tabletopaudio

SoundPad Broadcast Feature Sunset

Greetings All!

I'm making this post public as it pertains to all users of Tabletop Audio -- free, as well as patrons. The main reason I'm writing this is so I can quickly share this post with people who have questions about the feature (which I rarely get these days!)

Also, I appreciate that you may have suggestions etc but read on and I think you'll get where I'm at!

The TL;DR 

I'm sunsetting the broadcast feature for SoundPads for ma...

2025-05-29 16:47:31 +0000 UTC View Post

New Ambience: Drow Slave Camp

Greetings Patrons,

The Drow are the worst. Everyone seems to hate them. I know there was that one guy, but he seemed to be an outlier. On the other hand, are they kind of awesome in a love-to-hate-them kind of way? Sure, let's go with that.

When the blindfolds come off, you find yourself underground. The place reeks of sulfur, and suffering. A cruel looking blue man hands you a pickaxe and points to a pile of rocks. "Make those smaller" he says, and kicks you in the back as you t...

New Ambience: Light the Beacons

Greetings Patrons,

This track has been kicking around for a while. It's been through lots of revisions and tweaks and I finally feel like I'm ready to move on. My working title for this was "Barry_thing" - because I thought the opening low strings riff sounded like a John Barry / Bond villain motif. What it ended up being was more of a grandiose, wide-screen, action track.

Everything here is fairly typical orchestration. Strings, brass and percussion carry the biggest load, choir...

SoundPad: Vampire (Remastered)

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but these re-mastered audio files are of higher quality than what appears online (bandwidth/cost issues) and have been tweaked to the standards of the later SoundPads.

T...

New Ambience: Petrified Forest

Greetings Patrons,

A barren landscape is always a great backdrop for adventure. But a once thriving landscape that has turned - wrong - is even better. A desert might always have been a desert, but a petrified forest begs the question: "what happened, and why?"

Here's an ambience of stone trees, stone leaves and branches scattered on the ground, a distant structure, also in ruin. Is this the domain of a single malevolent entity, or have a bunch of strange creatures moved in and ca...

New Ambience: Listening Post

Greetings Patrons,

Listening Post is a remote facility in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere could mean deep space, a desolated wilderness, or on one of the frozen poles (terrestrial or other). The point is that it's been there awhile. The amenities aren't great, and it's either just you, or maybe a small handful of people running the place and trying to stay sane.

If this sounds like something out of Alien, or The Thing, then you get where I was going with this.

The ambience h...

SoundPad: Desert Planet (Remastered)

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but these re-mastered audio files are of higher quality than what appears online (bandwidth/cost issues) and have been tweaked to the standards of the later SoundPads.

T...

New Ambience: Foghaven

Greetings Patrons,

Foghaven is a small industrial city in the north. It's in the foothills of a mountain range and, as its name implies, is perennially rainy and foggy. Despite it's dreary outward appearance, it's a very friendly place. The people work hard and they welcome (well behaved) travelers.

Foghaven could be a sister city for it's sunnier neighbor to the south, Goodhaven. In fact - let's make that canon. It is. Who knows, maybe there will be additional 'havens'. Darkhave...

New Ambience: Resurrection

Greetings Patrons,

I have returned from our family trip to Madrid. It was my first time in Spain and it was amazing. What a truly wonderful city. I even managed to go to a few music shops and not come home with an extra suitcase full of toys! One of the best parts of travel is coming home, and in my case, getting back to the studio.

I started this track before I left, knowing that I'd have some time to think about it on the trip. The original music was sketched out, as well as a a...

New Ambience: Doll Shoppe

Greetings Patrons,

Magical, quaint, slightly terrifying? We've all got opinions on Victorian Dolls. Especially in numbers.

So here we are, on a side street in London. A charming storefront with a murder of dolls in the window. (No, that's not the correct collective noun for dolls, but try and stop me from making it a thing.)

After hours, when the customers have gone and the employees have locked up, things begin to get a bit odd. Factions have formed. No one is sure if it's ...

Tech Update: Player Fade-out.

Greetings Patrons,

I finally got around to making a quality of life improvement to the ambience player. I know many of you have been requesting a better fade-out algorithm. The old behavior was an abrupt stop that could sometimes take players out of the mood. The tried and true method, as many of you know (sorry), was to manually ride down the volume slider and hit stop at the end.

The new format is a clean, logarithmic (starts quickly, ends slowly) 6 second fade when you hit the...

New Ambience: Xenon Refinery

Greetings Patrons,

I was noodling around on my Prophet synth last week and came up with a cool idea that I thought could work in a track. It was an interesting process as rather than sequencing everything I put on a click track and recorded the entire thing live. Not being highly quantized to a grid gave it a nice organic feel, but adding things on top of it proved to be a bit challenging. On top of the synth track, there's piano, flautando strings, some deep percussion and a few synth ...

New Ambience: Deep Blue

Greetings Patrons,

I love underwater adventures. I've created several ambiences over the years, and a couple of SoundPads (Deep Six and Atlantis). But, like taverns and dungeons, I always want more.

Deep Blue follows a submersible craft as it navigates through kelp forests, trenches, and ancient civilizations. I would say it's fairly genre agnostic. It would work equally well in scifi, or fantasy. And, nothing about the tech would be out of place in a modern situation.

The...

SoundPad: Ice Planet (Remastered)

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but these re-mastered audio files are of higher quality than what appears online (bandwidth/cost issues) and have been tweaked to the standards of the later SoundPads.

T...

New Ambience: Hunting Grounds

Greetings Patrons,

The genesis of this track was a simple piano part that I ran into a fuzz pedal. In this case, a clone of the legendary Shin-ei Fuzz-wah (minus the wah) made by British maker Fredric Effects. I'm trying to incorporate more analog external effects into music lately as I just love how unpredictable they can be on various sources. But back to the piano - it was the start of the track, but not the basis. It was the guitar part that I latched onto and made me want to flesh ...

New Ambience: Drawing Room: Night

Greetings Patrons,

The drawing room was the hub of all activity in manor houses. It was here that guests were received, families gathered after meals, games were played, and even small concerts. Salons, parlors, living rooms and state rooms are all based on the human need for congregation. They are places where stories are made. Announcements, confessions, betrayals, rumors, and plans - they all begin here.

But what happens at the end of the evening, when the last person puts dow...

New Ambience: Harper's Waypoint

Greetings Patrons,

This track started out as a tavern, viewed from the outside, but slowly morphed into a secret hideaway in the forest. I thought a Harper's Hideaway away would be a pretty good title, but I went with 'waypoint' because it seemed more like a destination known only to a select few.

In fairness, this is a tavern. Harper's come here to relax between assignments, fix gear, tell stories, replenish supplies, and keep the house and gardens in repair. the sc...

SoundPad: Weirder Things (Remastered)

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but these re-mastered audio files are of higher quality than what appears online (bandwidth/cost issues) and have been tweaked to the standards of the later SoundPads.

T...

New Ambience: Broken Pantheon

Greetings Patrons,

I was playing around with reverb recently. In particular, chaining a few different types together to see what combinations of sound I could get. Eventually I created this massive space that was fed by some shorter modulated reverbs. I thought it sounded like a cavernous stone interior, but warmer, and a bit...other.

Broken Pantheon is a massive, multi-level, stone structure with a huge amount of negative space in the interior. This space could have...

New Ambience: Capes and Canes

Greetings Patrons,

This track is a couple of different things. On the ambience side It's a Victorian-era cityscape complete with Hansom cabs, horses, pedestrians and rain. On the music side it has a slightly sinister, slightly goofy, stealthy / pursuit / peering out of doorways type of vibe.

I recently purchased a new microphone preamp/EQ, so I thought that recording multiple tracks of live instruments was just the thing to put it through its paces. Violins, viola, and multiple p...

SoundPad: Hell Planet (Remastered)

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but these re-mastered audio files are of higher quality than what appears online (bandwidth/cost issues) and have been tweaked to the standards of the later SoundPads.

T...

New Ambience: The Last Express

Greetings Patrons,

Train stations, like their sci-fi cousins space stations, are amazing story generators. Stories can begin, develop and end in them. Arrivals and departures are meaningful events. Crowds can act en masse, like a school of fish, or individually and chaotically. You can lose yourself (or someone else) amidst the throngs. Holding everything together is time. The ebb and flow of people and machinery are all beholden to a schedule.

In this track, an unknown event is ...

New Ambience: Orb of Doom

Greetings Patrons,

Let's just start with the title: My working title was "Slowly Rotating Sphere of Prophecy", which obviously wasn't going to fit on the website. I kept it that way as I worked because I wanted it to be a neutral sounding thing and not necessarily evil. At least - not capital-E Evil. The premise was a magical orb, bristling with energy, that had to be controlled by monks whose growls, chants and vocalizations kept it from getting out of control.

Yes, the title had...

SoundPad: Alien Starship (Remastered)

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but these re-mastered audio files are of higher quality than what appears online (bandwidth/cost issues) and have been tweaked to the standards of the later SoundPads.

T...

New Ambience: Nightlands

Greetings Patrons,

This week I created an atmospheric, moody location that I called Nightlands. It could be 'ruined lands', or 'shadow lands', or any number of permanently twilight, partially destroyed environments, brimming with dark magic.

In my mind, this is a world which was once vibrant, but destroyed by a cataclysmic event. As such, the fabric between our world and Nightlands has been torn and it's possible to travel between them.

The ambience here is barren and windy...

New Ambience: A Royal Visit

Greetings Patrons,

This track fell squarely into the 'I've written some music...but what is it?" categories. More importantly, 'where is it?'

At the beginning of the week I didn't let it get to me. I continued to write, edit and orchestrate the arrangement. As often happens, vibes emerged. I didn't fully grasp it at the beginning, but I couldn't shake the notion of royalty from this one. It's not fanfares and fireworks, it's even a bit dour at the start, but I think it evolves in...

SoundPad: Combat: Siege (Remastered)

Edit: I forgot to include the .jpg of the cover in the .zip file. This has been added to the .zip, and also as a stand alone so you don't need to re-download it. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but th...

New Ambience: Checkpoint Omega

Greetings Patrons,

There was a scene in the beginning of the Star Wars film 'Solo' (which I enjoyed, and has a great soundtrack) where Han and Q'ira are trying to escape their pursuers and are at a military checkpoint waiting in queue. The scene is busy and tense. Will they get to the window in time? Will the be allowed to pass? There's very little action, but a lot of tension.

I love scenes like this in games and stories because they make time stand still. So many things can happ...

SoundPad: Castle Raven (Remastered)

Edit: I had left out a single sound "Male Laugh Dist 4". This has been added to the original .zip file and also as a separate download if you just needed the one file. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, ...

New Ambience: The Murky Depths

Greetings Patrons,

My idea for this one was an underground environment that was intensely humid, and bursting with life. I imagined tribes of indigenous hunter gatherers scouting for copious flora and fauna. Small bands of raiders attacking other settlements for resources or to secure better hunting grounds. Occasionally a small band of adventurers from topside would find their way down. Maybe it had to do with the cavern full of sparkling red stones?

The ambience here is differen...