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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

Tom J Nowell
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    Are you expecting them all to be perfectly in sync, i.e. coming out through speakers in the same room at the same time? –  Feb 03 '12 at 07:49
  • 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 –  Feb 03 '12 at 12:26
  • Not that its the only use of such a thing, I can think of many more –  Feb 03 '12 at 12:26
  • https://superuser.com/a/1485274/137881 's Using Icecast, BUTT And Stereo Mix is a good answer – Abdull Jan 24 '21 at 17:42

7 Answers7

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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.

theuser
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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. –  Feb 06 '12 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. –  Feb 07 '12 at 07:14
  • Nice, but How?? –  Feb 07 '12 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. –  Feb 07 '12 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 –  Feb 07 '12 at 17:55
  • So I have it piping the microphone now, but what I want is it piping the OS audio, so you're 90% of the way there –  Feb 07 '12 at 18:10
  • Also how do I reduce the lag to as realtime as possible? –  Feb 07 '12 at 18:12
  • Glad it's working for you, the design isn't realtime unfortunately. The vorbis would most likely have less delay though. Read this for the realtime discussion. Accept this answer! –  Feb 08 '12 at 14:04
  • But it doesn't do what I want, I want to stream my machines audio, you've gotten the streaming part, you haven't gotten the other part! –  Feb 08 '12 at 14:52
  • Fraps manages it, it records the sound from your desktop environment, what Im getting at the moment is not my systems audio, its my microphones audio (if I wanted the mic audio I could just start a skype call or any other voip). I'm testing this by loading a youtube video in the browser. I expect to hear the video through my iphone, instead I hear what comes through the microphone –  Feb 08 '12 at 14:53
  • When you add that part to your answer I will accept, otherwise your answer merely asks "how do I stream audio from a PC microphone over the network?", whereas the questions is "how do I stream the various sounds my PC generates over the network?" –  Feb 08 '12 at 14:59
  • My answer tells you how to stream directly from your sound-card to an audio stream. The realtime question is separate, however is partly answered by using FLAC instead of Vorbis or MP3. –  Feb 08 '12 at 16:19
  • But I tried that and I didnt get my soundcards output, I got my microphones output =s –  Feb 08 '12 at 19:06
  • I set it up again on a different machine. I turned off my speakers, and started loading apps that made noises, such as itunes, youtube, etc. I then waited to see what I heard. –  Feb 08 '12 at 19:35
  • If this was the answer, I would have heard what was playing in itunes, albeit with a delay. Instead I heard myself typing. This is not what I asked. –  Feb 08 '12 at 19:36
  • So yes you are streaming sound, but you are not streaming the soundcard output, there is no such option available to me in edcast, nor is it what happens if I merely open edcast after a fresh install and try to add an encoder –  Feb 08 '12 at 19:37
  • I suspect you know how to do loopback recording and you're assuming I already have that setup, or you're using a feature of an older version of windows I'm unaware of –  Feb 08 '12 at 19:45
  • I would point out that there are additional steps you failed to mention to get the loopback setup. Go into the recordng devices in control panel, show the disabled devices, and enable the stereo mix, then relaunch edcast and select that. Please update your answer with this information! Also mention that edcast standalone is required –  Feb 08 '12 at 19:55
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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.

  • wow...looks a tad complicated...is there a tutorial for how to installl? I didnt see one for mac –  Feb 05 '12 at 03:27
  • 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) –  Feb 06 '12 at 16:14
  • More information in this AskUbuntu question: http://askubuntu.com/q/82110/111511 – Vladimir Panteleev Feb 21 '16 at 21:16
  • Are you kidding, this is for Santa's Elves!!! – Bob Denny Sep 24 '19 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.

  • 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 '15 at 06:52
  • Note: Edcast is now AltaCast. But IMHO Mumble, optionally with a local Murmur server, makes all this much easier. – rustyx May 27 '21 at 13:57
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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

Community
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user14931
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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 '15 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 '19 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.

Rinaldi Segecin
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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".

  • 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 –  Feb 02 '12 at 15:26
  • looks like speaker share is no longer on google code –  Feb 02 '12 at 15:31