Setup

I am not, as my QuadV Technical Director will testify, the most gifted of technicians and I will not be dwelling too much on setup in this article. It will come as no shock to you that it is important to use good equipment, but it need not be the very best and most expensive equipment around. A good setup of the software initially is far more important than a mixing desk or expensive microphone or headset. That said; do spend a little time finding a reasonable headset and soundcard. A simple Creative Labs 5.1 soundcard should be sufficient however and you should not have to pay more than £50 for it. Likewise, the headset need not be expensive, but look for one with a decent microphone rather than superb (in-ear) audio quality and try and find one that fits your head and ears as you will be very uncomfortable, very quickly otherwise.

What you need to get started:
Winamp 2.91
Shoutcast Plugin 1.9.7
Creative Labs 5.1 soundcard
Headset with Microphone (Sennheiser PC166 is fine)

It is also worth mentioning that Vista can be a pain to setup, so if possible, use Windows XP for Audio setup. This entire section relates to Windows XP Setup only and I cannot help with Vista or Win7 support/setup questions. Some people will also tell you that the shoutcast plugin isnt the best out there and they would be right, but its an easy way to get setup to start with. Once you are comfortable and want to do this more often, there are plenty of other software options to explore to suit you with many of our casters preferring SimpleCast for example.

Dont forget you will also need a server to stream to, which in turn takes the load of the bandwidth away from your own connection and allows lots of people to join it. Look around on the internet, there are plenty of people who offer these fairly cheaply to start with or ask one of the bigger stations if you can borrow a server to test. Alternatively and only to start with, you can set the software up to use your own server but be aware it will only cope with a limited number of listeners if your connection is less than 10mb. You can find how to setup the server on your own PC here.

As basic as it gets, that’s all you need to get set up to shoutcast in audio over the internet, however, you will need a server to broadcast to. Shoutcast works on a relay system, that is to say, if you tried to host the server on your own PC, after a few people joined it, you would quickly run out of bandwidth (unless you have a ridiculously high upload speed in excess of 10mb). So what shoutcast does is send the data from your broadcast to a server and from there, relays it out to the people wanting to tune in. There are a few server providers around, but most charge for the bandwidth use and trust me, bandwidth can be quickly eaten up with a shoutcast server. If you can, hunt around for an existing station and ask them to borrow a server. Most are friendly and helpful and will be only to glad to have someone on-air for them. Try a few of the medium skilled clans as they often have servers they can loan out to budding shoutcasters or dj’s. ClanBase is also a great place to start, providing you are covering one of their tournaments of course.

If you have trouble setting up the software, you can check out this simple, but effective little guide from sp0rky which details exactly how to get going with the plugin here. There is also a tutorial on how to setup and use the software at errorfm, which you may also find useful.

There are many other plugins and even dedicated software that you can use, but for now, this will allow you to get on air, relatively easy and without huge expense and it’s the best way to try it all out before you get serious and spend that hard earned cash.

As you get better and get the bug for it, you can branch out to a mixing deck, dedicated microphone and boom for it and change software to one of the Audiorealm paid for packages. All of this will help improve your quality on air, but there is no need for this when you start out. If you get really serious, you can spend many hundreds of pounds on dedicated PC’s to stream video and expensive equipment from Sennheiser and Shure, but for now, this simple little part of the guide will help you get up and running without incurring huge cost. I know of several people who were very keen to succeed at shoutcasting who spent hundreds of pounds only to do a handful of commentaries and never be heard of again and that’s simply wasting money.