Scene Sound

Brad Knode dropped me a line this week about Scene Sound, his tabletop RPG sound management program. You know all those forum discussion threads on how to handle music and sound effects during a game? This is the answer.

Back in the olden days of the 90's I found that the best tool for managing game audio was a multi-disk CD boom box with a decent remote control. You could quickly skip from track to track as the situation demanded, and if you wanted to get really fancy you could burn a custom CD. Of course, that was when a 486 CPU with Turbo-boost was a solid system, and Pentium chips were just hitting the mainstream.

Now that my phone has more processing power than those ancient systems software is clearly the answer, and it looks like Mr. Knode has put some serious thought into developing a custom tailored solution for gamers. Scene Sound's features list is pretty impressive:

* Mix multiple sounds from files and CD sources. Supports mp3,wav, aac, mp4, flac, and more.
* Add streaming internet stations from pls or m3u playlists.
* Random sounds with adjustable time spans
* Set hotkeys for all effects
* Linked sounds. One sound waits for another linked sound to play and finish. Multiple links can even be used to create a loop with the first sound linked to the last in the chain
* Scripting. Not a scripting language, but an interface to control nearly every function in Scene Sound. Use a script for specific events in a scene like the arrival of the BBEG or other dramatic moments
* Save a created scene as a single file package. This wraps up everything for the scene and creates a package file which can then be sent to another user
* Add multiple folders to the Library Manager to access all of your files on your local computer or across a network

In addition, there are two other factors that make the program attractive: it's free, and it has a user community that's actively sharing sound elements.