How it works

From the very beginning, for someone who has never done this

No jargon. If you have never set up an internet radio before, this page tells you exactly what happens and what you have to do.

The basics

An internet radio has three parts

Understand these three and everything else falls into place.

🎵

The source

Wherever the music comes from: a media player, a mixing desk, a CD player or a microphone. It reaches your PC through a sound card.

💻

The encoder

This is ElaDyne. It takes the audio, compresses it to an internet-friendly size and sends it onwards. It is the part you install.

📡

The server

An Icecast or Shoutcast server that receives your stream and distributes it to listeners. You rent this from a provider.

💡

Where does ElaDyne sit? Exactly in the middle. We do not provide the source or the server — we are the piece that connects them, and we are the only piece that can handle many sound cards at once.

Step by step

Your first stream in five minutes

What actually happens, in order.

Create a free account

Download and install the program

Get the installer from your customer panel and run it. Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.

Enter your licence key

The program asks for it on first launch. Copy it from the email and paste it in.

Add a channel and enter server details

Server address, port, mount point and password. Your streaming provider supplies these four values.

Choose the sound card

Pick which card this channel should take its audio from. Every installed card is listed.

Press start

If the level meters are moving, you are live. Open your stream URL in a browser to hear it.

⚡ Under the hood

What happens when you press "Start"?

Useful to know when something goes wrong — you will know which link in the chain broke.

The card is opened

ElaDyne opens the selected sound card through WASAPI and starts reading raw audio samples in real time.

Layer · Windows audio

Audio is processed

Gain is applied, DC offset removed, the limiter smooths peaks, and channel routing (left/right/mono) is applied.

Stage · Processing

It is encoded

The chosen codec (Opus or AAC) compresses the audio to your selected bitrate, hundreds of times a second.

Stage · Encoding

It is sent to the server

A connection is opened to your server, authenticated with your password, and the encoded audio flows continuously.

Result · You are live

All four steps happen per channel, independently — one channel failing never affects the others. See the full feature list →

Common mistakes

The three places people get stuck

1️⃣

The mount point does not start with a slash It must be written as /radio, not radio. The server rejects it otherwise.

2️⃣

The wrong sound card is selected If the level meters do not move, the audio is coming out of a different device. Check which device Windows is playing to and select the same one.

3️⃣

Upload bandwidth is not enough Add up channels × bitrate and leave roughly 30% headroom. Six channels at 128 kbps need about 1 Mbps of upload.