A soundboard is one of the few things on a stream that is genuinely better with physical buttons — and also one of the few where the hardware costs more than everything else in the setup combined. The argument for buying one usually skips the fact that you already own a touchscreen with more buttons than any deck, sitting on the desk next to your keyboard. Kloot’s control deck is a web app, which means your phone or tablet is the board. This page covers building a real one: sizing it, laying it out, and the one OBS setting that decides whether the audience hears any of it.
Yes. Kloot’s control deck is a web app, so a phone or tablet works as the board. Upload your sounds, pin each to a key, and press them mid-game. Sound effects are free on every plan; a full board of 20 to 50 sounds needs Creator ($15/mo) for the item count.
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
A page of sound keys on your phone, tablet or second monitor, firing through the browser source already in your OBS scene — no hardware, no second application.
A working board is usually 20 to 50 sounds — enough that the one you want is on screen, few enough that you can find it. That number is the honest constraint here, because item counts are per plan and shared with your clips and frames: Free holds two, which is a real taste but not a board; Creator holds 50, which is where most channels land; Pro holds 200, which is a board plus a full overlay pack. Nothing about the capability is gated — this is a quantity decision, not a feature one.
Start with eight. Almost everyone overestimates how many sounds they will actually press, and a page you can read beats a page that is full.
Paste your Kloot overlay URL into one Browser source. Every sound plays through it — you are not adding a media source per effect and not stacking anything in the scene list.
Drag MP3, OGG or WAV files in, several at a time. Each is capped at 5 MB — roughly four minutes at 128 kbps, so effects are nowhere near it. WAV is normalised to MP3 on ingest. Storage is a flat 500 MB on every plan, which is a lot of sound effects.
Trim silence off the front of every file before uploading. A consistent 0ms lead-in is what makes a board feel responsive rather than laggy.
Effects are Fire items: press, plays once, done, momentary key. Music beds and ambience are Hold items: the key becomes a switch and the audio loops until you press it again. Both shapes fall out of the same Fire/Hold split every other Kloot tool uses, so there is nothing new to learn.
On the Kloot browser source in OBS, tick “Control audio via OBS”. With it off, the source’s audio goes to your desktop rather than your stream — you will hear every sound perfectly and your viewers will hear nothing at all. Do this before you spend an evening laying out a board, and verify it with a thirty-second recording rather than live.
Pin the sounds to one deck page and arrange them by how often you reach for them, not alphabetically — the four you press every stream want to be under your thumb. Open the deck on your phone or tablet; it is the same page as your browser, live in sync. Sounds may overlap freely, since the two-at-a-time limit applies to video only, so a second press over a playing effect works exactly as you would want.
Put the panic buttons — the ones that cover an awkward silence — in the same corner every time. Muscle memory is the entire point of a board.
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 Kloot control deck is a web app, so any phone, tablet or second browser window is the board. There is nothing to install and no hardware to buy — and a phone screen fits more keys than most hardware decks do.
Two on Free, 50 on Creator ($15/mo), 200 on Pro ($25/mo). The item count is shared with your clips and frames. A working board is usually 20 to 50 sounds, which is why Creator is the realistic plan for one — the capability itself is free.
Yes. The renderer’s two-at-a-time limit applies to video only; audio is exempt and can overlap. A board where the second press cuts off the first would not be much of a board.
“Control audio via OBS” is not ticked on the Kloot browser source. OBS routes that source’s audio to your desktop by default in some versions, which produces exactly this — perfect for you, silent for everyone else.
No. The deck is a web page you sign into, so it works from anywhere with a connection. That also means it keeps working if you stream from a different room than you sit in.
No. Kloot has no chat integration and no event triggers on any platform, so nothing plays without a press. For a soundboard that is arguably a feature — chat cannot spam an airhorn over your commentary.
It is the phone next to your keyboard. Upload your sounds, lay out a page of keys, and press them mid-game. Sound is free on every plan — a full board is where Creator’s 50 items earn their place.
Start freeFree plan (2 items) · Creator $15/mo (50) · Pro $25/mo (200)