Is anyone streaming to IceCast from Android using an external mic, headset, and etc?

[Nonapeptide]

I have a few broadcasters that I work with who would like to use Android phones (specifically Galaxy S4s) as their entire broadcasting platform for live events. In specific, sporting events. The broadcasting setup right now is usually to have two microphones (one for ambient sound aimed at a crowd, and one for the broadcaster themselves) plugged into an Alesis mixing board. A pair of headphones is also plugged into the mixing board. All sound quality, levels, mixing, etc. is handled on the board and regular USB 2.0 comes out and plugs into a Laptop. The laptop takes the audio and simply pushes it over to IceCast servers using Edcast Reborn and MP3/Ogg Vorbis encoders. Advertisements are played as static audio files on the laptop through any old media player like Windows Media Player or even iTunes.

 

However now some broadcasters want to be able to use their Android phones as the entire broadcasting platform. Is there anyone out there doing internet streaming from their Android devices that could offer some advice? My thought is that it's going to be tough, if not impossible, to recreate the exact level of experience for the broadcasters on a phone. I thought to get rid of the 4-channel mixing board and simply use a pair of headphones with a mic in them for the broadcaster, use DropBox on the phone to handle advertisement files so that they can be synced with a PC somewhere in the control room of a station, and then use something like the app BroadcastMyself to tie it all together. The only trouble is that broadcasters want to hear themselves in the headset. So perhaps I'll need to keep the mixer in the equation, however that has so far been a headache to find an app that can take USB audio input and hand it off to a streaming app like BroadcastMyself.

 

Is anyone out there using their Androids as a live streaming platform to backend IceCast servers? Any advice or thoughts in general?

[Brutish Sailor]

Just to shoot this out there. Broadcast Myself app is totally awesome for this. I enjoy it at least.

[Nonapeptide]

Just to shoot this out there. Broadcast Myself app is totally awesome for this. I enjoy it at least.

Thanks RD! Yeah, I think that app is the ticket. I'm now trying to appease these guys who want to have multiple mics. One for crowd noise and one for the broadcaster. I think they want too much functionality for too little effort. "Hey, we've got phones that are super Star Trek advanced! Let's use them and not have to pay for laptops!"

[Lmarrie]

The Airtime software makes it possible to broadcast from your smartphone. I think it would work if they were just going to be talking but running multiple apps like drop box and trying to play ads I think would be too heavy a load for a phone. My Galaxy freezes up just trying to Facebook LOL.

[Nonapeptide]

The Airtime software makes it possible to broadcast from your smartphone. I think it would work if they were just going to be talking but running multiple apps like drop box and trying to play ads I think would be too heavy a load for a phone. My Galaxy freezes up just trying to Facebook LOL.

Yeah, I think they're asking too much in the face of panic. Someone didn't get to the venue on time with the broadcasting PC, so now there's questions about if one can fall back on to a smartphone. I'm thinking that's a bit pie in the sky, but hey... I can't be the first one to want this. Right? Right?! :D