SOLVED Fixed: Streaming MOH

Can anyone point me to a good link for setting up a streaming audio for MOH? My client is asking for a local radio station that has streaming audio online.

Hi,

I don't know if you aware of this, but...

In addition to the technical aspects of setting this stream up as your MOH, there are the legal issues of royalties and such. Some people think that you can use a radio broadcast in this fashion without royalties or repercussions because it's free public radio. However, this is not apparently the case. The RIAA (and others) view this as a rebroadcast which is subject to royalties. And those royalties can be substantial, so it might not be worth doing. This is why royalty-free MOH is so popular.

Just my .02.

Mark

Ward, is that page applicable to ast 1.8 / piaf purple? because I've been trying desperately to make it work, but all I can get asterisk to playback from the local stream is silence.

I've added a "streaming" musiconhold class to Piaf. Name of it is "test". The exact app string that I am using is:
/usr/bin/mpg123 -q -s -m -r 8000 -f 8192 -b 0 http://scfire-mtc-aa04.stream.aol.com/stream/1040

I know this works because if I type the command on the shell, but instead pipe the sound out to the headphone jack (command switch -oh instead of -s) I can hear the music!

also
ps ax | grep mpg123

shows that its running, and not dying. But when I dial the 466 ext that I set up to just play that stream, I just hear silence. I added a Flite command in the context that says "music" and I do hear that-- so I know I am hitting the correct context.

Here's what that looks like:
exten => 466,1,Answer
exten => 466,n,Flite("music")
exten => 466,n,MusicOnHold(test)
exten => 466,n,Hangup

here's the console output when I dial 466
root@pbx:/ $ asterisk -rvvvvv
Verbosity is at least 5
== Using SIP RTP TOS bits 184
== Using SIP RTP CoS mark 5
-- Executing [466@from-internal:1] Answer("SIP/703-00000031", "") in new stack
-- Executing [466@from-internal:2] Flite("SIP/703-00000031", ""music"") in new stack
== Parsing '/etc/asterisk/flite.conf': == Found
-- <SIP/703-00000031> Playing '/tmp/Flite_893730274.slin' (language 'en')
-- Executing [466@from-internal:3] MusicOnHold("SIP/703-00000031", "test") in new stack
-- Started music on hold, class 'test', on channel 'SIP/703-00000031'

any ideas on why its not working? I know streaming MOH is generally frowned upon but this is for my "home/hobby" pbx just to tinker with. thanks!

Does anyone think this is just an Asterisk 1.8 problem? Because I ran a few shell commands and it appears that the stream is running (mpg123) and has an "ESTABLISHED" connection. So everything looks good from the outside. But I have only silence on that channel. Before I blow out my pbx and reinstall 1.6 I was wondering if *anyone* has gotten streaming audio to work on a purple install.
also is it a problem that there's a space in between /usr/bin and "mpg123" in the ps output above? shouldn't it show up as /usr/bin/mpg123? That's how I have it in musiconhold_additional.conf.

edit: just wanted to add that I updated to Asterisk 1.8.1 this morning and no change, still can't get the streaming moh to work

no, seriously, I had another thought, does anyone think this could be some kind of codec/translation issue? Because like I said I've got mpg123 running in the ps ax list and watching the * CLI I can see that it does this when I dial 466, which seems correct:
-- Executing [466@from-internal:1] Answer("SIP/703-00000003", "") in new stack
-- Executing [466@from-internal:2] Flite("SIP/703-00000003", ""music"") in new stack
== Parsing '/etc/asterisk/flite.conf': == Found
-- <SIP/703-00000003> Playing '/tmp/Flite_1787080546.slin' (language 'en')
-- Executing [466@from-internal:3] MusicOnHold("SIP/703-00000003", "stream") in new stack
-- Started music on hold, class 'stream', on channel 'SIP/703-00000003'

Everything "should" be working, but I just hear silence. I do hear Flite say "music" as indicated. I'm up to Asterisk 1.8.1.1 now. I noticed mpg123 has a commandline option "--encoding" which I assume can force the audio into a specific format. The help says:

-e <c> --encoding <c> force a specific encoding (s16 u16 u8 s8 ulaw alaw f32 s32 u32)

Could this be needed?

Update: fixed

Can someone 'fix' this to show what the update is to allow this to work? I'm getting complaints about my MOH.
It is 'tinny', too loud, etc.

Andrew