I'm looking to implement some live audio broadcasting functionality within a Ruby on Rails site for a client and was hoping I could get some input from people who have tackled this type of thing before.

Essentially what I need to do is capture and record a user's audio (via microhpone, line in, etc), then stream that to 1,000+ listeners with very little latency, like sub 2 second if possible.

So it looks like we've got 3 parts:

1. Web-based audio capture (likely with Flash or JS)
2. Server to accept audio feed and stream to listeners (likely Icecast or Wowza)
3. Actual audio player (maybe HTML5 w/ Flash as a fallback? Maybe this jPlayer fork)

Does RTMP makes sense here? Or maybe HTTP? What's the most 'future-proof' way to make this happen? Building with mobile in mind, but still want to be able stream to anyone.

I've found lots of potentially helpful threads and software but I'm struggling to get an idea of how it all fits together. I'm a front end guy and way out of my comfort zone so if anyone has insights to offer, I'd love to hear them.