Simple audio line-in/line-out bridging over TCP/IP?

[grw110]

Hi, I'm looking for an inexpensive solution to 'bridge' or tunnel analog audio over an in-home IP connection. The audio originates from the line-out of one device, to the line-in of my outdoor speakers/amp setup. It can be transported over TCP or UDP is fine - basically, transport can be any packets supported by consumer switches/WiFi AP's. For the scenario, think: being able to follow the action of a sports broadcast when I go from home-theater room, to outside my house, where my outdoor speakers are. I always want the outdoor speakers to be a 'slave' to the indoor 'master' - and not control them independently.

 

I'm not aware of any 'bridge' device pairs that will tunnel audio over IP from a 'transmitter' to a 'receiver.' Devices like this exist for Bluetooth... but, I need to span a large distance, and figure I should be able to leverage the my wired/WiFi home network to achieve this, and not worry about audio quality, or bluetooth profiles, etc. Bridge pairs like this also exist for extending HDMI - but these are typically not IP; they just use a Cat5/6 cable for transport.

 

Also - the intent is to not break the bank - I'm hoping for decent audio quality (does a reasonable job with uncompressed FLACs of CD audio) for at or less than $200.

 

Thoughts? Does such a device exist? I have a spare laptop - I'm wondering if a reasonable solution would be to set the laptop up to stream the audio coming into a mic port, over the home network to an Airplay receiver (i.e. the $50-ish Airport Express variety). I'm not versed in AirPlay, but an AirPort Express seems like a pretty reliable and well-tested piece of gear for this.

 

 

[Audio_ELF]

You may be able to do something with Airfoil and something like Audacity which will route an analogue input to Airfoil. I'll have a play tomorrow if I get the chance...

[grw110]

Great idea! Based on what I saw, I bet that will do the trick.

 

Does anyone have experience with Airfoil - or Audacity - or, similar software? I'd love to get an opinion on the quality of a solution like this - or what alternatives out there may be worth checking out also.

[Cebolla]

Thoughts? Does such a device exist? I have a spare laptop - I'm wondering if a reasonable solution would be to set the laptop up to stream the audio coming into a mic port, over the home network to an Airplay receiver (i.e. the $50-ish Airport Express variety). I'm not versed in AirPlay, but an AirPort Express seems like a pretty reliable and well-tested piece of gear for this.

Don't think your laptop's mic input would provide you with best quality interface from a standard line output, if it's a normal one designed for low powered microphones. So you may need to reconsider your ADC/network streaming device, if the laptop doesn't have a proper line in and you can't get a decent adapter (eg line in to USB) to work/cost prohibitive.

[JustGav]

Hi,

 

Just came across your post while doing some research. As it happens I'm doing some experimenting with something very similar. I'm building an audio distribution / mixing system for at home, but like yourself I'm piping it round using IP as the underlying tech.

 

Currently, playing with beaglebone blacks and some USB sound cards as a test rig. If it works I'll end up using higher quality ADC / DACs.

 

Couple of the big things include synchronisation, latency. Choosing between TCP or UDP for example. Both WiFi and wired. My initial test rig will be wired purely to sort out the timings.

 

If you are interested, I can share my findings and code as I go?

 

/gav

[Serge_S]

Denon DN-200WS:

[Bloodwound]

You can use USBIP. USB over IP. Might not me the most trivial thing to setup, but works fine. Dsd512 asynch usb to the other side of the world if that's your desire.

 

Whatever 10usd to 35usd device that runs linux and a 2usd usb soundcard should do fine as the host. There are clients for windows and osx.