We all know it's possible to stream audio and video to the various streaming sites with a smart phone, but the result always leaves something to be desired. There are certainly ways to improve the quality, such as the use of outboard audio gear before passing it into the phone to be encoded and streamed. But there is no way at this time to do this with any amount of reliability or quality.
So lets discuss what actually needs to happen before something like this is a reality.
Analog (hardware) solution: (Some?) iphones have analog audio input. I'm not sure if it's line level or mic level, but even if you can manage to get a clean signal into the device, you are still relying on whatever ADC they stuffed in there. As far as the androids the best you're gonna get is a mono mic level input. In this case you would have to attune from your preamp and rely on the horrible preamp within the phone, as well as whatever cheap ADC the phone is using. The phone would also then bare the load of encoding and streaming, and hopefully with all that going on, it doesn't just crash. All said and done, it doesn't seem like the analog route is the best way to reach a solution, and any such solution is going to be putting extra strain on the phone to handle everything all at once.
Digital (software) solution: The android phones, while using a micro-usb connection, are still able to act as a usb host. This is probably for the purpose of connecting external storage devices for transferring files. So it would seem the only thing we need to connect a usb audio device with a digital input, would be the proper drivers and software in the phone. But this need address not only the management of the usb device, but the routing of audio data into an encoder, and integration with streaming software… either by acting as a selectable audio input on the device, or by building custom streaming software that could use the signal. Quite a mountain to conquer for such a niche market. The device would also need to be powered by something other than the USB port, or it would have to be plugged into an (external battery) powered hub prior to connecting to the phone.
The turnkey/hardware solution:
These are just starting to appear on the market, but I expect we will start seeing many more in the future. I posted a
thread about a new video camera that can stream directly to livestream with only a mobile hotspot needed in between. And there are other other portable encoders that that work on wifi, and accept audio/video signals.
What other types of solutions have you contemplated, and what kind of streaming hardware have you run across?
Topic: Streaming pro-level audio (or video), without a computer (Read 2070 times)