Firing a sound on cue is one of those things that looks trivial and is genuinely awkward in practice. The usual answers are a media source per sound and a hotkey per source, a second application running alongside OBS, or hardware. All three work and all three cost you something — scene clutter, another window, or the price of the hardware. This walkthrough uses the overlay you already have in your scene: upload the file, put it on a key, press the key. There is one OBS setting that decides whether any of it reaches your audience, and it is step five rather than a footnote.
Upload an MP3 to Kloot’s Media tool, set it to Fire, and pin it to a deck key. Pressing the key plays the sound through your existing Kloot browser source. You must tick “Control audio via OBS” on that source or viewers will not hear it. Sound effects are free on every plan.
You set it up here
It lands here — your deck, or your phone
Eight sounds, one page. Nothing fires on its own — every one is a press.
Tick “Control audio via OBS” on the Kloot browser source
Without it, OBS routes the source’s audio to your desktop instead of your stream — so you hear every sound perfectly and your viewers hear silence. It is one checkbox in the source’s properties, and it is the single most likely thing to go wrong here. Kloot shows the same reminder in the editor whenever a clip is unmuted.
What you’ll build
Your own sound effects on deck keys, firable from your browser or your phone mid-game, playing through the browser source already in your scene.
Paste your Kloot overlay URL into one Browser source. Your sounds play through this source, which means you are not adding a media source per effect and not stacking anything in your scene list. If Kloot is already there from another tool, you are done with this step.
Drag MP3, OGG or WAV files into the Media tool — several at once. Each is capped at 5 MB, which is roughly four minutes at 128 kbps, so effects are nowhere near it. WAV is normalised to MP3 on the way in so you are not carrying uncompressed audio around. Sound is free on every plan, including Free.
Trim the silence off the front of an effect in any audio editor before uploading. A 300ms lead-in is the difference between a punchline landing and not.
A sound effect is a Fire item: press, it plays once, it is done, and the key is momentary. Press it again while it is still playing and it restarts rather than being ignored — which is what you want when a bit needs a second airhorn.
Press Listen next to the preview to hear the file privately. It plays at full volume to you and changes nothing about the broadcast — deliberately separate from the gain slider, because turning a clip up so you can hear it would change what your audience gets. Listen defaults off, since opening an editor while you are live should never start playing audio at you.
The bars you see moving are a level indication rather than a decoded waveform — the progress is real, the shape is decorative.
Open the properties of your Kloot browser source in OBS and tick “Control audio via OBS”. Without it, OBS routes the source’s audio to your desktop rather than into your stream: you hear every sound perfectly and your viewers hear silence. It is the single most likely thing to go wrong with an audio feature, because the failure is invisible from where you are sitting. Kloot shows the same reminder in the editor whenever a clip is unmuted.
Verify it once by recording thirty seconds and playing the file back. Do not verify it live.
Pin each sound to a key and put them on one deck page. The deck is a web app, so that page is on your second monitor and on your phone at the same time — press a sound from whichever is closer. Nothing plays on its own: Kloot has no chat commands and no event triggers, so every sound is a press you made.
Upload, audition it privately, pin it, press it. The one step people skip is the OBS checkbox — it is in here, in order.
MP3, OGG or WAV, up to 5 MB each — which is roughly four minutes at 128 kbps, so a full track fits. WAV is normalised to MP3 on the way in. Sound effects are on every plan, including Free.
Listen plays the file to you at full volume and changes nothing about the broadcast. It is deliberately separate from the gain slider: turning something up to hear it would change what your audience gets, which is not what “let me listen to this” means. It defaults off, because opening an editor while you are live should never start playing audio.
Pin the sounds you actually use to a deck page. The deck is a web app, so the same page is on your second monitor and on your phone — which is the whole hardware argument: you already own a touchscreen with more buttons than a Stream Deck.
A Fire sound plays once and it is done. The renderer’s two-at-a-time limit is video-only, so sounds may overlap freely — which is exactly what a soundboard needs when a bit lands and you want the airhorn over the applause.
Set a music bed to Hold and it loops on completion instead of stopping after one pass. The key becomes a switch: press on at the start of the chill segment, press off when you are back to the game.
A soundboard adds something most streamers do not have at all, without buying hardware or running a second app:
When: Something lands in chat and the moment wants a rimshot, an airhorn, a sad tuba.
Why it works: Timing is the whole joke. A key you can hit in half a second beats alt-tabbing to a media player every time.
When: Dedicated hardware costs more than your whole Kloot plan, and you already have a phone propped next to your keyboard.
Why it works: The deck is a web app. Your phone becomes the board, with more keys than the hardware and nothing to plug in.
When: Loading screens, a break, the first ten minutes before anyone shows up.
Why it works: A held music bed loops until you turn it off, so a quiet stretch has a floor under it instead of silence.
When: A donation read, a segment change, a “we are back” sting.
Why it works: The same sound every time is how an audience learns your show’s shape. Consistency is easier when it is one key.
A momentary effect that plays once, or a track that loops until you switch it off. Both fall out of the same Fire/Hold split every other Kloot tool uses.
Press, it plays, it is done.
The airhorn, the rimshot, the ding when a goal is hit. The key is momentary — hold it down or tap it, the sound runs once and stops. Press it again mid-playback and it restarts rather than being ignored.
Momentary key — press, it playsLoops on completion, until you toggle it off.
A lo-fi bed under a chat segment, rain under a horror game, a five-minute loop for the pre-stream window. Held audio loops instead of stopping after one pass — otherwise a music bed is just a very slow sound effect.
Switch — press on, press offA real taste — one effect and one bed.
A working board for most channels.
A board plus a full overlay pack.
The capability is free — a free account can upload a sound and fire it. What a paid plan buys here is quantity, and a soundboard is a quantity problem: the item count is shared with your clips and frames, so a board plus an overlay pack is where Pro’s 200 earns its place.
No. The sounds play through the Kloot browser source already in your scene, and the buttons are a web page — so a phone or tablet works as the board. There is nothing to install and no hardware to buy.
“Control audio via OBS” is not ticked on the Kloot browser source. With it off, OBS sends that source’s audio to your desktop instead of your stream. It is one checkbox in the source properties and it fixes this completely.
Yes. Kloot’s two-at-a-time limit applies to video only — audio is exempt, so sounds may overlap. That is deliberate: a soundboard where the second press cancels the first is not much of a soundboard.
Yes. Sound effects are on every plan including Free — an MP3 never goes through our converter, so there is no cost to gate. What Free limits is quantity: two media items in total, shared with your clips and frames. Creator ($15/mo) raises that to 50.
No. Kloot never reads chat and never connects to your platform account, so there are no event triggers of any kind. Every sound is fired by hand, which also means nothing unexpected ever goes out over your mic.
MP3, OGG and WAV, up to 5 MB each. WAV is converted to MP3 on upload so it does not eat your storage — every plan has a flat 500 MB.
Upload an MP3, pin it to a key, and press it mid-game from whatever screen is closest. Sound effects are free on every plan — no hardware, no second app.
Start freeFree plan · Creator $15/mo · Pro $25/mo