Which live streaming method is best?

[Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com>]

Mark,

sorry for the belated response. I'll try to summarize what you are looking 
for:

  * streaming audio over the internet
  * audio quality is an issue
  * video will (current planning state) be coming via webcam (and
whichever software)
  * you don't need to listen to or watch them - strictly unidirectional

The important question is: does the audio need to be in sync with the
webcam video you provide or not?
If yes - > see 1
If no -> see 2

1. The best thing I can think of would be ustream.tv, justin.tv or a
similar service. All of them are flash-video based, and all of them
(at least those two) require you to use the (free) Flash Media Encoder
(FME) to be able to control audio quality in detail (including making
it stereo). That way, you could then transmit audio and video on one
stream.
Which one you choose is up to you, one thing which may be of
importance: while ustream requires you to have the FME and a browser
plugin running, justin can do with only FME. So if you are using a
somewhat older computer for that task, justin.tv would be my
recommendation.

2. Of course, the items listed under 1 would also work here. To make
it really simple: use the Oddcast standalone client (or Winamp with
the Oddcast and Line-In plugin) on your side, and Winamp with the
Oddcast/Icecast-pseudoserver plugin on the other side. This will
however require that the router/firewall at the other end is setup to
forward the oddcast port to the machine receiving the audio. Other
solution (if they don't want to mess with the venue's IT setup):
install an icecast server on your machine, configure the router to
port forward to the machine running the icecast server, and then send
the stream with the Oddcast client to your local server and have the
other party connect to your icecast miniserver with Winamp (or a media
player of their choice).

Yours,

                 Rainer