Subsonic Media Streaming Software

If multiple users are logged in at the same time, they are able to chat to each other via the built in chat system.

The folders to share are set up by selecting music folders from the settings tab. This section could do with being updated because even though subsonic now supports the streaming of video files, the folders with the videos in have to be set up as if they are music files. I have a number of folders with media in and I have set them as below. I’ve used the UNC paths and this works fine.

As soon as these settings are saved, the music is very quick to populate on the home screen. From here, artists can quickly be navigated to by either scrolling or selecting the artists first letter. The software supports many different formats, including ogg and flac (extra formats can be manually added). Subsonic then transcodes the music files on the fly to the appropriate format for streaming over http (Its possible to limit the bitrate if your internet is not as good. Subsonic will adjust for this decrease in bitrate accordingly when it transcodes the song on the fly).

Songs can be added to a play list, a whole CD could be played or music can be randomly shuffled. Subsonic also supports the retrieval of song lyrics and cover art.

Subsonic can be set up to automatically download podcast to a specified folder and to stream internet radio or TV, which comes in handy if you want to use of the mobile apps on your phone (which I will come onto later, for android at least).

As mentioned earlier, videos are also now supported, and the software automatically transcodes the videos into flash for playing through a browser. Now I myself haven’t has much joy which remotely streaming videos as I don’t have brilliant upstream bandwidth at home. It is possible to decrease the bitrate, but once you do that, the video quality quickly decreases until its fairly blocky and hard to watch.

I also use subsonic on my android phone (there are also apps available for the iPhone, windows mobile 7 and any device with a browser by navigating to your subsonic domain/wap). This can be done so for free for the first 30 days, but after that, a donation must be made to get a licence key to allow the continued use of streaming to mobile apps. This a free to download app available from the android market. It allows streaming over 3G as well as a wifi connection.

Setting up is pretty pain free. All that needs to be done, is the server address, username and password need inputting into the app. This is done by selecting settings from the main screen and then adding your details. Up to 4 servers can be configured for use.