Streaming audio over network (realtime)?

I'm getting my new laptop tomorrow and would like to get it all nicely integrated with my current computer.

One of the things I'd like to be able to do is play music wirelessly to my nice amp and speakers (currently hooked up to my main computer).

I know I basically need to broadcast the main audio output from my laptop and then connect to it on my main computer. I thought of running and Icecast server on the laptop but I don't know what the latency is like on that - anything more than a few seconds would be annoying.

Just to complicate things, I'm going to be dual-booting the laptop with Linux and Vista.

Any ideas?
Windows Media Encoder looks like it might work for windows.

Any ideas for Linux?

Hello,

Icecast is good from computer to computer. If you don't want to have the amp connected to any computer but receive music from any:

What you need:
1x Media server host / your laptop
1x Wireless router (if you want it to be wireless)
1x Streaming client adapter

On your computer what you can do is to host your music library as a media server with Windows Media Player 11. (Library > "Media Sharing...") This will make your music available for other computers in the same network, wired or wireless. Some other media sharing softwares: Tversity, TwonkyVision, SimpleCenter, VLC.

The wireless router will be the hub and access point for wireless devices such as your computer and the streaming adapter. They will get a similar local IP address and be able to communicate with each other and share services.

The streaming adapter is a multimedia device that can connect itself to the wireless network, find the media server hosted by WMP11 on your laptop, browse and play your music without any interaction needed on the PC. The music will just stream over the network.
The streaming adapters have an analog audio output for your amplifier or receiver, through RCA or mini jack types of audio connectors. The latency will depend on the data bitrate of the source file and how strong your wireless connection is, it is practically impossible to control, and therefor you will not be able to control the latency - No realtime playback synch possible.

Streaming audio adapters:
Philips has a product line called Streamium (www.streamium.philips.com), and I know some products that would do this just fine: Philips SLA5520, WAC7500, WAS7500, WAS6050, NP1100. If your media server is UPnP compliant, these devices can stream from them

Logitech has those Squeezebox, but they are not UPnP compliant and will require Logitech's dedicated software (no use of WMP11)

Apple with their AirPort Express and Airtunes also offer some possibility, but using their dedicated software only.

So back to the latency issue: in order to broadcast and play in real time on two devices in sync you will need a regular audio connection, analog. If you want to keep it over wireless network, a streaming device that can synchronize its playback to another streaming device is the best option, Philips WACS7500 can do that with their "Music Broadcast" function but the WAC is the media server itself. There might be other devices that can do this but not that I know of.

I hope I gave enough info, good luck!