Stream your soundcard using pulseaudio and Nokia N95

This guide will briefly explain how to create a network music stream server using the sound actually played on your sound card. I use to find this trick especially useful when I m sitting on my balcony with my laptop and in the same I can stream Pandora web radio via WiFi into my home music system (for the great happiness of my neighbours).

What you will need:

1. A computer with network connection.
2. A mobile phone able to connect to your PC via network and with the ability to play network mp3 streams. (I have an N95 8G phone with installed player CorePlayer. )


Setup:

1. Install pavucontrol, vlc player and sox.
2. Get the name of your sound card monitor device. Run in terminal:
   
   pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | cut -d" " -f2
   
   The command should return something like this:
   
   alsa_output.pci_8086_293e_sound_card_0.monitor
   
   
3. Run pavucontrol from your terminal and in 'Input devices' set the 'Show' option to 'All devices' . Find the monitor device and make sure that it is not muted.
   
   
4. Configure your network for some IP. For example 192.168.2.2.
   
   
   
5. Start up some music in your favourite music player.
   
   
   
6. Now let's convert the output of the monitor device of your sound card to an mp3 stream. Run this in the terminal:
   
   parec --device=alsa_output.pci_8086_293e_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0.monitor --format=s16le --rate=44100 --channels=2 | sox --type raw -s2L --rate 44100 --channels 2 - --type wav - | cvlc -v - --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mp3,vb=800,ab=128}:standard{access=http,mux=raw,dst=192.168.2.2:8080}'
   
   
   
   where pci_8086_293e_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0.monitor is the name of your monitor device and 192.168.2.2:8080 is your PC's IP address with the streaming port. Yes, it looks freaky.
   
   
7. Connect your audio input of your mobile phone to your home audio system and play the 192.168.2.2:8080 stream in your mobile. With
   few seconds delay you should hear the output of your PC's sound monitor device.