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I really like my music collection, built up over many years. It reflects who I am and my personal tastes, far better than any radio station or streaming service. It stands to reason that I would love to listen to it in more places than just my music room, or throughout the house.
Since the Walkman emerged back in the late 70’s, it has been possible to listen to our choice of music, but with limitations. You had to carry a case full of cassettes, then CDs with you and swap them frequently.
Then storage capacities started to expand, and the Smartphone came along, so now you can put many, many tracks on a large SD card. However, it is still limited by the storage size, and, if you compress the music to get more to fit, the final quality of the music.
Streaming services such as Amazon and Spotify are now on the scene, and you can create sound hours with similar content to your particular genre preferences, but it’s not quite the same as your own collection.
With Breakaway One and the appropriate cores, you can stream your own music privately directly to your smartphone, anywhere in the world where there is internet connectivity
Here’s how.
You will need:-
1) A Breakaway One licence with at least HD and streaming core options.
2) Some sort of automation or playout software capable of selecting and playing your music collection running on your home network.
3) An internet connection with at least 5gbps upload speed and sufficient monthly data plan (say greater than 20 GB).
4) A fixed WAN IP address, or an account with DynDNS or similar.
5) A smartphone, tablet or laptop capable of listening to a streaming service.
6) A program to play the stream on your playback device. I use VLC, which is well-supported freeware available for PC, Android and iOS.
7) (Optionally) some sort of amplification equipment to play the output if you don’t like earbuds.Setting Up:-
1) Let’s assume that you already have BA1 set up and running your HD core on your home system. Description on how to do this is really outside the scope of this post. Similarly, assume you are also using something like SAM, OtsAV or other playout software to play into your home stereo.
2) Assign your home computer a fixed IP address within the range allowed by your modem/router. By default, most devices that connect to your network are assigned a temporary number via DHCP which may change each time the device re-connects. As we will be forwarding a port to the playout machine, it must have a known IP address. My modem address is 192.168.0.1, so I have assigned my music PC 192.168.0.200. There are plenty of instructional videos online to help you do this for Windows.
3) Setup a Streaming Encoder. Because I use BA1 as a service, I use the BARemote, so let’s go through that. The Config program is very similar.
a) Select Encoder 1.
b) Select from the list of codecs. I use AAC+, which has to be installed separately, but this can be any you prefer. If you have the bandwidth, try one of the lossless codecs.
c) Similarly, the bitrate will affect the quality, but also the amount of data used.
d) Server type MUST be “Internal” and the mount point “/default”
e) The URL should be “https://” PLUS the fixed IP that you assigned your network connection PLUS “:20110”. In my case it is “http://192.168.0.200:20110”.
f) Click on “Enable” and you should see the number of kilobytes streaming.
g) You can test it by opening VLC or your “listening” software and entering the URL/port address in the “Open Network Stream” option.4) OK, so far, we have got streaming working on your internal network, so any device capable of playback that is connected either wired or wirelessly should be able to reproduce your music. Bear in mind that there is a top limit of 9 connections allowed.
5) Now, to be able to listen from anywhere there is internet connectivity, we need an extra step – to forward anything on your WAN IP, port 20110 through to your internal, fixed IP address. This is relatively easy on most modems, but the instructions differ per make/model of modem, so you will need to consult your manual or Google for the correct method. Basically, you will open the web interface of your modem, and then go to the advanced menu options. You are looking for something like “NAT Forwarding/Virtual Servers”.
When you find it, enter a name for the rule e.g. “MyStream”, External port (20110), IP Address (your internal fixed IP for your BA1 device e.g. 192.168.0.200), Internal port (20110) and Protocol (TCP/UDP). Save the entry, and you may also have to re-boot your modem.
6) Now, if you know your WAN IP (or you can get it by typing “whatismyip” into your browser), you should be able to type into VLC Open Network Stream field as “http://{your WAN IP}:20110”.
If you are like me, where each time I connect to my ISP I lose the WAN IP, you can set up a dynamic DNS account where each time your address changes, DynDNS updates the Domain Name Servers.So, there you have it. YOUR music wherever you go. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, you can’t make the link public, or you will be hit with performing rights fees, but you can share it with family with the proviso that they also don’t make it public.
Remember, there is a limit of 9 streams on the “Internal” option of BA1.
Nice tutorial! I’ve been using a Trial pass-through core for streaming to my phone. I use it like 15 minutes a day, so I don’t mind the rare moment when I hear the registration jingle. However, for people who aren’t at their computers all day, a Streaming license seems like a great deal, being entirely self-contained and capable of various formats of high-res FLAC, etc.
Spotify (at least) is capable of being controlled remotely. You can use your phone to control Spotify by clicking the Connect To Device icon that looks like a speaker and sometimes a monitor behind it and choosing your Breakaway PC as the Listen On device. Sometimes Spotify likes to take over playing from the phone instead of your media app that is streaming Breakaway, so once you notice the sound being different, check and make sure your media app is still in control and Spotify is “Listening On” the Breakaway PC instead of playing on the phone.
Again, this is only for personal listening and not any type of public broadcast. Follow the laws of your country and don’t break the TOS of your music services.
That’s the only down side of my solution – no control (other than Pause/Play), so you can’t ditch an unwanted track if you want to. Not a problem in my case, because I can VNC into the same PC, using a similar principal (port forwarding port 5900), so I can use the track select options of OtsAV via VNC.
You CAN display the playing Artist/Track information if your playout program provides the meta data as a string in a file, or a URL.
My program of choice (OtsAV TV) doesn’t produce a file, so I have written an AHK routine which extracts it from the built-in Remote Access Server and writes it to a file. You can then point the BA1 stream encoder to the file location and the details will display in VLC.
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