Barix Exstreamer and SqueezeSlave

This is a guide to resurrect your old Barix Exstreamer that your put in a corner when you bought your Squeezebox (or got cheap off EBay!)

This enables your exstreamer to look and behave like a Squeezebox.

It is much better than simply pointing the exstreamer at http://serverIP:9000/stream.mp3 as the lag/delay is A LOT less and you can change the volume from the Squeezebox Server interface.

How

• Install VAcard from Barix website (free) http://www.barix.com (under downloads then software).

• Install 'virtual audio cable' (non-free, demo available) http://www.ntonyx.com/vac.htm

• Install SqueezeSlave (free).

• In 'multimedia/sound' (depending on your Windows version) in Control panel select 'virtual cable 1' as your default playback device. (This makes SqueezeSlave output to this virtual soundcard, I cant find any way to choose a playback device via the SqueezeSlave command line)

• Start SqueezeSlave. Remember to put the IP address of the server after the command, and use the -m option to make SqueezeSlave use a different mac address if you run more than one copy of SqueezeSlave on your network e.g. squeezeslave -r10 -m00:08:e1:00:15:54 192.168.100.4

• Run audio repeater (start –>programs –> virtual audo cable). Set 'wave in' as 'virtual cable 1'. Set 'wave out' as 'Vacard 1 out'. Press start.

• Open 'VAcard TCP/IP mp3 streamer' - it should be started automatically when windows starts. Open by clicking on a black icon in the taskbar. Select the 'streamers' tab. Enable the first tick box 'pusher #0'. Click on properties.

You can either 'push' the stream to your exstreamer or 'pull' the stream. I choose to pull as then the exstreamer will continue to try and reconnect if the server reboots. Select 'stream server'. Leave default values for port and connections (8000 and 3). Recording device should be set as 'vacard1 in' and is unchangeable. Choose appropriate values for the rest - e.g. sampling rate 44100, bitrate 320, stereo.

Then configure your exstreamer to connect to this server to obtain its audio. On the Barix webinterface Settings –> streaming –> - mode - '3 streaming puller' - Server IP address - IP address of the computer with SqueezeSlave running - server path - / (all others leave at default)

Problems

All sound from your computer will go to this 'device' as we have changed the default sound card output...... this will be resolved once we can choose an output using SqueezeSlave (which is still very unfinished, but surprisingly usable). - VAcard would not be required if we could output directly to 'vacard 1', however if we do that the sound is garbled - ?is this a SqueezeSlave problem?

Other uses

Could be used to redirect the audio output of your whole computer to the exstreamer e.g. when playing games, listening to DRM protected music etc. Not sure how realtime it is yet - but it seems fairly good (less than 1 second delay when switching tracks on the Squeezebox Server webinterface)