Two users, one Mac RR feed server

[civiltongue]

I hope someone can give me some advice.

I have a Mac using Nicecast to provide a local police/fire feed. There are two users on this Mac, and I'm having trouble maintaining the feed when one user takes over the computer from the other. The first user is not logged off, so Nicecast continues to provide the feed service, and the RadioReference redistributor stays happy and does not complain about a broken feed. However, the Mac re-routes the audio path from Line In for the new user, so that the first user's Nicecast can no longer hear the audio and just transmits dead air.

The closest I have come to making this work is to provide a second instance of Nicecast for the second user. The first user must stop his Nicecast broadcast, then the new user must immediately start up his. Even so, RadioReference experiences this as a break in the feed, and many users must restart their Internet radio clients.

Does anyone have any better ideas?

[charlieone]

Originally Posted by civiltongue

Does anyone have any better ideas?

Yup. Buy a thin client or small form factor PC on eBay and set it up as a dedicated, headless streaming computer.

I just picked up a thin client for under $50. With USB sound cards ($1 each) you can even stream multiple feeds.

[civiltongue]

Thanks, Charlie. I appreciate your attention. You know, I don't so much mind the initial cost ($50 or whatever), but having yet another computer to administer is just more than I want to deal with.

I'm still hoping someone with Mac experience can come up with a solution. It might involve redefining the audio line input as some different kind of audio device which would not automatically redirect when changing users.

[Astrak]

....................................

[ggraves]

Originally Posted by charlieone

Yup. Buy a thin client or small form factor PC on eBay and set it up as a dedicated, headless streaming computer.

I just picked up a thin client for under $50. With USB sound cards ($1 each) you can even stream multiple feeds.

Where do you find $50 thin clients at?

[charlieone]

Originally Posted by ggraves

Where do you find $50 thin clients at?

They're all over eBay. A quick search came up with 4 good ones under $40 this morning.

HP and WYSE seem to make good ones. I've seen most guys using HP machines on here. I bought a WYSE and I've been very pleased with it so far.

[richtidd]

Originally Posted by civiltongue

I hope someone can give me some advice.

I have a Mac using Nicecast to provide a local police/fire feed. There are two users on this Mac, and I'm having trouble maintaining the feed when one user takes over the computer from the other. The first user is not logged off, so Nicecast continues to provide the feed service, and the RadioReference redistributor stays happy and does not complain about a broken feed. However, the Mac re-routes the audio path from Line In for the new user, so that the first user's Nicecast can no longer hear the audio and just transmits dead air.

The closest I have come to making this work is to provide a second instance of Nicecast for the second user. The first user must stop his Nicecast broadcast, then the new user must immediately start up his. Even so, RadioReference experiences this as a break in the feed, and many users must restart their Internet radio clients.

Does anyone have any better ideas?

I guess your are doing the two instances under each user profile. One for each?

To my knowledge, NiceCast is not at this time, able to do multiple instances. At lease that is what the say.

The problem is the Mac can really only support one user at a time.
While your can set up different profiles, each profile uses the one set of computer resources as far as I know. So each user log in will take control of the computer settings as you found out and disrupt the feed.

To my knowledge, you cannot do as you want: Two users & the feed on the same Mac.

I use a Mac & NiceCast for a feed but it is dedicated to the feed.

What you really need as the others are hinting at, is a dedicated feed computer.