bismillah..

Struggled… for a few days..  😀 but finally I made it works.. hehe

Actually, the icecast has been working well since two weeks ago, but it could only receive a playlist stream provided by ices2 program. Okay, now we’ve encountered two foreign term.. icecast and ices2.. what are those creatures.. hehe. Later on, we’ll discover one by one..

I will focus on sharing my experience on creating an Internet Radio Station specifically on Mac. Also, this implementation will be using vorbis encoding, that you may use lame mp3 as encoder in your own preference. Ubuntu or windows will be following in other posts. I really want to share it with you guys, while it’s still hot.. 😀

Anyway.. let’s start it.

Requirement:

1. Downloads :

• icecast – we will use icecast version 2.x in this example. You can download the files here. Download the source code. However, if you do not want to compile it by your self, you can download macport and let it do all the dirty works.. 😀
• darkice – a live cast tool that can encode voice input from computer sound devices into desired encoding (mp3 or ogg vorbis). You can download the source code of darkice here. I’ve read about the availability of darkice in macport, however when I ran the search command, it didn’t found anything.. :S . That’s why we need to build the library from scratch. Current version of darkice is 1.0.
• JackOSX – Mac porting of JACK device driver in linux. It will create an interface to be used by darkice. Download it here. If you use macport then avoid to use that version of JACK. I faced it that the device was not well configured.. I don’t know exactly why.. 😦
• Okay.. install macport .. hahaha

2. Compilers

Install essential package from xCode available in your mac installation DVD in order to be able to compile the source codes.

Steps:

1. Icecast installation

We just need to call the port command belongs to the macport from console. Run with root privilege.

$ sudo port install icecast

After that, port will download all required dependent libraries needed by icecast, including the lame mp3 library and ogg vorbis library. We need to change ownership of some folders in order to be able to runs it well with the existing configuration template. Although, we can also define our own configuration for logging folder. In my implementation, avoiding non default logging folder and cache folder, I just change their ownership 😀

$ sudo chown -R desired_user /usr/local/share/icecast

It will change the ownership of caching and logging folder to the “desired_user” .

2. JackOSX installation

You just need to run the package file that has been extracted from a zip file. Restart of system will be required.

3. darkice installation

Extract downloaded file and enter the folder using console. We will do some configuration in order for darkice to be able of using the JACK device.

Befor that, we need to modify a few lines of source code in order to get the JACK run automatically along with the darkice. It is not necessary, however it will make our life easier in the future.. 😀

Find JackDspSource.cpp file in the src folder, and open it. We will find this lines of codes in line 209 :

if ((client = jack_client_new(client_name)) == NULL) {
    throw Exception( __FILE__, __LINE__, "JACK server not running?");
}

Replace those lines with this code :

if ((client = jack_client_open (client_name, JackNullOption, NULL)) == 0){
    throw Exception( __FILE__, __LINE__, "JACK server not running?");
}

We are replacing the deprecated jack_client_new function with the jack_client_open function. The latter one will automatically starts JACK server. 🙂 You can download the modified JackDspSource.cpp here ..  http://pastebin.com/uTNwLTUi

Save the modification and run these commands from the console:

$ export prefix=/opt/local $ /configure  --with-lame-prefix=$prefix --with-vorbis-prefix=$prefix --with-twolame-prefix=$prefix --with-faac-prefix=$pefix --mandir=${prefix}/share/man --with-jack-prefix=$prefix $ make $ sudo make install

we need to explicitly declare that we are using library of lame and vorbis, along with the JACK. The darkice will be compiled using all of those capabilities. We also defined prefix prevously to be on “/opt/local” since the macport installed all  those libraries inside that folder.

To test whether the installation is successful or not, we can run “darkice” command in console and we will have the program is found or not.

4. Run the icecast

We need to configure the icecast config file. The default file is located on /opt/local/etc/icecast.xml .

The configuration file I made is uploaded here.. http://pastebin.com/Fj9MTVzZ

The lines needed to be modified are only:

– authentication section

<authentication>
    <!-- Sources log in with username 'source' -->
    <source-password>yourPass</source-password>
    <!-- Relays log in username 'relay' -->
    <relay-password>yourPass</relay-password>

    <!-- Admin logs in with the username given below -->
    <admin-user>admin</admin-user>
    <admin-password>yourPass</admin-password>
</authentication>

change the username as password as you like.

– address binding

<!-- This is the hostname other people will use to connect to your server.
It affects mainly the urls generated by Icecast for playlists and yp
listings. -->
<hostname>0.0.0.0</hostname>

<!-- You may have multiple <listener> elements -->
<listen-socket>
    <port>8181</port>
    <bind-address>0.0.0.0</bind-address>
    <shoutcast-mount>/mount.ogg</shoutcast-mount>
</listen-socket>

Change the hostname to your computer IP. Port number can be defined as you like that will be used to access your radio. The bind address is again your IP number. The mount point will be the file address showing after the IP number and port number in your URL address field.

For the above configuration, the url will be : http://0.0.0.0:8181/mount.ogg .

You can run the icecast by this command:

$ icecast -c /usr/local/etc/icecast.xml -b

“-b” parameter means that the icecast will run in the background.

check by running

$ ps -def |grep icecast

if there is a program running in the background, then everything is okay.

5. Run the darkice

Create the configuration file for darkice. You can see mine here.. http://pastebin.com/xdsz7eB7

The parts you need to modify is on the icecast2 connetion:

[icecast2-0] bitrateMode = abr # average bit rate format = vorbis # vorbis # format of the stream: ogg vorbis bitrate = 96 # bitrate of the stream sent to the server server = 0.0.0.0 # host name of the server port = 8181 # port of the IceCast2 server, usually 8000 password = yourPass # source password to the IceCast2 server mountPoint = mount.ogg # mount point of this stream on the IceCast2 server name = RadioName # name of the stream description = This is only a test # description of the stream url = http://0.0.0.0:8181/mount.ogg # URL related to the stream genre = yourGenre # genre of the stream

Fill the server with IP of your icecast running computer. So do with the port number and mountPoint comply with the setting of icecast in the previous setting. Save the file in certain folder, we’ll name it as darkice.cfg for example.

As for the input source setting, we’ve set it as “jack_auto”. It will automatically grab the input from JACK device.

Run the darkice with this following command.

$ darkice -c darkice.cfg

it will print out some verbose description.

6. Test your radio

Open your browser, it can be firefox or chrome or an IE. Put http://0.0.0.0:8181/mount.ogg in your address bar, following the setting in your icecast config file.

And, if there was no problem .. we can hear our own voice with a delay of about 7 seconds.. 😀

..

I think, that’s all I could share for now.. 🙂