Here’s what I want to do: I wonder if anyone here has any ideas.
I want to stream live audio from one PC to another over the Internet. (The reason is for use as a backup Studio To Transmitter, or “STL,” for my radio stations.) This would not be broadcast to the general public, so I don’t need a 'Cast server on the Internet.
I can do it with VOIP software, but the quality isn’t very good. Most of the high-quality packages that I’ve seen are simple jukeboxes: they want you to give them a playlist of canned, already-recorded audio files, which they’ll then stream. Most of them also want you to stream via a “'Cast” server on the Internet; they’re not suitable for point to point (or seen from another view, I would be the “originating” server – if I was streaming to the general public, people would be connecting directly to my server._
Put even more simply: I should be able to plug in a microphone, talk into it, and a remote computer at the other end of the link would play my voice through the speakers, live, with as little delay as possible.
A couple of packages appear to be able to do the live streaming, but a extremely trick to setup and configure. (To be honest, as much as I hate to admit defeat, I haven’t been able to get them to work.)
Any ideas? Do we have anyone here who operates a live Internet radio station, rather than a simple “canned” playlist format?
Streaming Audio Server Software for Internet Radio Broadcasting
I haven’t used this myself. It is not open-source but you can install a free version if you include a link to their site. It supports broadcast but you can always use it for one-to-one streaming.
Thanks. I promise that I hit their Website during my Google search, but never noticed that! Maybe I was tired. 
In our case, since I’m not using it to stream to the general public, I’d just pay the fee for registration. But considering that the cheapest “professional” IP-STL package that I’ve seen cost nearly $1000 for the complete package, this little deal would be a great bargain.
(Which was sort of the point.)
Interesting, though, that no one in the F/OSS community has made a LIVE streaming package. All of them are essentially jukeboxes that play prerecorded files, or have limited bandwidth (ex., for VOIP).
(Yeah, yeah, I know. I ought to create such a package myself. If I only had the time . … …)
smpoole7 I have no actual experience but I’m not sure what you’re saying about *casts from my limited knowledge it should do it with i.e ices
This page as an example of using /dev/dsp as a source so unless I’m missing something not sure what this does or doesn’t do.
Perhaps it’ll help, the way I see it you want to stream the /dev/dsp which this example is doing…
Streaming Audio with Ices and Icecast
I deeply appreciate the response, and I realize that the “ices” should be able to do it. (The operative term is “should.”) But if you read down further on that page, you’ll see that others are experiencing the same problem that I have – it’s very difficult to actually make work. Note that one comment begs, “can this be updated?” Apparently, those instructions are no longer applicable to the most recent versions.
F/OSS is a beautiful thing, but it is annoying how the documentation rarely keeps up with the latest releases. Go into any Wiki for most of the popular packages and you’ll see the warning, “this how-to is outdated” on half the walk-throughs.
The immediate response from the F/OSS community, of course, is: “then YOU should update the docs.” I DO. I make it a point to go into these Wikis and forums after I succeed with something and post my own walk-throughs. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one, though. (Yes, that’s ego-centric hubris, but hey; I’m allowed a little as I get older. )