Suggestions for streaming audio?

[Arthur Pemberton]

Hello,

I may have the need to do some live audio streaming soon, so I am
doing some preemtive research on the topic. The last time I did any of
this was on Windows with Windows Encoder no less. I have since grown
to hate Windows and would much rather do this in Linux. Since Fedora
is my distro of choice I ask you guys:

What is the status of audio streaming (and I suppose recording) on
Linux? What are hardware requirements like? I would doubt that they
would be high, but I rather not assume too much.

The application would be for live audio of the classical music type, I
have no preference yet of codec, but I am guessing that the avg.
simultaneous connections once it is fully up and running would be at
least 50, but I am just guessing at this point.

Please let me know what your thoughts, and esp your experiences are.

Thank you.

-- 
Fedora Core 6 and proud