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About This Software

Press the scene. Keep telling the story.

The fight starts. The music is still the tavern. You're looking down at a laptop, hunting for the right tab, and the table is waiting for you. Or you stopped bothering with music, because it was one more thing to run.

Bardio gives you one press instead. Tap Combat. The music turns, the rain you lit earlier keeps falling, and you're still mid-sentence. Your players feel the room change, and they never see you do it.

What a press does

Every scene is a button: Combat, Chase, Tavern, Travel, Dread, Festival, Court. Press the one that's happening.

• The music changes and keeps going until you press the next scene. Ambience sits on its own row, rain, fire, a crowd, and stays lit under whatever plays next.
  
• Tracks crossfade, and none repeats until the scene has been through the rest.
  
• A door slams when you ask for it. One-shot effects sit beside the scenes.
  
• Pause holds everything where it is. Stop ends it all, effects included.

Nothing to wire, nothing to mix mid-story.

Who is Bardio for?

• Game Masters running a tabletop RPG, in person or online. The soundtrack is live: the fight starts, you press Combat and keep narrating; the party gets back to town and you press Tavern. Your phone works as the remote from the head of the table, and an Elgato Stream Deck turns the scenes into physical keys.
  
• Streamers and actual-play creators who need music, ambience and effects during a live or recorded session without a second person on sound. Bardio plays through the PC like any other audio source, so OBS and Discord capture it as it is. Every bundled track is CC BY or CC0, and Copy credits on the Packs page gives you the credit list for the description.
  
• Event organisers putting atmosphere into a room: a convention table, a games night, a live or immersive game. Set the presets up beforehand, run them from a phone while you walk the floor, and play through whatever speaker the venue has. It needs no internet, so a hall with no signal is fine.

I made Bardio for a friend who wanted music for their game and couldn't find anything good at a reasonable price. It ships finished. Install it this evening and run a session with it.

• A Classic Fantasy library: 81 music tracks, four and a half hours of it, with 123 ambience loops and 179 sound effects, already sorted into scenes.
  
• Nothing to set up: the library installs with the app, and there's no account.
  
• Not playing fantasy? Bring your own music and Bardio sorts it the same way.

The box works as it comes; the rest of this page is optional.

Bring your own music

Drop in a folder. Bardio listens to each track and sorts it into a scene.

• Anything it isn't sure about waits in a short review list with its best guess.
  
• Glance down the list and confirm the lot at once, or skip the ones you'd rather place yourself.
  
• It works on files on your machine; a streaming playlist can't come across.

Fix it in two taps

When a track turns up in the wrong scene, tap the tag beside its name and pick where it belongs. Bardio moves it, and the scene you're in plays on; you never leave the board.

Presets: the whole room in one press

A preset is a scene with its ambience and its volumes, saved together. Press Tavern night and the tavern music starts with the fire and the crowd under it, at the levels you set. Press Boss fight and the whole room changes at once.

• Seven come in the box, from Tavern night to Storm on the road.
  
• Save your own from what's playing: set a room up by hand, tap the + at the end of the row and name it.
  
• Press it again to stop its music and its ambience, the same as a scene.

Make the board yours

Scenes are yours to name, and the board is yours to arrange.

• Add a scene for the thing your table keeps needing. Give it an example or two, and Bardio finds the tracks in your library that sound like them; new music sorts into it by ear from then on.
  
• Order the buttons the way you reach for them.
  
• One look per campaign: each keeps its own board, its own scenes, its own presets and one of eight colour themes, from parchment to eldritch, with an accent colour of your own if you like.

Your phone is the remote

So is a tablet or a laptop: anything on the same Wi-Fi with a browser. Pair it once, by scanning the code or typing six digits, and from then on you change the scene from your seat without reaching for the keyboard. If you want, anyone at the table can do the same.

Elgato Stream Deck

Got an Elgato Stream Deck? The Bardio plugin ships inside the app. Install it from Bardio's settings, drag a scene onto a key, and the scene is a physical button: press it mid-sentence without looking at a screen. Presets, sound effects, Pause and Stop get keys too. It needs Elgato's own Stream Deck app on the same PC.

Put the sound where you want it

Bardio plays through one device at a time, and you choose which. Out of the box that's the PC. Pair a phone and the Mixer's Playing on list offers it: tap the phone's name and the sound comes out of that phone instead, or out of whatever it's connected to, a Bluetooth speaker, a soundbar, a pair of headphones. The PC goes quiet and keeps the controls, and so does every other device at the table.

• The laptop at your end, the sound in the middle of the table. A phone on a Bluetooth speaker by the map plays the room; your screen stays quiet beside your notes.
  
• Move the game and the sound moves with the phone. Out to the garden or the next room, within reach of the same Wi-Fi, the speaker goes in a pocket and you still run everything from any device.
  
• One mix, wherever it plays. Volumes, Pause and the scene follow across every device, and effects fire where the sound is.
  
• Nothing to buy. It's the same app on the other device, playing.

Playing online? Share it in Discord

If you run the game over Discord, share the Bardio window in the call with sound on; everyone who clicks Watch Stream hears the soundtrack. Your mic stays your mic, and the music skips Discord's voice filtering, so it arrives sounding the way it does at your desk.

• It's Discord's own screen share, so there's nothing extra to install.
  
• Each player sets the music's volume for themselves, with the stream's slider.
  
• Using a VTT? Keep the voice call in Discord beside it and share Bardio into it.

One purchase. Runs on your machine.

• No subscription. You pay once, and the copy you install is yours.
  
• Nothing phones home. No account, no server, no internet connection needed. The optional extra packs download when you ask for them; nothing else touches the network.
  
• Your library is files you keep, on your own hard drive.
  
• It keeps working if we vanished tomorrow.

What's in the box

At the table

• Press the scene: Combat, Tavern, Dread, Travel and more. The music changes; ambience and effects sit beside it, each on its own button.
  
• Fix it in two taps: a track in the wrong scene is one tap on the tag beside its name and one on the right scene. It plays on.
  
• Presets: a scene, its ambience and its volumes in one press. Seven in the box; save your own from what's playing.
  
• Pause and Stop that mean it: Pause freezes everything; Stop ends it, sound effects included.
  
• Your phone is the remote: or a tablet, or a laptop, anything on the same Wi-Fi. Let the table help, if you want.
  
• Elgato Stream Deck: the plugin ships in the box. A scene, a preset, an effect, Pause and Stop, each on a key.
  
• Put the sound where you want it: the PC, or any paired phone and whatever it's connected to. One device plays; the rest stay controls.

Your library

• Ready out of the box: a Classic Fantasy library (81 tracks, 123 loops, 179 effects), sorted by scene, and seven presets.
  
• Bring your own music: drop in a folder; Bardio sorts it by ear.
  
• Make it yours: name your own scenes, order the board, one look per campaign.
  
• No AI music or sounds: every track in the box composed, played or recorded by a person, credited in the app.

The purchase

• One purchase: no subscription. The copy you install is yours.
  
• Runs entirely offline: no account, no server, no internet. Nothing phones home.
  
• In person or online: built for the table; online, share the Bardio window in your Discord call.
  
• Windows: Windows 10 or later.

Questions about the sound

Why not just use a playlist or YouTube?
A playlist plays one mood until you stop talking to change it. Bardio changes with the scene on one press, and you keep talking.

Is the music any good? Where is it from?
Composed, played and recorded by people, licensed, and credited in the app with a link to every source. No AI. It's Classic Fantasy: battles, taverns, dread, travel. For anything else, bring your own.


Does it work for D&D?
Yes. DnD, 5e or older, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, any TTRPG. Warhammer 40,000 and other miniature wargames too: bring your own music and press the scene.

Only fantasy?
The library in the box is Classic Fantasy. For horror, sci-fi or anything else, drop in your own music and Bardio sorts it into the same scenes, or into scenes you name yourself.

Can I use my Spotify playlists?
No. Bardio plays files on your machine. If you have the music as files, drop the folder in.

Is this a soundboard?
Not the kind you build. Scenes come ready; press the one that's happening. There are one-shot effects too, a door, a sword, a crowd, when you want them.

Is this AI?
No AI music, no AI sounds. Every track in the box was composed, played or recorded by a person, and each one is credited in the app with a link to where it came from. The only models in Bardio sort your own music, one in the box and a sharper one as an optional download: you pick a few tracks for a scene and they find the ones that sound alike, on your PC, sending nothing anywhere and making nothing.

Can I stream or record with the bundled music?
Yes, with credit. Every bundled track is under a licence that allows it in a stream or a recording: Creative Commons Attribution or CC0. Copy credits on the Packs page gives you the whole list, with licence links, to paste into a description. If a platform's automatic matching ever flags a track, that list is what you dispute it with.

Questions about your setup

Can I have more than one campaign?
Yes. Each campaign keeps its own scenes, presets, board order and theme; switch from the campaign menu.

Do I need to know anything about audio?
No. Press the scene. That's the whole job.

What do I need to run it?
A Windows PC, Windows 10 or later. It plays through the PC's speakers, or you hand the sound to a paired phone and whatever that is connected to, a Bluetooth speaker say; one device plays at a time. Any phone, tablet or laptop on the same Wi-Fi works as a remote; so does an Elgato Stream Deck.

Does it need an internet connection?
No. Bardio runs fully offline. No account, no licence server. Remotes join over your local Wi-Fi, which doesn't need the internet either. On a venue network that blocks devices from seeing each other, a phone's hotspot works instead. It works on a laptop in a basement with no signal.

Questions about buying it

Is there a subscription?
No. One purchase.

What happens if the studio disappears?
Nothing changes for you. Bardio runs on your own machine with no server to switch off, and your library is on your hard drive. The copy you installed keeps working.

With thanks

The music and sounds you hear on this page come from the Classic Fantasy library in the box; in the feature videos they are the tracks Bardio played while they were recorded. Thank you to the people who made them.

In the trailer

• "Achaidh Cheide" and "All This" by Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech), CC BY 4.0
  
• "lost dynasty" by Damiano Baldoni (Jamendo), CC BY 4.0

In the videos

• "Hammock Fight", "Hyperfun", "All This", "Run Amok", "Long Note Four" and "Sardana" by Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech), CC BY 4.0
  
• "Wooden-Door-opening+closing_mono.wav" by hannagreen on Freesound, CC0 (public domain, with thanks)

Every track in the box is credited inside the app too, with a link to where it came from.