How To Stream Spotify from Mac to Playstation 3

How To Stream Spotify from Mac to Playstation 3

A while ago I thought about having my Spotify playlists streamed to my Playstation 3. My sound system is connected to that device, placed in my living room, so I needed to find a way to stream the whole sound output (also called “Stereo Mix”) from my Mac to the PS3. In this article I will explain how you can stream any sound from your Mac, for example Spotify, to any local device using WLAN, in this case my Playstation 3.

What do you need to stream your audio output?

Although this tutorial seems quite long, once you’ve made your way through it and configured everything (one-time only!), handling all this will be pretty easy, and it won’t take longer than a minute. It’s not really complicated to accomplish this, however you need four tiny tools (all of which are freeware though!):

Now we can get started! Remember, if you want to stream Spotify, of course you need to have a valid account there!

Installation and one-time-configuration

After you have downloaded the above tools (you only need one of those Media Server applications), get started by installing Soundflower. Also install MuSE OS X and (in my case) the PS3 Media Server. You already got three of the tools ready! However, Shoutcast is not a real app, you can only run this tool using the command line (with the Terminal app that you can find on any Mac OS X device). So I recommend you to move the new shoutcast_server folder to a location of your choice that is easily reachable, for example I put it on my desktop.

Now you need to tweak some settings. Inside the shoutcast_server folder, open the file sc_serv_basic.conf with a text editor. All you need to change here is the line that says “password” as well as the “adminpassword”. Just type in two different passwords of your choice. If you want to, you can also change the “portbase” by removing the semi-colon and typing in another port number. Otherwise Shoutcast will stream on port 8000 (I left it as it is). When you’re done, save the file and close it. Now you need to make sure that you can later access your audio stream using the PS3 Media Server. To do this, access the Library folder by clicking on the Go To submenu in the Mac Finder menu bar and press down the alt-key to see and open this Library folder. Inside, go to Application Support -> PMS. You should see a file called WEB.conf, otherwise you can download it here. After you have opened it with a text editor, you see a long list of streams that have already been input there. If you don’t wanna use them, just delete them. Just be sure to enter the following line under # audio streams:

audiostream.Web,Radio=<name-of-your-choice>,http://<your-computers-local-ip-address>:<the-port-specified-in-the-shoutcast-configuration-file>

Replace <name-of-your-choice> with any name of your choice (for example Mac Sound Output) – this will be the name of your stream that you will later see on your Playstation 3. Replace <your-computers-local-ip-address> with your computer’s local ip-address (if you don’t know how to find it, read this article), and replace <the-port-specified-in-the-shoutcast-configuration-file> with the port number you set earlier (remember, if you didn’t change it, enter 8000). Don’t forget the colon in between! For example, your line could look like this:

audiostream.Web,Radio=iMac Sound,http://192.168.2.7:8000

Now save this file, and your one-time-configuration is done. Everything that follows now are the actions you always need to do to start your audio output stream.

Stream your Audio Output from Mac to any WLAN device

These are the actions needed to start your Mac audio output stream:

  1. Go to your Mac’s System Preferences -> Sound. For Output as well as for Input choose Soundflower (2ch). This allows Soundflower to grab your Mac’s sound output and use this output as input for your audio stream.
  2. Open the Terminal app. You need to move to your shoutcast_server directory. This works by typing in cd <path-to-the-directory> (where <path-to-the-directory> needs to be replaced with the path to the directory, for example cd Desktop/shoutcast_server). After that, type in ./sc_serv sc_serv_basic.conf to start your own audio server. The application will start, at the end it should say something like Listening for connection on port 8000 (or sometimes also 8001).
  3. Open muse-OS X. First, click on Status (so that you can see what you’re doing). Then click on Output Device until it said something like Closing output device: Soundflower 2ch. Then click on Input Device, but this time check that it says something like Opening input device: Soundflower 2ch. In short words: Output has to be closed, input has to be open.
  4. Now, still inside muse-OS X, click on Stream. A new window opens. There you will actually set up your audio stream and pass it to the Shoutcast server you just started before. First you need to click Add on the right side of Output Streams to add a new stream. Now choose the audio settings you want to use. I recommend to use Encoder Type: mp3, Mode: stereo, bitrate: 128, frequency: 44100. As you can see, muse-OS X currently only supports audio streaming up to 128 kbit/s. However, since the free and unlimited version of Spotify only streams up to 160kbit/s anyway, that’s not too much of a loss.
  5. After tweaking these audio settings, click on Add on the right side of Stream Servers. Now you need to enter the necessary information to send the audio to your Shoutcast server. For Host, enter localhost, for Port again use the port number you specified earlier (default was 8000). Leave the Mnt field empty. Name and Description can be anything you like. As Login Type, choose shoutcast, leave the Username field empty, and for Password you enter the password you specified in your Shoutcast configuration file (NOT the adminpassword!). When you’re done, click on Connect. Your audio stream is now running!
  6. All you need to do now is start the PS3 Media Server app. After it has connected to your Playstation 3, you can access your shoutcast stream from there under the name you specified earlier in the PS3 Media Server’s WEB.conf file.

Now turn on some sound to test it. You will probably notice a delay of a few seconds, but if you only want to listen to your Spotify music, that shouldn’t be a problem right? Oh, and another little hint: After you have set Soundflower 2ch as your Mac’s output, you won’t hear your Mac’s sound out of its speakers any longer, it will only be streamed to your WLAN device (in this case the Playstation 3). So if you still want to be able to listen to your audio on your Mac’s speakers at the same time, open the tiny application called “Soundflowerbed” that was installed automatically with Soundflower, and set the output settings from OFF to Built-In Output.

Congratulations, you should now be able to stream your Spotify music from your Mac to your Playstation 3! If you have any questions or if something doesn’t work, feel free to post a comment. And if you’re a Windows user, you might find that tutorial about streaming Spotify from Windows helpful!


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34 responses to “How To Stream Spotify from Mac to Playstation 3”

  1. Blake Rothermel Avatar
    Blake Rothermel

    I am having issues in step 2: moving my server with terminal. I keep getting an invalid directory error.

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Hi Blake,

      I will try to help you if you are so kind to tell me what exactly did you type into Terminal and where your sc_serv file resides.

      1. seth keadle Avatar
        seth keadle

        Hey Feliz I am stuck on step 2 as well…

        this is what i am getting in terminal

        “seth-2:~ sethkeadle$ cd /Users/sethkeadle/Desktop.sc_serv sc_serv_basic.conf

        -bash: cd: /Users/sethkeadle/Desktop.sc_serv: No such file or directory”

        1. Felix Arntz Avatar

          Hey Seth, you made a tiny mistake with what you typed in. First you should type in “cd /Users/sethkeadle/Desktop”, press enter – then type in “./sc_serv sc_serv_basic.conf”. These are two separate commands (the “cd xxx” command simply navigates to the specified directory). I’m sorry if the article was misleading in that point, it is not one, but two commands.

          This is pretty basic usage of the Mac OS Terminal, so if you’re interested in this, I can recommend this article: http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-terminal-commands-that-every-mac-user-should-know–mac-4825

          Hope this helped!

          1. Mattias Melin Avatar
            Mattias Melin

            Hello Felix. I´m also stuck at step 2. Get this error:

            Mattiass-MacBook-Pro:Desktop mattiasmelin$ ./sc_serv_basic.conf

            -bash: ./sc_serv_basic.conf: No such file or directory

            I´m absolutely no good at this and i please hope you could help me. Just want this thing to work.

            Thanks!

          2. Felix Arntz Avatar

            Hi Mattias, it should be ./sc_serv sc_serv_basic.conf, you forgot the first part.
            And of course the files must exist in the directory where you are (in your case they need to be directly on the desktop).

            For more information, I refer you to my other comment above yours, the one you responded to.

  2. Franz Avatar
    Franz

    Worked fine for me with the PS3, however I tried to read the stream from my Sony Home Theatre N590 but it doesn’t work so I go through the PS3 then to the soundsystem. Could it be due to the encoding?

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Hi Franz,

      sorry, but I don’t really know about this blu-ray player. I suppose it generally works with the PS3 Media Server? Did you try it multiple times? Even on the PS3, sometimes you have to click on the stream more than once to get it running because it says “Incompatible data” or something like that, just that you know.
      I don’t know if this helps… but at least you can listen through your PS3.

      Felix

  3. Jeremy Gross Avatar
    Jeremy Gross

    Hey. I seem to have everything up and running, but my PS3 gives me a “unsupported file type” error code for all the streamable content including Spotify. any help would be much appreciated.

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Did you try loading the Stream multiple times on PS3? When I do it, I also get this error message sometimes, but it always works after a couple of times. However, this might have to do with the speed of your WLAN, since all these tools working together is probably pretty complex…
      Contact me again if you still have this problem, maybe you can provide me with more details.

  4. Felix Arntz Avatar

    The WEB.conf file’s content looks totally right. This is definitely not the problem. Sorry, but it’s also hard to guess what might be the cause of this error, I’ll do my best.

    Both audio input and output are set to Soundflower 2ch? And the shoutcast server displays the message ‘Listening for connection on port 8000’ or ‘Listening for connection on port 8001’? Of course reinstalling can always be an option, however in most cases it won\’t solve the problem – but you can try of course.

    If the last message tells you 8001, you might wanna try to also adjust Muse OS X and the WEB.conf file to match port 8001 instead of 8000.
    It always works for me with 8000, even when it says 8001, but who knows? Maybe you’re lucky…

  5. Jeremy Gross Avatar
    Jeremy Gross

    Also every time It says “unsupported file type” my computer pulls up an error that VLC player quit unexpectedly.

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Why VLC Player? Are you streaming content using the VLC Player? You don’t need it as of this tutorial. Furthermore VLC bundles some streaming options itself, maybe it is conflicting with the shoutcast server stream.

    2. Jeremy Gross Avatar
      Jeremy Gross

      sorry. I Know I’m retarded. how do I disable VLC for streaming?

      1. Felix Arntz Avatar

        No problem, don’t say that… You can just quit VLC completely I suppose, so that it is active in neither your OS X Dashboard nor your OS X navigation.

  6. Jeremy Gross Avatar
    Jeremy Gross

    This is now showing in Terminal. \”2013-09-16 16:30:44 I msg:[MICROSERVER] Listening for connection on port 8000

    2013-09-16 16:30:44 E msg:Error opening port 8000 because Could not bind to :8000 because Address already in use

    2013-09-16 16:30:44 I msg:[MAIN] Runner shutdown

    2013-09-16 16:30:44 I msg: Logger shutdown

    Macintosh-2:shoutcast chauncieallred$ 2013-09-16 16:30:44Imsg:[MICROSERVER] Listening for connection on port 8000

    -bash: 2013-09-16: command not found

    Macintosh-2:shoutcast chauncieallred$ 2013-09-16 16:30:44Emsg:Error opening port 8000 because Could not bind to :8000 because Ad

  7. Jeremy Gross Avatar
    Jeremy Gross

    I still don’t get it. Both audio input and output are set to Soundflower 2ch, the shoutcast server displays the message ‘Listening for connection on port 8000’, and the VLC player is off. on the PS3, under Medea server the Spotify is actually called “Spotify-[VLC Web Audio (Legacy)]*.

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Okay, now all this seems to be a problem with the VLC Audio Transcoder and PS3 Media Server. What are your transcoding settings? You can tweak them in the PS3 Media Server app. Maybe you should try to use MPlayer Web Audio as the reason might be that the transcoder is not working properly with your system. More than this, I don’t really know what might be the exact source of the problem… Maybe this can help you: http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3507&p=64418

      I hope you get the problem solved soon!

  8. Jeremy Gross Avatar
    Jeremy Gross

    I am using mplayer. i have uninstalled and killed everything, starter over, downgraded, upgraded tweaked the transcoding settings. everything seems flawless. web podcasts work, one or two of the web radio channels work, the rest (including my channel do not). I think I give up. thank you for all your help

  9. Luke Avatar
    Luke

    Hey Felix, great post. I’m just having a problem when I run Shoutcast… Any idea what\’s causing this?

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg: Logger startup

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg: version 2.0.0.29

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 D msg:

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:***************************************************************

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:** SHOUTcast Distributed Network Audio Server (DNAS)

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:** Copyright (C) 1999-2011 Nullsoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:** Use \”sc_serv filename.conf\” to specify a config file.

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:***************************************************************

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:[SHOUTcast] DNAS/mac v2.0.0.29 (Jul 31 2011) starting up…

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:[MAIN] PID: 495

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:[MAIN] Loaded config from sc_serv_basic.conf

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:[MAIN] Calculated CPU count is 4

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:[MAIN] Starting 4 network threads

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 E msg:No such file or directory

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg:[MAIN] Runner shutdown

    2013-10-16 20:47:36 I msg: Logger shutdown

    Thanks!
    Luke

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Hi Luke,

      first, thanks for your comment and appreciation. Your problems seems to be known in the Shoutcast community, the common opinion states that it is related to version 2.0.

      So I would recommend you to check first if all the folders and files pointed to in the sc_serv_basic.conf exist (for example /logs/sc_serv.log …).

      Some people argue it might be a DNS problem…is your shoutcast server being hosted on localhost (127.0.0.1)? Is this hostname pointed to the correct IP address? check /etc/hosts/ in your browser for that.

      If that doesn’t help, you could try to use an older version below 2.0.

      If even this doesn’t help, maybe you can find help in the community, for example these guys have a similar problem: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=339672

      In the worst case, it is just a bug that they are going to fix…in some time…

      It would be nice if you could keep me updated on this. And if you have more questions, feel free to ask.

      Hope this helps!
      Felix

      1. Luke Avatar
        Luke

        Hey Felix,

        Thanks so much for your help! So yeah, it looks like the following two files are missing:

        banfile=control/sc_serv.ban
        ripfile=control/sc_serv.rip

        Any idea why, and where I could get these from?

        It also mentions /test.aac at the bottom – I can’t find this file either – does that matter?

        With regards to /etc/hosts/, I had to change this a little while back for another reason, so I’m wondering whether this may have caused an issue, but I’m pretty sure this is back to how it should be now, but let me know if it looks wrong:

        ##
        # Host Database
        #
        # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
        # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
        ##
        127.0.0.1 localhost
        255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
        ::1 localhost
        fe80::1%lo0 localhost

        If all else fails, I’ll try and get hold of an older version. Do you know of anywhere I could download this?

        Thanks for your help,

        Luke

        1. Felix Arntz Avatar

          I don’t know for sure if this is the solution, but you could try to simply create these two as empty text files and name them accordingly.

          The hosts bit certainly looks correct.

          The one place I know where you can download older versions is this site: http://www.shoutcast2.de/alte-shoutcast-versionen/

          It is German, but I suppose you’ll find where to download things 🙂

          Good luck, hope you get this fixed!

          1. Luke Avatar
            Luke

            Yeah I’m not having much luck. Although one thing I have noticed is that my IP address appears to be changing daily. Not sure if this would be causing problems or not?

          2. Felix Arntz Avatar

            No, I don’t think that’s a problem…

  10. William Cowan Avatar
    William Cowan

    First i want to say, thank you so much for this, it was incredibly helpful.

    I also wanted to ask everyone (including Felix), if there is anyone experiencing any extreme lag, it would not be an issue if it was 3-4 seconds,
    But the lag is at 37 seconds, to change the volume on the sound being streamed to the system in the other room,

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Hi William, thanks for your reply!

      About your question, indeed this is normal when streaming Spotify with the above methods. Unfortunately there is no easier way (as far as I know). I do not exactly know why there is this huge lag, might have to do with all the different tools running at the same time or even with the power of the system on which they’re running. I personally don’t really see it as a problem, but I get your point.

      So just that you know, you are by far not the only one, this is a common issue, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a fix for it (except finding an easier solution for streaming Spotify).

  11. Tien Truong Avatar
    Tien Truong

    Hi Felix,

    Thanks for making this great tutorial. I am actually able to get the PS3 to stream the data, but it doesn’t stream the audio of my computer. It only streams that audio that is captured by my external mic. I double-check the procedure and everything was correctly outlined so I messed around with the sound settings to see if I could correct it that way but no luck. I’m not really sure why it’s picking up audio only from the mic and not the audio from the running program of my Mac.

    Any luck getting help with this?

    Thanks,

    1. Felix Arntz Avatar

      Hi Tien,
      t’s really one stupid thing about Mac OS X, that you need an external tool like Soundflower to capture system audio. On Windows you could just choose “Stereo Mix” as input so that you can record it…

      The problem you have seems really weird, I have no idea why this happens. I suppose you did set input and output audio in your system prefs to Soundflower(2ch), just to make sure. Do you use another software tool that could interfere one of those from the above article? Other than that, I don\’t have a clue, sorry. Hope you get it fixed though!

      1. Tien Truong Avatar
        Tien Truong

        Thanks for the quick response! Yeah, it seems to be unclear to me as well why the Soundflower(2ch) isn’t being picked up from the PS3 even with the input and outputs set to that channel. I am able to see that the audio is being picked up through the 2 channel input only on the Mac as I can see the audio level being recorded. I don’t think there is another application that interferes with Soundflower or its configuration.

        Besides the configuration of the input port using the “Sound” option, would we have to set the “DSP Status” window of some program to “Core Soundflower(2ch) as well or should this already be configured once the input channel in “Sound” is configured to Soundflower(2ch)? This was the example shown in the readme.txt from the Soundflower installation folder?

        Other than that, I don’t think I can figure out what the issue is.

  12. nannneih Avatar
    nannneih

    Hi thanks for awesome tutorial ! But for some reason, i can’t download MuSe OX S ’cause I don’t have Rosetta software or something like that..I can just open the files.. Do you know what that Rosetta is and what should I do? I could’n find any place to download it.. I noticed it when I tried to type that ./sc serv sc_serv_basic.conf into the Terminal App and it didn’t find anything..was it just because I don’t have that muse tools..?

  13. Simon Dodd Avatar
    Simon Dodd

    Hi Felix, Thanks for the awesome post however I am having some issues when trying to start the shoutcast server. I am in the right directory in Terminal but when I type in ./sc_serv sc_serv_basic.conf it waits a little while and then says Illegal instruction: 4

    Any ideas what this could be?

    Thanks again for a great post

    Simon

  14. Felix Arntz Avatar

    Hello Walt,

    I’ve tried it using various ways and for some reason I couldn’t get it to work with Nicecast either. I know the combination of three tools is a complex situation, but as of now, it is the only thing that worked for me.

  15. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    The link for the shout cast serve is no longer working. I have looked around for a new link and can’t seem to find it. Do you know where it can be downloaded?

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