Well, let me talk with myself, if y'all don't mind!
I've been having a blast Shoutcasting! You are welcome to
check out my station which -- due to its experimental nature -- is not guaranteed to be up, nor will I make any guarantees as to what's being featured at any given moment. Currently, I'm broadcasting a random selection of my 6000 tracks (classical to jazz to musicals to europop to trance...) at 128kbps MP3.
But boy, I sure wish I could use MC for broadcasting! I wonder what would be involved in writing or adapting a plugin that'd work with MC. It'd be so much nicer to be able to just click on playlists and BOOM, have them broadcast, and -- of equal importance -- have the pleasure of rating and tagging songs while a broadcast is going on.
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More things I've learned from my intensive dive into Shoutcasting:
- I can broadcast WMA files for free with Shoutcast's Winamp plugin... it's just that with Shoutcast (and even the aforementioned for-pay plugin), they end up as MP3s on the receiving end. Bummer
. In fact, I've been unable to find ANY affordable way to serve up WMA files (so that they end up as high fidelity WMAs on the receiving end, too)
- The Shoutcast plugin works on WinAmp 2.9 and Winamp 5
- I can broadcast stuff with WinAmp, turn WinAmp's volume down independently, and then listen to other music on MC with no slowdown in the broadcast or system slowdown!
- I learned that my DSL connection is actually about 330kbps upstream (I thought it was 128), so I can actually easily broadcast two 128kbps streams or four 64kbps streams!
- Well, I
technically can broadcast using MC, but only by sending the full soundcard data upstream. On the bright side, that means I can even stream secure WMA files, which is NOT possible with Winamp. But on the downside, I also would end up streaming Windows system beeps, e-mail notification buzzers, incoming IM noises, and all. And furthermore, unlike with normal streaming via WinAmp, no song titles would get sent
. So this isn't a very viable option.
Anyway, I can't wait 'til I can effectively broadcast with MC! I'm already thinking of fun weekly radio shows I could do