I recommend using liveice, it's extremely buggy, and the code is in a
poor state, but when it works, it works well. Using the LAME encoder,
and mpg123. I'd stay away from the xmms plugin because it's even more
buggy.
Recently I've succeeded in getting the xmms-liveice plugin to work with
the shoutcast server for linux. But when playing the mp3s for shoutcast
and having xmms decode them for play, it is EXTREMELY cpu intensive and
pretty much kills my machine. I've heard of a plugin for xmms which
basically streams the sound output to /dev/null(which can be used to
solve this problem.), but having got around to trying it out.
As far as how to determine what bitrates and such to set your streams
at.
www.shoutcast.com and
www.icecast.org have some good guidelines.
liveice can be found on the icecast CVS server or at:
http://star.arm.ac.uk/~spm/software/liveice.html
* Blake