audio over socket

[patryk]

hi.
I'm trying to create simple p2p voice-chat script.
my first attempt was to establish one way communication using sox and netcat:

on receiving computer:

nc -l 0.0.0.0 1234 | play -r 8k -t flac -

and on sending:

rec -r 8k -t flac - | nc 192.168.1.11 1234

audio from default input in one computer is played on second box, but there's over 4 second lag...
can someone recommend any solution?
maybe some other recording and playback software or different codec?
TIA

[Rexilion]

Why not use the UDP switch in netcat?

-u UDP mode

[Miven]

I have a guess that the flac compression is slowing things down, both on send and recieve. Try raw audio.

I think I'll try it myself.

[patryk]

actually i've made some progress here. it looks like it's more buffering than codec issue (but raw audio is indeed slightly faster)
using

rec --buffer 18 -r 64k -c 1 -t ul - | nc 192.168.1.11 12345

and

nc -l 0.0.0.0 12345 | play --buffer 18 -r 64k -c 1 -t ul -

, lag is small enough.
but there's still that buffer problem. i need to use very high sample rate in order to "overflow" buffer quickly, but that seams like a waste of bandwidth.
anyone know recording/playback program with "unbuffered" mode?

[JohnGraham]

Have you considered GStreamer? It can be fairly complicated (it's able to do a lot) but is reportedly quite good.

Audio-specific example here, loads more examples for various things here.