Software to stream audio over network acting as a virtual soundcard?

I need some software which will send all audio from one Windows machine to another over Wi-Fi while acting exactly as a soundcard, i.e. appearing as audio source among sound-cards - so that switching between headphones, notebook's speakers or streaming sound to different machine is fast and convenient.

Does an app that does exactly what I want in high quality and reliably exist? If not, what are the closest alternatives?

p.s. I'll be mostly streaming internet audio and music from youtube if it helps.

 

Not sure if this fits your description but I sometimes use "Virtual Audio Cable". Its something my friends use more often than I, they like to use it for streaming online or playing music to our teamspeak.

 

@TheReciever I tried launching it, looks overly complicated and I couldn't find a guide for my situation. Maybe you can provide a link to some decent guide?

 

I know of none, just spent a little time with until I figured out how to direct audio sources and split recording sources.

 

I managed to get a working setup with TuneBlade/TuneAero + VBCable. Also tried Airfoil - choppy playback, USB Over Network - unusable. I can't say that I'm satisfied with Tuneblade since there doesn't seem to be an option to control volume via keyboard which is annoying AF.

By the way, I had the same question some years ago. So sad nothing seemingly improved over the years, I'm very disappointed. Guess I'll have to try Bluetooth 5 as well.

 

I came here just to troll you and tell you that PulseAudio does this exact thing but it works on everything but windows

For a while I had an ancient iMac G3 DV running debian that I used as a TV, but I had to render the video on my desktop and stream it, and send the audio over pulseaudio. It was pretty hilarious and I kind of miss that thing.

 

@ALLurGroceries this guide says it does, although it's used for local streaming to WSL. I'd love to try PulseAudio if there's some decent guide to follow, or someone can give me a few hints how to adapt the guide I link to my task.

 

Here's a simple guide for audio streaming:
https://www.willprice.org/2013/05/10/pulseaudio-network-streaming.html

That guide looks intriguing, I didn't even consider the WSL route!

 

@ALLurGroceries I played with WSL a while ago, wanted to try iptables and some Linux-Android emulator on 10. Neither worked out, but some other things did, and anyway it was a fun experience. Thank you for the guide link, will try it today.

 

PulseAudio has such a capability, though you'll need some setup to get it working properly.

 

@Dennismungai sadly I don't understand how to set it up under Windows. Guide linked by @ALLurGroceries is for Linux, and the only Windows guide I found is from 2011. \=

 

The lack of documentation on this is worrying.

I'll scour the Arch Wiki for this (as I was able to use their documentation to create a remote audio sink for a Raspberry Pi, though its' sink source was a Linux box).

This user has some luck with a setup similar to yours, it might help.

 

Maybe not exactly what you look for, but this wifi streaming works, have used it, zero problems.

https://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/13/stream-what-you-hear-streams-sound-to-other-devices/

 

@6730b thank you, I made it work after binding to interface directly - but I can't control volume with keyboard and that's annoying AF, also keeping my system mute means I can't control volume with RDP either - it mutes whenever I change volume via RDP. Bottom line, unsatisfactory. Tried Airfoil and TuneBlade too, neither good enough for me - and all 3x solutions mentioned sometimes lag/skip. \=