Is it possible to do this with an Icecast stream?

[dan@loudaudio.co.uk]

I am currently using an Icecast stream to do live outside broadcast feeds into the studio of a small community radio station I'm involved with.

The system works very well, however every time I connect into the Icecast server from a remote location, it involves someone in the studio (or a remote connection into the server) to press 'play' on a playback client (VLC running on the same computer as the Icecast server) in order to play the audio out of the computer to a mixing desk. Not ideal...

What I am looking for, is a solution to avoid this step of having to start the playback manually and for the audio to just appear on the soundcard output ***as soon as someone starts streaming into the server***. That way, the main server computer in the studio can be locked away and does not need to be touched! Is it possible to configure the Icecast server to spit the audio out the soundcard without needing to use a playback client? If I have to use a playback client (running on the same machine as the Icecast server), it is possible to keep the stream "alive" even when nothing is streaming into the Icecast server and therefore VLC will only need to be started once?

I'm sure there must be a solution to this!

Running Windows XP although happy to go with a Linux solution if necessary..

Many thanks for any help.

Dan