Twonky Forum

I have a small Mini-ITX based Linux (Gentoo) server that I use to host Twonkyvision to my Noxons and PS3.

I have bandwidth caps, but love listening to internet radio. Many of the stations I listen to are already being transmitted for free, on my Sky satellite (which is very close to my server).

I have been fiddling with running the line out from the sat box, to the line-in on the ITX PC, and then broadcasting it, so it can be picked up as any other net radio station (but a local one, that does not sap my bandwidth allowance).

I got it working (ish) with Icecast and ices2.1, using OGG format (which Noxon streams OK, but the PS3 does not). The problem I have, is the overhead of permenantly encoding and streaming it pegs my CPU at near 100% for the OGG encode.

Anyone know of a less CPU intensive solution? I am thinking streaming PCM, if I can. The other solution, is to somehow get the encoding process to start/stop when clients connect and disconnect (this is a LAN only icecast, as the only time it will be in use, is if someone around the home uses it).

Seems a really bad idea to permenantly encode and stream, when nobody is connected!!

mgillespie wrote:I got it working (ish) with Icecast and ices2.1, using OGG format (which Noxon streams OK, but the PS3 does not). The problem I have, is the overhead of permenantly encoding and streaming it pegs my CPU at near 100% for the OGG encode.

Anyone know of a less CPU intensive solution? I am thinking streaming PCM, if I can. The other solution, is to somehow get the encoding process to start/stop when clients connect and disconnect (this is a LAN only icecast, as the only time it will be in use, is if someone around the home uses it).

Seems a really bad idea to permenantly encode and stream, when nobody is connected!!

Hey mgillespie,

I do a similar thing with my Sirius satellite radio. I also leave mine encoding the stream 24/7, even when the satellite radio itself or any clients aren't connected.

I think your performance problem stems from the OGG format. I'm using icecast2, darkice and LAME to stream in the MP3 format. On my machine - Athlon XP 1800 - it runs at around 5% CPU. Just remember to install NASM and compile LAME with the assembler optimizations. Even without the assembler optimizations I think it took somewhere between 15 and 30% of the CPU, so you would still be better off.

Also, since I am streaming in MP3, I can get to it from anything. I have yet to find anything that can stream audio that can't play this stream. PC, Xbox 360, TiVo - you name it. Its great!

Anyone got any better ideas, I have been playing with other configurations, but I always end up with the same problems, encoding 24x7 is not the right thing to be doing. I would be FAR better off streaming the line-in as raw PCM/WAV to my clients. However I can't find anything that does this.