This guide covers the steps necessary to broadcast to a SHOUTcast server. These are the steps that need to be completed on the client side, not the server-side. This guide assumes that you have already received an IP address, port, and password from Web Savers’ staff.

1. Getting Winamp and the SHOUTcast Plug-in

Download and install the latest version of Winamp 5.x. This can be downloaded from winamp.com.

Download and install the SHOUTcast DSP Plug-in for Winamp 5.x. This can be downloaded from shoutcast.com.

2. Finding the SHOUTcast Plugin Configuration

After you’ve installed both Winamp and the DSP plugin, open winamp and click on the top left corner, and select Options and then Preferences.

Scroll down to the bottom and click on “DSP/Effect”. This should populate two plugins in the list to the right. Click on the one that reads “Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP v1.9.0 [dsp_sc.dll]“, and then click “configure active plugin”.

3. Connecting Winamp to the Web Savers Server

You should now have the “SHOUTcast Source” window open. Click on the “Output” tab. About half way down you should see fields labeled “Address”, “Port”, and “password”. Change these values to what you’ve received from Web Savers’ staff.

Click “Connect” near the top, and check the box that says “Connect at Startup”. You are now connected and streaming to the SHOUTcast server. If you check the url http://yourip:port it will show the server as online.

4. Specify the Encoding Bitrate

Click on the Encoder Tab, under the Encoder Settings, pick the kbps that you signed up for during the order process, 24, 48, 64, or 128 kbps. If you have not ordered yet and are unsure what these options mean, generaly speaking the higher the bitrate (in kbps) the better the quality of audio. If you are planning on playing music we suggest a bitrate of at least 64kbps, though 128kbps certainly sounds the best.

5. Configuring the Music Source

Click on the Input Tab, and make sure it reads Winamp under Input Device. This will broadcast whatever is playing in winamp onto the SHOUTcast server. If you have a microphone or another sound device hooked up, you can select it from this drop down list and it will switch from the song playing to whatever device you choose. So if your song is coming to an end and you want to start talking, or if you’ve had enough talking and would like to start some music again, you would be switching this between “Winamp” and your microphone input.

6. Test it out!

Since you have just configured Winamp to take anything playing and feed it to your SHOUTcast server, to test it out you simply need to start playing an audio file. To do this you will need to double click on an existing song in your media library. If you have no songs in your Winamp media library, drag and drop an MP3 or other audio file on to the Library. The link to follow to listen to your station is http://yourip:port/listen.pls. If you have registered a domain name and visiting http://www.yourdomain.com shows your Web Site or a Plesk splash page, then you can also use http://www.yourdomain.com:port/listen.pls.