Tag: software

how to stream your music into Second Life — six software source clients compared

You can stream your music into Second Life using the same technology as internet radio. This requires a Shoutcast source client, which sends your music to a streaming server, which subsequently rebroadcasts your music to all the listeners in Second Life.

This post lists the leading choices in Shoutcast/Icecast source clients. This source client is the piece of software that runs on your computer, connecting the music you play with the streaming server.

The leading tools are contrasted and compared. After reading this post, you should be prepared to choose a streaming source client that meets your needs.

In this previous post, I explained how your music can be streamed into Second Life using the same technology as internet radio. I also explained that it required a Shoutcast source client, which sends your music to a streaming server, which subsequently rebroadcasts your music to all the listeners in Second Life.

This post lists the leading choices in Shoutcast/Icecast source clients. This source client is the piece of software that runs on your computer, connecting the music you play with the streaming server.

What it does

The Shoutcast/Icecast streaming source client takes audio input from a program or hardware device, encodes it into a media stream, and sends the media stream on to a streaming server. Each step of this process requires configuration, and each program differs in the specifics of where you may find these settings. However, the settings themselves are fairly universal.

Music source

The input to the source client may come from a media player such as iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player, or it may also come from a hardware device connected to your computer — such as a mixer connected to a sound card or even an integrated laptop microphone. Your chosen source client will present a list of possible inputs from which you can choose to broadcast.

Encoding

Some source clients may be able to encode into multiple media formats. However, for compatibility with Second Life, you will need to use mp3. The Second Life viewer on your listeners’ end does not support WMA, AAC, Ogg, or other formats. Further, you will find that if you try to use the most pristine mp3 encoding settings, your listeners will experience skips in the stream. It is best not to use anything higher than 44.1 kHz, 64 kbps, stereo. You should be able to find these settings grouped together.

Specifying the stream server

Lastly, you will need to specify the Shoutcast/Icecast streaming server to which the source client will connect. This will be in the form of a URL or an IP Address, a Port number, and a Password. Some streaming clients allow you to build a ‘library’ of servers, each with their own URL, port, and password. This is handy if you regularly perform at a number of venues. Each venue will have its own server. This allows you to, once configured, merely select a given venue’s server from a list, and have all the values set at once. If your source client does not have this feature, you will need to manually enter this data every time for each venue.

Criteria

For each listed software streaming client, I list the price, where you can obtain it, what platform it runs upon, and other attributes. After reading this post, you should be ready to choose a streaming source client that meets your needs.

Before I list the choices, I will first define what the various attributes mean.

Operating System (OS) – This tells you what operating system the streaming source client is compatible with. There are choices for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and other UNIX-like OSs.

Plugin vs. Standalone – Some Shoutcast/Icecast source clients are ‘plugins’ , which operate inside of other programs. An example is the Shoutcast DSP Plugin, which installs ‘into’ Winamp as a host. Other source clients run in their own window, providing all needed functionality themselves.

Record functionality – Some source clients will also record (or ‘archive’) your stream. The stream is not only sent on to the streaming server, but it also is written to disk as an mp3 file. This allows you to play back your stream at a later date.

Presenting the candidates

butt (broadcast using this tool)

This relative newcomer provides all the functionality that you would need or want. The fact that it is free, and runs on almost any computer, makes it a great choice.

Winamp with Shoutcast DSP Plugin

This solution has been the mainstay in the Windows arena, mostly due to its price.

Nicecast

For years, this has been the standard in the Mac arena. Full featured.

Simplecast

This selection comes from a company with a full line of professional internet radio tools.

Reaper with Shoutcast plugin

Reaper is a full-functioned DAW, from a company founded by the guy who first invented Shoutcast technology. Extremely powerful, with complexity to match.

Edcast

Both EdCast and its precursor Oddcast are from the same developer, along with a number of other useful music tools (including a stream recorder).

The envelope, please

If you are just getting started in streaming your music into Second Life, I recommend that you start with butt. Silly name, I know. However, it is free, does everything you want it to do, and runs the same way on any computer you’re likely to have. Plus, it is an open source program, meaning that its future is pretty much assured.

Any of the other choices would be fine as well. They all work pretty much hiccup-free. If your needs are unique, there may be some reason to prefer another over butt.

Myself, I use Reaper with the Shoutcast plugin. Reaper is a full-featured music production DAW like Pro Tools, Logic, Sonar, etc. In fact, it was my DAW before I started streaming into Second Life. The fact that Reaper is from the guy the guy that invented internet radio (as well as Winamp, Gnutella, and other modern necessities) holds strong sway with me.

Get going!

You really can’t go wrong with any of the above. Just grab one, grab the free Second Life viewer, create a free Second Life account, log on, and start performing for the eager Second Life audiences!

Questions? Comments? Let me know if there is any specific aspect of being a Second Life musician that you’d like me to cover!

This is but one article in a series on opportunities for musicians in Second Life. Further articles will cover resources, technical issues, groups and organizations, revenue streams, publicity outlets, and more. Next up, however, will be a step-by-step guide to installing and configuring butt, and testing your stream inworld. I hope you join us in this journey to a strange and wonderful new world. In the meantime, you may wish to do some early exploring on your own — it is free to get started! Just click the link below:

Secondlife.com

How do I send my music to listeners in Second Life? Shoutcast, Icecast, and streaming explained

Music in Second Life operates on a technology known as Shoutcast. Shoutcast, along with its open source compatible follow-on Icecast, is the same technology that underpins all of internet radio. When you stream your music into Second Life, you are essentially operating your own internet radio station!
This article explains the links in the chain between the musician and the listeners. Technologies and software components are described for each link in the chain.

DJs, karaoke track artists, singer/songwriters, and bands can all find a ready-made, world-wide, paying audience in Second Life. What all is involved in getting your music streamed into Second Life?

Music in Second Life operates on a technology known as Shoutcast. Shoutcast, along with its open source compatible follow-on Icecast, is the same technology that underpins all of internet radio. When you stream your music into Second Life, you are essentially operating your own internet radio station!

Overview

There are several links in the chain between you creating your music and the listener hearing your music.

  1. – you create your music on a computer
  2. – a program known as a source client encodes your music for the server
  3. – a Shoutcast/Icecast streaming server broadcasts the music to multiple Second Life viewers
  4. – the listeners’ Second Life viewer plays your music for their enjoyment

Let’s look a little deeper at each stage of this process.

Music Creation

Again the first step in the chain is that your music must be input to a computer. If you are DJing from WinAmp, iTunes or other music player, this is already taken care of by the music player program. If you are performing in real-time — such as playing a guitar and singing — you will need to input your performance into the computer’s sound card through the use of a microphone and/or a mixer. Many computers have microphones built right into them that would be suitable, though you may notice an increase in sound quality with a more sophisticated microphone.

Source Client

The Source Client is the link between your computer and the internet. This is a program or utility that runs on your computer. It has essentially two responsibilities. It creates and maintains a connection to the Shoutcast/Icecast server, and it encodes your music into the datastream that the server needs. Source Clients are available both as standalone programs, and as plugins that operate with your Music Creation program.

Shoutcast/Icecast streaming server

The Shoutcast or Icecast streaming server is a ‘virtual machine’ that runs on a computer. While you can technically install the server on your own computer — even the one you are using as the Music Creation computer — it is generally inadvisable to do so. The reason for this is that the primary function of the Shoutcast/Icecast server is to take as an input the single stream from your Source Client, and redistribute it as any number of of streams — one for each listener. Each additional listener consumes more bandwidth. A typical home internet connection can accommodate only a few such listeners before all the available or upload/download capacity is exhausted.

As such, a Shoutcast/Icecast server is most typically rented — as one would rent space on a web host. There are numerous companies that rent streaming servers for a few dollars per month. Further, most Second Life venues have already rented such servers. If you are slated to perform at a given venue, they will most often have you employ their existing streaming server.

Second Life viewer

The last link in the chain is up to the Second Life viewer. Each parcel of land in Second Life is associated with a Music URL. When an avatar steps onto a given parcel, the Second Life sim sends the Second Life viewer this Music URL. This URL should be the location of your Shoutcast/Icecast streaming server. The Second Life viewer then sets up a connection to the streaming server. It accepts the stream of your music from the server, decodes it, and outputs it through the audio system of the computer upon which the Second Life viewer is running. In this manner, each listener is able to hear the music you are making. Your listeners may even be on the opposite side of the Earth!

What do I need to get started?

While all the pieces described above are needed to stream your music into Second Life, only a minimum set is required to get up and running. The absolute minimum is that you will need a Music Creation program and a Source Client. There are many options available in these categories, both free and commercial. They are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and other platforms.

As mentioned above, there are many venues that supply Shoutcast/Icecast streaming servers for your use. I spent about a year as a Second Life musician before I decided to rent a stream of my own.

The last item is the Second Life viewer. While you do not technically need this to stream into Second Life, you will want it anyhow. Otherwise, you will find it difficult to connect with venues and fans. There really isn’t any downside, as it is free. Plus, Second Life is just a lot of fun!

Is it for you?

After reading the above, you may be eager to delve into Second Life as another marketplace for your musical endeavors. As you can see, the opportunities are nearly endless. Further, it costs nothing to try your hand at it — plus, it’s just a whole lot of fun. No matter what sort of musician you may be, there is another market waiting for you in Second Life.

Questions? Comments? Let me know if there is any specific aspect of being a Second Life musician that you’d like me to cover!

This is but one article in a series on opportunities for musicians in Second Life. Further articles will cover resources, technical issues, groups and organizations, revenue streams, publicity outlets, and more. Next up, however, will be a survey of the software choices for Music Creation and Source Clients required to pipe your music inworld. I hope you join us in this journey to a strange and wonderful new world. In the meantime, you may wish to do some early exploring on your own — it is free to get started! Just click the link below:


flawless digital copy? maybe!

In a previous post, I bemoaned a problem i was encountering with some supposedly identical CDs. I had a pile of CDs from a project, which should have had identical tracks on each — but ripping and comparing the resultant files yielded miscompares.

After collecting further data, it appears that perhaps the miscompares are explainable. As it so happens, one of the people doing the duplication did not understand the differences between .wav, .mp3, .wma, etc. file formats. While all the CDs were audio CDs, they were burned at different times, some having been ripped as mp3, or as wma, or as…

Perhaps the best news is that I was able to locate proper mastered versions of each track that had not been through this rough treatment. I procured copies of each track as they came from the mastering house.

Even better — the process seems very durable. After sequencing the tracks, I uploaded them to our store on BandCamp. This upload was in the form of .wav files. I then downloaded these files in .flac format. Then I used MediaMonkey to convert the .flac files to .wav files. Finally, I used ExactAudioCopy‘s built in .wav file comparison tool to compare the original files to the ones procured from BandCamp. Again, these were uplloaded as .wav, converted to .flac by BandCamp, downloaded as .flac, then converted back to .wav. In each case, the files’ audio portion matched exactly.

So I again believe in the integrity of digital audio. Woo-hoo!

free VST plugin — spl giving away their Attacker for a limited time

VST plugins are software effects devices for digital audio workstations (DAWs). There are a plethora of eqs, reverbs, compressors, etc. available to extend the functionality of your DAW. One of the more unusual of these devices is the Attacker from SPL (Sound Performance Lab). For a limited time, they are giving this unique processor away for free.

VST plugins are software effects devices for digital audio workstations (DAWs). There are a plethora of eqs, reverbs, compressors, etc. available to extend the functionality of your DAW. One of the more unusual of these devices is the Attacker from SPL (Sound Performance Lab). For a limited time, they are giving this unique processor away for free!

spl Attacker
spl Attacker

This unique processor is ideal for adding presence and ‘oomph’ to selected signals. Try it on a wimpy-sounding bass drum to add some real meat. Or if your dirty guitar is loud, yet still indistinct, you can use the Attacker to bring it to the foreground.

Simple to operate, one need only instantiate the Attacker as a VST plugin on the channel to be enhanced, twist the attack dial to achieve the desired amount of emphasis, then trim the output gain control to set the overall level. Simple and effective.

The spl Attacker is available for download, in both Windows and OS X versions, at spl’s website. It is provided in VST, RTAS, and AU plugin formats, and is compatible with most mainstream DAWs. But act fast – this is a limited time offer (expires 2009 November 15).

Screaming deal for guitarists from Line 6! GuitarPort Online review

For a limited time, Line 6 is offering a hardware, software, and service combination, which forms a complete system for learning, performing, and recording guitarists and bassists. The $30.00 USD price may be the deal of the year in the entire music marketplace.

I just spent the day in tonal heaven. My Line 6 GuitarPort Online bundle just arrived today – approximately one week after ordering.

So what is the Line 6 GuitarPort Online bundle, you ask? It is a combination of hardware, software, and online service, that combine into a complete guitar learning, performance, and recording system. The current price of entry to this soup-to-nuts system is less than $30.00 US!

Let’s talk about each element of the system separately. We’ll start with the hardware. Included in the box is the Line 6 TonePort DI Silver. This is a small, solidly built metal unit measures about 6″x4″x2″, sitting comfortably on your desktop. The front panel has a 1/4″ jack for plugging in your guitar, bass or other instrument, a Pad switch for lowering the gain (good for instruments with active or other high output pickups), and a volume control for the direct monitoring function. The rear panel has  USB jack for connecting to your computer, a 1/4″ stereo headphone jack, a 1/4″ DI Out jack, and a pair of 1/4″ Analog outputs. This is, in essence, a 1 in, 2 out computer audio interface, specifically tailored to be convenient for guitarists and bassists.

The software consists of GearBox and Line 6 Monkey. Monkey is a handy utility that connects to Line 6’s servers, and provides a centralized interface to check all aspects of the system for possible software and firmware updates, and simplify the upgrade process.

GearBox is where the rubber hits the road. This is a fairly full-featured ‘amp sim’, that contains models of most classic amps and FX you might care to name. These are all rendered as quite convincing emulations of the expected Marshalls, tweed and blackface Fenders, Mesas, Voxes, Soldanos, Jazz Choruses, etc. Also included are Bass amp sims like both SVT and B-15 from Ampeg, Eden, GK, etc. Also included are emulations of API, Neve, and other preamps, as well as a number of Line 6 models.

GearBox also includes all the cabinet models that one would expect to mix and match with the above amps, in configurations from 1×6 through several 4×12’s. Also included are a full array of modeled microphones such as Shure SM57, Sennheiser 421, Neumann U67, EV RE-20, AKG D112, and Telefunken U-47.

GearBox also has a full complement of stompbox effect emulations. Included in these are a gate, volume pedal, wah pedal, distortions, fuzzes, and overdrives, compressors and de-essors, equalizers, chorus, flanger, univibe, tremolo, phaser, Leslie, delays, echos, and reverbs.

GearBox can be used either as a standalone application, or as a VST plugin within a host application such as Logic, Sonar, Pro Tools, Cubase, or other DAW. In the standalone application, one could listen to their performance through headphones, or even run the main stereo output from the TonePort DI-S to a massive PA system for concert applications.

The third component of GuitarPort Online bundle is the hosted service. The $29.95 initial cost includes a three months subscription to GuitarPort Online. This is an Internet service tailored as a tool for guitar players to learn new songs and nail not only the performances, but also the tones of scads of great guitar songs. Included are patches for your GearBox, accurate Tablature of the guitar portions of the tunes, and full recordings of the tunes — in variations of complete arrangements, the complete arrangement minus the lead/main guitars (where you play these parts in real time), complete arrangement minus bass, and complete arrangement minus all guitars.These arrangements are all faithful performances of the original hits — and some, such as a number of Jimi Hendrix tunes, are from the actual master tapes from the original performers!

From Line 6’s description:

Online Guitar Lessons and Guitar Tabs

Over 400 songs in all! Our learning center brings together music theory and song lessons covering genres from blues to jazz to metal to classic rock and modern rock. GuitarPort has hundreds of completely accurate guitar tabs for songs by top artists such as All American Rejects, Allman Brothers, BB King, The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Black Sabbath, Johnny Cash, Coldplay, Alice Cooper, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Al diMeola, Fall Out Boy, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Johnson, King Crimson, Kiss, Albert Lee, Linkin Park, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Marley, Modest Mouse, Motley Crue, Muddy Waters, Pantera, Pink Floyd, P.O.D., Ramones, Rush, Joe Satriani, Scorpions, Soundgarden, System Of A Down, Joe Walsh, Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and ZZ Top.

Fully-Produced Songs to Play Along With.

These aren’t just generic jam tracks or backing tracks. You can listen to the full mix or versions with the guitar parts stripped out. Choose from hundreds of fully produced songs from the most popular artists to jam with. Your sound is mixed seamlessly with the recording, so it sounds like you’re performing with the band.

Awesome Guitar Tones.

When you choose a song on GuitarPort Online, it automatically loads a recording of the song, accurate tabs for all guitar parts and the guitar tones the perfectly match the recording. Our modeling software mimics your favorite artists’ amps and stompbox and studio effects, so when you are learning and playing your favorite songs, you can sound exactly like the recording.

GuitarPort Online plugs right into GearBox, such that one navigates and operates the online portion from right within GearBox. This forms a streamlined interface for browsing the catalog of songs, tabs, and tones. Indeed, the online component can even switch patches for you on the fly!

Taken as a whole, this system provides all a guitarist or bassist might need or want to learn and perform the most important pieces in the music catalog — melodically, harmonically, and tonally. Each of the pieces also form a solid offering in their respective category. Granted, Line 6 likely is offering this bundle in order to addict people to the GuitarPort Online service, which after the three month trial period, will continue to cost you $7.99 per month. However, not long ago, one would likely expect to pay $100-$200 for an interface of this capability, and another $50-100 for such a capable amp sim program. As a bundle, this may be the best deal of the year for guitarists and bassists!

For an even more impressive value, I can inform you how to use the TonePort DI as a dongle to unlock a copy of Line 6’s POD Farm (for a limited time), which is an even more comprehensive amp sim, allowing for two complete parallel chains of FX, amps, speakers, and mics.