Can you send sound from one Windows machine to another across a network? Best answer on the web

Jan 08, 2009 @ 04:56 am by webmaster
  • I'm trying to find a way to send all audio from one Windows machine to
    another across a local network. I have one laptop hooked up to the stereo,
    but currently to use music players like Rhapsody or iTunes on it, I
    have to run the apps on the remote laptop and control it remotely from
    my main laptop. I'd like to be able to run the apps on this laptop,
    but have all the sound be routed to the other laptop. Basically, I'd
    just like this laptop to use the remote laptop as its soundcard.

    I've done a lot of looking into this, and nothing has quite done the
    trick. Any solution has to have good sound quality, as this is for
    music, and can not be application-specific, meaning it will
    work with Rhapsody, iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, Winamp, etc. One issue that raises is that it can't be tied to a particular format, like MP3. It needs to also handle at least AAC and Windows Media files. Ideally, it would just take the raw audio output that would normally go to the soundcard.


  • You can put together a sort of pipe with a little configuration. First of all, Open the full Volume Control, Options>Properties>Recording, make sure Wave Out Mixed and/or Aux are checked. Press ok. Now click the "Select" checkbox under Aux or "Wave Out Mixed" This will send all output from the speakers just as a microphone or line-in.
    You can then take a program like VLC (http://videolan.org, http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=10049), File>Open Capture Device, Select your sound card, check Stream Output, Settings..., Check Audio Codec, choose MP3 or your favorite transit format and a bitrate. Now look back up this page and check UDP. Then fill in the IP address of the receiving computer (make up a port number, 1234 is fine). You can Ok that Settings... dialog but wait on the main one.
    Now start VLC on the receiving end, File>Open Network Stream>UDP/RDP.

    Wallah. You should have a network bound conduit of sound. You can automate the settings once you have them down to a shortcut with the command line code at the top of the Settings... dialog.


  • It works! With the command line interface, it's quite slick and simple. The only catch is that it still plays sound on this notebook (the server). I was able to stop that by checking 'PC Spk Mute' in the volume settings, but it would be nice if I could just mute it while the VLC server is running, so the local sound starts up again as soon as I stop the server. Any ideas?
    Otherwise, it's good. There's a little bit of lag, but that's to be expected. Also, I have to make sure the volume on this laptop is turned pretty far down or the audio coming through the stereo is very distorted. Not a big deal though.
    It's funny--when I was trying to figure out a way to do this a few weeks ago, I actually came across VLC, but for some reason thought it couldn't do what I wanted. Anyway, thanks, you answered my question!