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Roughly how much bandwidth would streaming MP3's use?

N

Nighthawk69

Golden Member
Hi there,

I'm wondering, roughly, how much bandwidth MP3's would use if they are being played from a fileserver to another computer on a network. This is an 802.11b network, so I'm trying to balance bandwidth and make sure everything I want to do will work 🙂

The method of playing these will simply be queuing them up in WinAMP on the remote computer and playing them over the network from a fileserver. How much bandwidth would doing something like this use? I'm guessing under 1Mbps, probably much less, but I wanted to see what you guys thought.

Happy Holidays,
 
If I am on the right track then....

By queuing an MP3 you really aren't "streaming" it. What you are doing is asking the computer playing the file to transfer the file to local memory and play it. In that case you are depending on the local file system/stack and really don't have many limits other than adding about 20% overhead to the MP3 bitrate to keep the playback buffer full.

If you truly are streaming something like multicast or RTP streaming then add 10% to the bitrate for overhead. These are "safe" estimates.

Hope this helps.
 
Most MP3's are encoded at 128Kb/s. Add 20% for general overhead, so no more than 200Kb/s for standard encoding. I do it with my 802.11b laptop all the time, even with a bad signal it still streams just fine.

- G
 
hahahhaahhhahahahhah

Garion and I both posted at the same time and estimated 20% overhead. 🙂

while a little high at 20% it is still a very safe and workable estimate.
 
That sounds great 🙂

I am going to have a fileserver with MP3's and, well, files, on my 802.11b setup so my other 3 desktop's can listen to MP3's... should have plenty of bandwidth then, even when fully using the DSL speed. Sounds great, I can't wait!

Thanks guys!
 
One more thing, would streaming them be better and would this be possible under Win2k Server?

Recommendations are welcome! 😀
 
You're looking for something like Shoutcase then, of which I've got very little experience with. Looks and runs great, but setting it up is a pain in the butt.
 
I may be mistaken, but I believe Windows 2k server has a Media Streaming component that you can add through Networking Services. I have not played with it yet but it looks pretty simple and straight-forward

Cru
 
remember that you can break up the streaming component and actual DJing component of an MP3 stream; one machine can actually be streaming the music to the internet and you can be controlling it through another box through the LiveAmp plugin or whatever it's called..
 
You're looking for something like Shoutcase then, of which I've got very little experience with. Looks and runs great, but setting it up is a pain in the butt.

I setup icecast on Linux streaming an MP3 from a radio card, it works really well, I hit a few bumps during initial setup but nothing major and if you're not streaming live sound (i.e. you want to stream a playlist of MP3s you haev already) it'll be easier. It's been playing for over 66 days straight now. Each listener takes about 0.033333 MB/s

I may be mistaken, but I believe Windows 2k server has a Media Streaming component that you can add through Networking Services. I have not played with it yet but it looks pretty simple and straight-forward

A guy at work was using that before we moved the radio card to my Linux box and it worked alright, except for a few times it stopped and wouldn't restart without a reboot. It used WMA so only Media Player could listen and they didn't sound as good, but maybe that was just the bitrate he was encoding at.
 
i found this on the FAQ page for slim mp3

An inexpensive 10Mbps hub has about 25 times the capacity needed to stream MP3 audio at the highest quality (384Kbps).
 
Thanks for all the comments.

I'm not sure how this streaming would work, but maybe you guys can clear it up for me...

This would be over a LAN, not the Internet, first of all, and it would need to stream whatever MP3 files that another computer on the LAN requested, bot a set playlist. Would that be possible?

And finally, would there really be any real advantage of streaming over the wireless than just browsing to the server's hard drive, queuing a few up and playing them?
 
OK, I setup a ShoutCast server, which is very easy to do and seems to work well so far, though I have not had a chance to really test it out much as I need to get the LAN setup fully first.

Thanks all!
 
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