 kbps mono (minimum quality, less bandwidth) to 56 kbps stereo

(maximum quality, more bandwidth).

You’re now ready to start

broadcasting MP3s over your network.

Start broadcasting!

Start the

Shoutcast server, run Winamp, and start playing an MP3 file. At this time,

Winamp sends the output audio to the Shoutcast server. The server is now

ready to accept requests from any user on the network who has a Winamp

player.

Tuning into your MP3

station

Fire up your

Winamp. Open your playlist by clicking on PL. On the bottom-left corner,

click on add and choose Add URL. Now, type the IP of your MP3 server

followed by a colon and port number. For example, if the IP address of your

server is 192.168.2.3 and the port number is 8000 you would type the

following–192.168. 2.3:8000. Now click on Open.

After an initial delay of

about five seconds, you’ll be able to hear the MP3 file being broadcast.

Anybody on the network is

free to tune into the server and listen to songs. It’s as simple as that.

You can also add more features to your Shoutcast server. For example, you

can add a plug-in that’ll allow the Shoutcast server to broadcast messages

to other users through a microphone. Talk about a DJ in every office! So,

Happy Listening!

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