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Remember: The higher your bitrate, the fewer listeners you can support.
Put The Two Together
So, more bandwidth means more listeners, and a lower bitrate means more listeners. Now, let's do a
concrete example, taking a cable modem connection with 256 kbps of upstream bandwidth. How
many listeners can this connection support, maximally, at:
24 kbps: 10
56 kbps: 4
96 kbps: 2
128 kbps: 2
The way this was determined was by taking the available bandwidth (256 kbps) and dividing by the
stream's bitrate. Each listener takes a chunk of your bandwidth equal to the stream's bitrate, so if
you have 1 listener on a 24 kbps stream, 24 kbps of upstream bandwidth is in use, and if you have 3
listeners, 72 kbps is in us. So we divid 256/24 and take the result (10). This is the absolute
maximum number of listeners the server can support.
Access Control
Now that we know the maximum number of listeners we can support, how can we make sure we
don't exceed that number? This is where the Listener Limit setting comes into play. In Nicecast's
Server window, under the Built-In Server tab, you'll find this control. Stop the server with the Stop
button, then adjust this.
The Listener Limit should be set to the number determined above for your specific connection. When
this is set, any listeners who try to conenct past the limit will be told the server is full. If this is not
set properly, more listeners can connect than the server can truly support, and the stream will start
to rebuffer and drop out for all users.
100 Listeners? How?
Serving large numbers of listeners is rarely possible with the local connection, but by using an
External Server, you can go beyond the limits of your own connection. Services such as Live365.com
and fast-serv.com allow you to relay your stream, sending it just once to their server.
Once you set up Nicecast with an External Server, listeners tune in to this server, which has much
faster connections to the internet. You can pay for more listeners to be able to access your stream
by adding bandwidth, or you can increase the quality of your stream beyond what you could
reasonably support from your local connection. But on almost any internet connection, Nicecast's
built-in server will support at least 1 or 2 listeners, so in the beginning we recommend sticking with
the built-in server.
For more information on using External Servers with Nicecast, please read the External Servers
tutorial page.
Showing Track Titles in the Stream
Nicecast will include track titles right in your audio stream, so your listeners know what they're
hearing. Nicecast automatically reads track information from the following applications:
AirfoilSpeakers
AskTheDJ
djay
Ecoute