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How would I take all sound on a windows machine and broadcast it over the network for other machines to hear?

I can find instructions for individual apps, but I don't want to do this on a per app basis, I want everything sent to that sound output.

Note that this is not asking how to share music over the network, iTunes and Media Player have that sorted, nor is it how to use a machine as a remote microphone, skype/voip has that sorted, I'm asking how to stream all sound on that machine, regardless of source, that includes the beeps skype makes, audio from games, dings on error dialogs, browser sounds, etc etc

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  • 1
    Are you expecting them all to be perfectly in sync, i.e. coming out through speakers in the same room at the same time?
    – Kieren Johnstone
    Feb 3, 2012 at 7:49
  • No, that would probably require an MIT team and several years of research from what I understand of acoustics =p What I'd ideally like to be able to do is walk around with headphones and an iPhone/Android phone rather than having speakers on loud or faffing around with bluetooth, afterall I've got a wifi connection already =p
    – Tom J Nowell
    Feb 3, 2012 at 12:26
  • Not that its the only use of such a thing, I can think of many more
    – Tom J Nowell
    Feb 3, 2012 at 12:26
  • superuser.com/a/1485274/137881 's Using Icecast, BUTT And Stereo Mix is a good answer
    – Abdull
    Jan 24, 2021 at 17:42

7 Answers 7

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6

Simple, use IceCast.

Free, open-source, cross-platform.

I interface to IceCast using Edcast (on Windows), allowing broadcast of audio in both vorbis and mp3 formats. (I think AAC as well!)

Have fun!

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    This is great if I want internet radio, and I have mp3s and Vorbis files I want to stream, but it all falls apart when I'm streaming to my phone or a laptop, and my skype recieves a message and the 'ding' isn't a part of the mp3 tracklist, or when I load a youtube video and its audio doesn't get streamed, etc etc. If I wanted to stream my music library I would use iTunes homeshare, or media players upnp support.
    – Tom J Nowell
    Feb 6, 2012 at 16:17
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    Edcast allows you to stream everything coming out of your sound-card into mp3 and/or vorbis streams.
    – A T
    Feb 7, 2012 at 7:14
  • Nice, but How??
    – Tom J Nowell
    Feb 7, 2012 at 11:07
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    It does it by default. Just configure its connection to the icecast server, and it should all just work.
    – A T
    Feb 7, 2012 at 16:45
  • Again, nice but how??!!?!?!?!? There is next to no documentation, none of it is clear, and the UI gives few clues. I installed edcast and icecast, launched icecast, then edcast, and tried to do something with it. If I click add encoder and then try to connect in edcast, it repeatedly tries to connect getting nowhere. There're no configuration options on where to connect it, or howto guide, or help buttons
    – Tom J Nowell
    Feb 7, 2012 at 17:55
11

SoundIt does just that.

And it lets you stream the sound output of your PC to any web browser so you can stream to any phone or even another PC.

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  • This is brilliant!
    – bPratik
    Aug 20, 2015 at 16:45
  • Very simple. Too simple. Absolutely no quality settings. And poor quality by default. But in some cases may be very usefull.
    – Ruslan K.
    Mar 29, 2021 at 11:55
  • The stream quality depends on your network connection, it tries to stream at the best quality your network is capable of
    – theuser
    Apr 27, 2021 at 15:57
  • this should be the accepted answer, its really brilliant.,
    – Qiong Wu
    Jun 21, 2022 at 20:50
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PulseAudio should do what you want. There are client and server components for Linux, Mac and Windows.

PulseAudio will create a virtual audio device on your Windows machine. All sound coming to that can get routed over the network to your clients.

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  • wow...looks a tad complicated...is there a tutorial for how to installl? I didnt see one for mac
    – mjrider
    Feb 5, 2012 at 3:27
  • It looks rather painful, especially since there are no GUI tools aside from linux and they don't appear to be keeping their house in order (win32 binaries link to opensuse, but opensuse only builds onpensuse builds despite the mingw32 label)
    – Tom J Nowell
    Feb 6, 2012 at 16:14
  • More information in this AskUbuntu question: askubuntu.com/q/82110/111511
    – Vladimir Panteleev
    Feb 21, 2016 at 21:16
  • Are you kidding, this is for Santa's Elves!!!
    – Bob Denny
    Sep 24, 2019 at 21:10
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  1. Go into Control Panel > Sound > Recording > Right click in the devices list > Show disabled devices > Right click on Stereo Mix > Enable > Click on Stereo Mix > Click on Set Default
  2. Install icecast win32
  3. Install edcast standalone
  4. Run icecast
  5. In icecast, click start server
  6. Run edcast
  7. In edcast you need to add an encoder. The server details match the icecast server details. Default server is localhost, default port 8000, default password hackme.
  8. In edcast, make sure Stereo Mix is selected under Live Recording
  9. Click connect.
  10. Profit.

(Using edcast 3.37 and icecast 2.3.1)

EDIT: I should mention this method does not automatically start the server, that requires a bit more setting up.

EDIT2: In Windows 7 I had to create the folder C:\Users\"current user"\AppData\Local\EdcastStandalone for my Edcast settings to stick.

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  • I know it's an old question, but it's worth trying. When you say "that requires a bit more setting up", which percentage of the configuration are we talking about? Is it relatively simple to setup and start? In a personnal project I'm looking forward using something like this, but first of all I'm looking for something rather easy to setup that will not break over time. Thanks in advance!
    – Frederik.L
    Oct 13, 2015 at 6:52
  • Note: Edcast is now AltaCast. But IMHO Mumble, optionally with a local Murmur server, makes all this much easier.
    – rustyx
    May 27, 2021 at 13:57
3

I recommend Stream what you hear 1.4

Simple stand-alone App that does what you need and streams to devices and over Http. Just download and install it and then right-click the tray icon to choose your target network output device (it has to support upnp/dlna). Watching YouTube videos could be difficult though, because the audio is extremely delayed this way (up to 5 seconds!).

have fun

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  • Can you expand this answer with a bit more detail about how to use the utility? It sounds like it might work, but the answer is still a bit basic.
    – AJ Henderson ♦
    Jul 16, 2015 at 21:41
  • Definitely the easiest one to set up (no requirements such as chrome and no modifying xml files with your IP address manually). You can also stream directly over http for non upnp/dlna devices.
    – Cimbali
    Jul 24, 2019 at 21:49
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I've altered a program found on internet and created WLStream. It enables you to stream audio from a Windows output device so Pulse Audio will be able to play it back on a Linux host. The communication between the two is done with plink from Putty. There's a delay in the audio stream caused by the network, I'm sure if you alter the privilege on the TCP packet sent from plink or change your router's configuration as you would for VOIP it'll reduce the audio's stream lag but my research didn't go any further. WLStream can be compiled using Visual Studio 2017 and there's a pre-compiled from the last version here.

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1

Can't say I've ever used it myself, but it looks like Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba will do just what you need. There are Mac and Windows versions to send audio, and Mac, Windows, and Linux versions to receive audio. It also works with airplay, so it should show up in iTunes and your iOS devices. The only downside is that it's a paid commercial application.

There's also SpeakerShare, which is free and open source, but doesn't have the airplay functionality. It looks like there are current Android and Mac versions, as well as depreciated Windows versions available under "All Downloads".

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  • air foil will have considerable lagg for video unless you are using a correct player on the recieving end. I wish there was a EASY way to do this
    – mjrider
    Feb 2, 2012 at 15:26
  • looks like speaker share is no longer on google code
    – mjrider
    Feb 2, 2012 at 15:31

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