A Soundboard That Doesn't Wreck the Mix

What it is for

Soundboard clips arrive at whatever level and length their source had, so one of them will always be far too loud and one will always start with dead air. This is the preparation pass — normalise, trim, bind, license — plus the reason none of it can be fixed later: the clips and your voice reach the stream on the same input. Ends with the full-set rehearsal that catches the bad clip before an audience does.

The skill Copy

A soundboard fails in two ways: it is louder than you are, and it puts audio
you do not own into your recording. Both are fixed before you go live.

Prepare each clip outside the app first:
- Normalise every clip to the same level, and set that level BELOW your
  speaking voice. Playback level is a trim across the set, not a rescue for one
  file: a clip that arrived 12 dB hot is still 12 dB hot next to every other
  clip you fire.
- Trim the silence off the front. A 400 ms lead-in feels like a dead key, so
  you press again, and it fires twice.
- Cut to under three seconds. Anything longer plays over your own commentary,
  which is the moment people stop listening to both.

Bind them so you cannot fire one by accident:
- Nothing within reach of movement keys, push-to-talk, or the key you hammer
  when you die.
- Keep the whole set under about eight clips. A soundboard you have to think
  about is one you will not use.

Assume you cannot separate it afterwards:
- Your voice and the soundboard reach your streaming software on the same
  input, so a clip cannot be pulled back out of the recording later. That is
  the whole reason the level is decided before you fire it.
- If you genuinely need them on separate tracks, route the soundboard through
  a virtual audio cable into a second source, and prove that works before the
  stream, not during it.
- Check what your capture is actually taking. Capturing the whole desktop is
  how a clip meant for viewers ends up in the game chat too.

Licensing, which is the expensive one:
- Music and film audio inside a clip gets recordings muted or claimed, often
  months later and retroactively. "It's a meme" is not a licence, and being
  small is not a defence.
- Use clips you made, clips you licensed, or silence.

Run the whole set once at real stream volume before you go live. Every clip, in
order. It takes two minutes and it is the only test that catches the one that
is 12 dB hot.

How to install it Copy

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

Did it work for you?

Where it came from