Windows – Stream audio from Windows 7 to Ubuntu

After hours of Googling and dozens or reboots, I got it working with the help of this post in ubuntu forums.

The solution is simple: add the following line to the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and reboot the machine.

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack

That line originally contained power_save, power_save_controller, position_fix and probe_mask variables along with the model variable that was set to auto. Sound did not work when I retained existing values for other variables and set model=6stack. I had to strip them off to get it working.

Hope this helps someone.

There is a very simple solution because PulseAudio already has all the necessary tools.

1. Get your source device name with command pactl list | grep Name

2. Create the following script named pashare:

   #!/bin/sh
   case "$1" in
     start)
       $0 stop 
       pactl load-module module-simple-protocol-tcp rate=48000 format=s16le channels=2 source=<source_name_here> record=true port=8000
       ;;
     stop)
       pactl unload-module `pactl list | grep tcp -B1 | grep M | sed 's/[^0-9]//g'`
       ;;
     *)
       echo "Usage: $0 start|stop" >&2
       ;;
   esac
   

3. Make some checks and preparations (to allow script execution and check if the port successfully opened):

   chmod 755 pashare
   ./pashare start
   netstat -nlt | grep 8000 
   telnet 127.0.0.1 8000
   

4. Download and install PulseDroid.apk

5. Launch app on your phone; set the IP address to your computer and the port to 8000.

P.S. You can also check this Wiki page for general information on Pulseaudio network streaming, and this Wiki page about RTP streaming. Don't expect too much from streaming raw audio over WiFi; it takes enormous gobs of bandwidth. Even with a high-end wireless router/AP with a powerful signal I haven't been able to get more than stuttering audio out of it. Your best bet is probably to setup a proper media server (like Rygel, which works well with Pulseaudio) to transcode the raw audio to something like MP3 and stream that instead.