Hello,
I haven't seen the whole discussion about this, but from what I understand someone is using PD, mplayer and jack for streaming to an icecast/shoutcast server.
I have used PD as a 24/7 source encoder/streamer, using mp3cast~, in the OtherSide project. This was a server that had PD running a synthesis patch which can be controlled by OSC through IRC and a bot listening on a chatroom there. It has been up for the past 3-4 months non-stop and with no maintenance within the University of Sheffield intranet.
My initial experiment was to run PD through Jack and use Darkice. I'd patch the PD outputs to the Darkice inputs, which would then stream to the Icecast server. It didn't seem to be as stable though and it was more CPU-heavy than mp3cast~. I initially tried to do that cause I wanted to use other software apart from PD, but I ended up scripting the rest of the software and get their output in PD, which would pipe the output directly to the Icecast server. I didn't use a dac~ or jack, saving a lot of CPU resources.
Any comments welcome, I'm still interested in hearing about ways other people do similar things.
Take care,
Ilias