How to Broadcast Live Audio From a Mac

Use a headset mic, an internal mic or any other microphone connected to your computer.

While some people enjoy broadcasting their interviews, news and opinions via podcasts, others take it to the next level by broadcasting live via the Internet. One relatively easy way to do this is to use a third-party application to broadcast your live audio to the world right from your Mac computer.

Instructions

1. Download Nicecast from rogueamoeba.com. You can download a free version, but if you broadcasts longer than 60 minutes, there will be noise over your stream after 60 minutes. In that case, download the paid version.

2. Open Nicecast and select the "Source" drawer, then select the source from which your audio will be taken. If your broadcast is going to be a live interview or other spoken audio, select a microphone input from the list of Sources. If you're going to be broadcasting audio, select iTunes as the source.

3. Click the "Info" drawer to enter a name, a description and a genre for the stream.

4. Click the "Quality" drawer to select a bitrate for your stream. Rogue Amoeba suggests to provide enough quality for each listener, depending on your bandwidth. So if you have four listeners and you have a cable modem, divide your modem's bandwidth -- 126 Kbps -- by four, which comes to 32 Kbps for each listener, which is enough quality for each person to hear you properly. If you don't have any other programs that need to be running on your computer while you're doing the stream, slide the "CPU" slider all the way up so that Nicecast will be using more of your computer's CPU power.

5. Get the link for your broadcast by clicking the "Share" drawer and copying the URL that appears next to "Internet Setting." Copy the code and share it via email or your website.

6. Start your broadcast by navigating back to the Nicecast "Source" drawer and clicking "Start Broadcast." To stop the stream, go back to the "Source" drawer and click "Stop Broadcast."

Tips & Warnings

• You may eventually have to move your stream to an external server that will allow you to have more listeners. Services such as fast-serv.com and Live365.com allow you to send your stream to their server and thereby accept more listeners.

References

• Rogue Amoeba: Nicecast 1.10.0 Manual
• CogDogBlog: CogDog Guide to Nicecasting

Resources

• Rogue Amoeba: Nicecast