Stream audio via USB as fake mass storage?

[AlanHK]

A friend has a stereo with a USB socket.
This lets it read USB mass storage (eg, thumb drive) and play MP3s or WMA from this.

He's also got a laptop that he uses to play Internet radio. (Most of which are streaming MP3 or WMA.)

I wonder if there is a USB driver so the laptop can be connected to the stereo via USB; so the laptop appears as a drive with a single MP3 file. When the stereo attempts to read the MP3 file, the driver can send the MP3 stream to it.

This seems at least conceptually possible to me. Has anyone done anything like this?

(I know I can go the analog route: headphone socket to RCA.)

[edDV]

A friend has a stereo with a USB socket.
This lets it read USB mass storage (eg, thumb drive) and play MP3s or WMA from this.

He's also got a laptop that he uses to play Internet radio. (Most of which are streaming MP3 or WMA.)

I wonder if there is a USB driver so the laptop can be connected to the stereo via USB; so the laptop appears as a drive with a single MP3 file. When the stereo attempts to read the MP3 file, the driver can send the MP3 stream to it.

This seems at least conceptually possible to me. Has anyone done anything like this?

(I know I can go the analog route: headphone socket to RCA.)

Most players and receivers with USB slots only support file playback, not native streams. It would be possible for the manufacturer to add stream decode capability but this isn't possible for the user.

So the question then becomes can one fake a live stream to look like a file using some buffering technique. Maybe for example starting playback of a placeholder hard disk file or looping sequence of files where the contents of the files are replaced with the live stream.

[edDV]

A friend has a stereo with a USB socket.
This lets it read USB mass storage (eg, thumb drive) and play MP3s or WMA from this.

He's also got a laptop that he uses to play Internet radio. (Most of which are streaming MP3 or WMA.)

Alternate method would be S/PDIF out of the laptop to the receiver. If the laptop doesn't have S/PDIF out, one can be added as an express card or USB dongle.

[AlanHK]

So the question then becomes can one fake a live stream to look like a file using some buffering technique. Maybe for example starting playback of a placeholder hard disk file or looping sequence of files where the contents of the files are replaced with the live stream.

That's a simple way to do it.
But it means the stereo is reading the real hard disk of the laptop.

Better if there was an app/driver that emulated a simple USB drive with perhaps a series of MP3 files.
Then the stereo sees only the pseudo files.


Anyway, I'm not actually going to implement it. I wondered if someone else had.

[AlanHK]

Alternate method would be S/PDIF out of the laptop to the receiver. If the laptop doesn't have S/PDIF out, one can be added as an express card or USB dongle.

Not in this case. The only digital input the stereo has is the USB slot. Otherwise just RCA.

Also, I'm looking for something basically free.