In my last post I mentioned using TableTop Audio’s new SoundPad feature to play ambient sounds and effects in our game. It was an experiment on my part after a friend of mine asked me if I could figure out how to do it. So, like a good friend and nerd, I worked on it for hours. Turns out it wasn’t that hard but there were a few missing steps from the various internet tutorials I was using. Here’s how, and why, I did it.

Why Not Jukebox?

We use Roll20 for our online games. Roll20 has a great Jukebox feature that can do playlists and pull directly from Tabletop Audio. It’s a great tool for adding audio to your games and I recommend it. You can learn about Jukebox on Roll20s wiki: https://wiki.roll20.net/Jukebox

Jukebox plays through the Roll20 environment in the browser. However, like many people we use Discord for audio and Roll20 for rolling dice, dealing cards, and moving tokens. So I wanted to be able to push the sound through the main audio channel for our game. In addition, SoundPad lets you do some fun on the fly mixing that would be harder (but not impossible) with Jukebox.

Additionally, sometimes we record our games using the Craig Discord bot. Craig records the Discord audio channel but not the system sounds, and I wanted both in the mix. Finally, not everyone uses Roll20. This set-up will work if you just play on Discord with audio and a dice roller like SavageBot.

Voicemeeter & Virtual Audio Cable

The solution I landed on was to use Voicemeeter and Virtual Audio Cables from VB-Audio Software. These tools are donationware, so anyone can get up and running with them for little to no cost. I am using Windows 10.

Install Tools

1. Install Voicemeeter (run the installer as an Administrator) & Restart
2. Install Virtual Audio Cable (run the installer as an Administrator) & Restart

Configure Sounds

1. Open Control Panel>Hardware and Sounds>Sound and set Voicemeeter to Default Recording and Playback Device
2. Open your Browser  (I use Chrome) then open “Sound Mixer Options on Windows” and set the Output to CABLE INPUT (Virtual Audio Cable)

Configure Voicemeeter

1. Open Voicemeeter
2. Set Hardware Input 1 to your Microphone (use WDM option for all devices)
3. Set Hardware Input 2 to Cable Output (Virtual Audio Cable)
4. Set A1 Hardware Output to your Headset or speakers.
5. Set Hardware 1 (your microphone) to B
6. Set Hardware 2 (your browser) to A & B
7. Set Virtual Input (your computer system sounds) to A

What this does is takes your voice from your mic and the sounds you play from chrome and output them to channel B. While putting your system sounds and Chrome into channel. Channel A is what you hear and B is what gets sent to others.

Configure Discord

This part gave me the most fits because Discord does a lot of (very good!) things to clean up noise and suppress sounds. As a result, it made the music and sounds from Voicemeeter sound all wonky. Turning all that off was the missing piece that took me way too long to figure out.

1. Run the Discord desktop software (you can’t do this with the Discord web app)
2. Go to user Settings>Voice & Video and set Input & Output devices to Voicemeeter
3. Turn off Automatic sensitivity
4. Slide sensitivity all the way to the left
5. Scroll down to “Advanced” settings and turn off: Noise Suppression, Echo Cancellation, and Automatic Gain control.

Mess Around with Things

This is the basic set-up. From here you should be able to join a Discord audio channel and have your mic be heard, hear your friends talking, and send them music and sounds from your browser tabs (this includes music from YouTube videos and other audio sources, not just SoundPad).

Somethings to Tweak

1. Audibility. This dial will set the threshold for your inputs. This is good to keep light background noises or your heavy breathing coming through the mic. Play with it to see what level works for you.
2. Faders. These adjust the volume of each input and output, mix these until your heart’s content. If using background music you probably want Hardware 2 a bit lower so you can voice over it without any troubles.
3. Intellipan. This adds some bass, brightness, or reverb to the sound. This can make your already sweet voice sound even sweeter (for advanced users Voicemeeter also has a big EQ you can mess with)
4. Roll20. If using Roll20, or any other browser windows that make noise, you probably want to disable them so you don’t mix chat notifications or dice roll sounds into your audio.

That’s it. Hit me up on our Discord server and let me know how it works for you. I never used music in a game much before, but the players really enjoyed the added dimension. Now building SoundPads is part of my prep!