Egresses are the servers that take the Ingests and then distribute the audio to listeners with or without ad insertion.
In this article, we are going to cover:
NOTE: Monetization is available for customers through a SoundStack agreement. For more information about this, you can contact us here
Egresses
Here is our step-by-step guide on how to create and set up an Egress:
1. Login to the SoundStack console.
2. From the left-side navigation menu, click on Publishers.
3. Select the publisher of your choice, click on the Create button, and select Egress.
4. You will be able to select from the same regions that we have available for Ingests. As mentioned on Ingests, we currently support only the ICY protocol and you can select the Ingest from the drop-down menu to associate to the Egress. If you associate multiple ingests, the system will have the ability to fail over between the different Ingests, so that the stream remains online if a single Ingest were to have an issue. The most ideal setup is to have at least two ingests in different locations.
NOTE: In order to select multiple Ingests they have the same encoding settings. Also, as previously mentioned it is vital to make sure the settings in your encoder match the Encoding settings, as this also affects the system’s ability to seamlessly fail over between ingests.
5. Next, you can select the session limit that controls how long a listener can stay connected on the Egress before they have to restart the stream. This feature will cause listeners to manually restart the stream after the number of hours you select, avoiding the possibility of leaving the stream open for an extended period of time helping keep your music licensing obligations in check.
6. Next, you can configure Geo-blocking. This is particularly useful if you only have music licensing in a specific country. The first option allows all countries except the ones you specify, and the second option does not allow any countries except the ones you specify. For example, if you only have music licensing in the US, you should use "Allow no countries except" United States.
You can create more egresses in different regions for redundancy capabilities. This way, if one of these egresses goes down or there's a network problem, the listeners can still tune in using the second egress.
To view all the Egresses created under your organization, simply navigate to the Egresses tab on the left menu.
Clustered egresses
A clustered egress provides automated redundancy and load balancing across multiple SoundStack points of presence. Clustered egresses also support additional features such as delivering streams via the HLS protocol. Creating a clustered egress will automatically deploy the stream onto multiple SoundStack points of presence and provide load balancing between them. A Balancer does not need to be created when using the clustered egress feature.
To create a clustered egress, make sure you have selected a publisher first then click on Create button and select Clustered egress.
Here is our step-by-step guide on how to create and set up a Clustered egress:
1. Insert a name for the clustered egress and select a cluster from the drop-down list that was assigned by SoundStack.
2. The next step is configuring the encoding settings. A widely employed configuration for audio streaming is the MP3 codec set at a bitrate of 128 kbps and a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, utilizing "Joint Stereo" channel mode and a constant bitrate (CBR). Alternatively, you have the option to select AAC as a codec, adjusting sample rates or bitrates based on your specific streaming needs.
3. Following that, you encounter the mount configuration, which is editable in two modes: Basic and Advanced.
NOTE: Unless you are familiar with Advanced mount configuration, our recommendation is to only adjust the ICY name, ICY description and ICY URL fields from the Basic editor mode if needed.
4. The last option is “Aliases” which can serve various purposes, including simplifying URLs, providing branding consistency, or offering a user-friendly reference to a stream.
If you have any further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact our Support Team through the ticket submission form or by emailing us at support@soundstack.com.