New and free tool helps turn your PC into music hub for your TV or Phone
About the Tool
Stream What You Hear (SWYH) is a cool new program that helps you easily make your PC into a streaming station for any web-capable device in your home. It can help you use Spotify, for instance, on devices that do not have access to it, or it can be used to listen to tracks that you do not have on your devices, and from anywhere in your home, too. And it is free, too!
How Does It Work?
The software is only available on Windows. An important part of getting the stream to work is to have all the devices you want to use for the stream on the same network. The stream can be accessed by any web browser with UpNP/DLNA functionality. What this software does is to pump out all audio that goes through the sound card into the stream. Meaning that on your other devices, you will hear not only the music playing on your PC, but any other sounds that are made on it, as well. This has its ups and downs. For instance, you may be expecting a Skype call, but are nowhere near the computer, but you can also get interrupted when you just want to chill out.
How to Set It Up?
Of course, you have to download the program first. After you install, it look for its icon in the system tray portion of the taskbar. You should see a musical note icon. Before clicking the note, start playing the music you want to stream. Then, go to the icon, right-click on it, and select Tools -> HTTP Live Streaming. Now, a window will pop-up with a web link. Send the link to the device you want to play the stream. It doesn’t matter how you send the link to the device. You might as well input it manually if you wish to. You can paste it in VLC media player for Android, or just paste it in the web browser’s address bar and hit Enter, and the device will select the appropriate program to play it. If a play button appears, hit it and you are ready to go.
Drawbacks
When it comes to streaming, you should expect to have some delay on the stream even if all of your devices are on the same network. Typically, it can be a few seconds. This is why you should consider muting your PC when streaming to any other devices. Otherwise, get ready for some serious cacophony.
Bottomline
Anyway, SWYH seems like a useful tool, plus it’s free, so you can play around with it a bit and then decide whether you want to keep it or not. If you want to learn more about the program, be sure to check out its website.