Internal mount points for outside broadcast workflows

  • Updated on Oct 11, 2023
  • Published on Jul 6, 2021
  • 2 minute(s) read
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Customers can enabled additional "internal mountpoints" to use for internal audio workflows, typically to transmit audio between remote locations and the main studio. For example for receiving audio from outside broadcasts or external contribution partners.

These additional mount points are intended for internal use by the customer to route audio between remote locations, and may not be used to provide audio directly to end users.

Each mountpoint allows only 5 concurrent listener connections. Additional listener requests will be rejected, ensure you provide these mountpoints only to trusted parties.

Setup

Stations can enable up to 5 additional icecast mountpoints on their stream. Each additional mountpoint incurs a montly cost - see our pricing page.

Once enabled, customers must select the names for these mountpoints before being able to use them. Our support staff can assist with this.

Mount point names must:

  • be between 2 and 24 characters in length,
  • use only normal alphabetic characters or numbers,
  • contain no spaces or special characters.

The final mountpoint name to connect to will always include the customer unique stream identifier also.

Usage

Once enabled, stations can send icecast audio streams into these mountpoints from their remote locations and pull this audio using any application that will read an icecast stream.

Example mountpoint name:

outsidebroadcast

Will become available on port 8000 of the customer specific IP, ex:

http://1.2.3.4:8000/123_outsidebroadcast

  • Where outsidebroadcast is the customer configurable name.
  • The IP and prefix will be uqniue per customer.
  • Internal mountpoints can receive valid icecast audio streams in MP3, AAC or OGG formats.
  • Use the same username and password as for the primary input stream, available on the stream dasboard.
  • Note: internal mountpoints are available only on plain HTTP, not HTTPS.

Latency

Icecast in general is designed for serving one-to-many audio to a lot of listeners and is not optimised for low-latency audio. Latency on these streams can range from between 5 to 20 seconds or more depending on the which tools, format and bitrate is used.

General guidelines:

  • Higher bitrates typically have lower latencies. Most overheads are associated with buffering, and higher bitrate audio can fill up set buffer sizes quicker. There are diminishing returns on this, so 256k will not necessary have half the latency of 128k. We recommend a maximum of 160k AAC or MP3.
  • Use the right application for playback. Do not use a browser for playback but rather a dedicated audioplayback tool. We recommend using VLC.