hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4249.txt

Episode: 4249
Title: HPR4249: Audio Streams on the Command Line
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4249/hpr4249.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:02:08

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,149 for Thursday the 14th of November 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Audio Streams on the Command Line.
It is hosted by Kevvie and is about 8 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Kevvie talks about streaming
and ripping audio streams on Linux using the Command Line.
Hello, hello, this is Kevvie from the TuxJump podcast
and welcome to another episode of each PR.
Now, on this episode, I actually wish to go over two things here.
Firstly, streaming from the command line
and then secondly, ripping the stream or recording it,
depending what you want to call it, also from the command line.
Now, we seem to have gotten very used to huge programs
that will do everything for us and that's great,
but if you've maybe got a system with limited resources,
especially if you're on your travels and you've got your netbook
or laptop or whatever, then it may not be the same as having a big PC,
at desktop PC, so you're thinking, right,
you want to scan other limited resources a wee bit
and this is where the command line really helps
because instead of installing the graphical thing
which will do everything with bells and whistles,
instead, think of them with the command line tools
as being more they do one thing and usually do it well.
So for this, you don't actually, likely will not actually have
to install anything to use these.
You're just going to need an internet connection to actually stream
the radio or music, whichever it's going to be.
If you've got a pre-built Linux distro,
so if you're using something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint or whichever one,
chances are you'll have VLC installed.
Now, you can actually use VLC from the command line.
However, if you just type in VLC, it'll bring up the graphical,
but if you type in CVLC, then that is a purely command line driven one.
You will not get any GUI at all.
So let's just say, for example, you've got your stream.
It's as simple as CVLC space and then put in the address of the stream.
That's it. It's as simple as that.
It will play it and we'll keep on playing it until you
hit Ctrl C to close that.
And that's it.
However, the one thing I dislike about it is that it will just
purely play this thing, but I won't give you any information.
So let's just say, for example, you're listening to a radio station.
It's a radio station.
You've got this stream on and you think, oh, that's a really good track.
What is it?
Well, if you're using VLC on the command line,
it doesn't actually tell you that by default.
So there's one way program that I like.
And I know I said that I wouldn't be downloading,
but this is a small program and it doesn't require many dependencies.
And this is just MPG123.
Now you may think, okay, so hot.
Well, with MPG123, once you install it,
all you do is literally type that in MPG123 space and then this stream.
And the only difference is that it'll continue playing,
but when each track is updated, or sometimes, you know,
these radio streams may be only tell you what show is on.
It's up to you.
It's up to them, sorry.
What they'll do is it'll display the title.
Now, from the majority of times, I've used a few kind of smaller,
lesser-known radio streams for this.
It works for all the big ones.
So you would have, let's just say, for example,
you're going to run, if you're in the UK BBC Radio 1,
BBC Radio 2, all those things.
It works for that.
But I've run a few very much localized radio stations
that have, I've got the URL for us as well.
And it also worked.
And it gives you the track title and also the artist.
So that's a handy feature.
And I quite like that.
So that's MPG123.
Like I said, not a comprehensive review.
It does one thing and does one thing well.
But I really love it.
You just hit Ctrl C to actually finish it off.
If you want to go a wee bit further,
then you can use other things.
You certainly can pedal your radio stations
into a playlist and you can start doing it like that.
But I'm not going down that route just now.
Sorry, that's for VLC.
That's not for MPG123.
Now, if you're thinking at the same time as well,
well, yeah, quite like to record something.
That's fine.
You can also record.
Now, one thing I would recommend, especially on the command line,
is we're just going to record here.
So rather than load up your home directory
with a bunch of recordings,
I would recommend that you create a dedicated folder for that.
So create your folder, call it recordings.
See, whatever you want.
If you really want to go down the route
to doing it on the command line,
it is just MKDIR, make directory.
So MKDIR space recordings.
So fine, change into that CD space recordings.
And we're just going to need a simple tool.
We do not need to install anything for this.
We're just going to use the WGate command.
So to do this,
now what we're going to do is we're going to do WGate
and then a space
and then hyphen capital O.
And then a space and then call it whatever you want.
Now the beauty of WGate is that if you want,
you can save it as an MP3 file,
an org file, or a flag file.
That's the only three I've tried.
I haven't tested it out any other time.
I'm really used, any other,
to be perfectly honest.
So you can, then you can save it as a flag file.
Just be wary, right?
That you are only going to get the quality
of the original stream.
It's not going to improve the quality of a bad stream,
just because it's saving as a flag file.
But it does mean it's a lossless file edition.
If you want to edit this later.
So to do that,
sorry, you get WGate space hyphen capital O,
or uppercase O,
and then a space and then call it whatever you want.
So I'll just call it test1.flac.
And then a space and you need the inverted commas now
and put the stream inside the inverted commas
and press enter.
And that's literally it.
That's all you do.
If you want to close it,
yeah, click on the terminal and press control C
and it'll stop the recording at any point.
When you're doing it, I did notice,
if you look at it through GUI,
then very often the file is there,
but it's reading as zero bytes.
Until you close it,
it doesn't seem to look like it's doing anything,
but it actually is.
So yeah, so that's a simple retool.
You could easily, if you wanted to develop this a wee bit,
set this up as a cron job,
where you put it in as a time,
you could set it as to go for a specific time,
if there's like maybe a specific radio station
that you listen to your radio program
and you're gonna be away, just set up here.
This is a cron job to actually record the time you want
and for the length you want.
So yeah, because it's as,
you can make this as fancy or as simple as you want.
So yeah, it's a nice wee simple shoe there
on plain as radio stream from the terminal
and also recording a stream from the terminal.
If you've done this or if you've got alternatives,
please let me know, you can either obviously comment
or give a alternative, give a reply shoe if you want,
but yeah, I just think this is something that these days
sadly doesn't get enough love,
but I think this will definitely be a place for it.
So until next time,
Gio and please do consider supporting Hacker Public Radio,
spread the word and also contribute a show if you can.
Bye.
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