Hi, I'm Tim. I'm a professional composer and sound designer from Brooklyn, NY and I play tabletop RPGs with my kids (10 and 7 11 and 8 12 and 9 they keep growing don't they?...you get the picture...).

I'm also a musician. I started playing the violin when I was 4 and played classical music in orchestras and chamber groups through college. Post college I played violin and guitar in lots of different bands in Chapel Hill NC and later in NYC. I've done studio and live work with Blondie, Paul Waaktar (A-ha), Eric Ambel (Joan Jett, Del Lords), Susan Cowsill (The Cowsills), Jolene (Sire Records), The Veldt (Stardog/Mercury), Dillon Fence (Mammoth Records), The Lamps (members of The Bangles, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Connells), and Stars of Stage and Screen. During the summer, I coach string quartets at a kids' chamber music day camp.

As any creative professional will tell you, working for clients usually doesn't scratch many creative itches. Tabletop Audio allows me free rein to do whatever I feel like (ars gratia artis!). Also, I really enjoy creating miniature 10 minute films out of sound.

I've found that playing situational audio files - i.e. "you're in a cave!" increases the level of enjoyment, immersion and suspension of disbelief for many gamers. Just as some players like adding miniatures to amp up their games, I enjoy adding some kind of background audio.

Yes! I love working with other people. Send me an email at [email protected] and tell me about your project. I do custom audio for games, escape rooms, installations, audio books, trailers, kickstarter videos, anything that has sound in it.

You can email me at : [email protected] or find me as "Tabletop Audio" on: or   or   or  

You can also find me on Mastodon, on Bluesky, and as @tabletopaudio on Hive Social.

If your Twitch/Video channel is non-profit, then yes, absolutely, with attribution.

I know a lot of you monetize your videos and here's my basic position: If you're making a little bit of extra money on the side to pay for hosting or bandwidth, buy the occasional game, or purchase refreshments for game night, then I'm fine with you using the 10 minute ambiences in your videos. If you're making more than that, (you decide where this line is drawn) then it doesn't seem unreasonable that we discuss some sort of licensing fee arrangement.

SoundPad was designed for those of you who wanted more control over your sonic environments. Instead of fire-and-forget 10 minute ambiences, each SoundPad is made up of a few dozen sounds, divided into categories. Many of these sounds are designed to loop and are loop enabled when the page is loaded. Additionally, most of the sounds can be layered on top of one another. The music tracks are slightly different in that they can be layered over any of the sounds but only one music track can play at a time.

Each of the 30 Individual SoundPad's audio content is less than 6MB total so it is bandwidth friendly for those who wish to use it on cellular networks.

SoundPad sounds are not included in under the Creative Commons license - see the "Terms of Use / License" section below.

SoundPad development is ongoing. There are currently over 1100 sounds available. More features and new SoundPads are planned.

YES! You can now use the new Custom SoundPad Tool which lets you mix and match up to 32 36 40 sounds from any of the released SoundPads. There are over 1000 sounds to choose from. These custom SoundPads can be saved on your device for quick recall or shared with friends via custom links.

Anything you want!, the goal for the site is to accommodate a wide variety of games, environments and settings. I've had more than a few writers tell me that they listen to these for inspiration when they work. Whatever you're playing or working on, new ambiences are being added all the time.

The tracks on the website are mostly music+ambience, so you get the sound of the environment and the score baked in. If a track has alternate versions (only the earliest ones didn't), it means you have access to ambience-only and music-only versions of the track.

Additionally, I will sometimes add more versions e.g. a "no rain" track, or a version without a central character, or characters. An example of this is a tavern track where there is an 'empty' version which has no people in it. These different versions allow flexibilty in your storytelling and allow you to mix music and ambience as you see fit.

Basically the alternate versions are anything I think might be a cool alternative, or fun addition!

I create all the sounds as high fidelity,lossless, 24 bit/48khz uncompressed audio files before dithering and encoding for the web. The 10 minute ambience files are eventually compressed into 192kbit/sec mp3 files, which for me are the best balance between file size (cost) and fidelity. SoundPad files are compressed a bit more and converted to both .ogg and .mp3 (your browser will automatically select the right format - e.g. Chrome chooses .ogg)

Noticed that did you? I wanted it to be a) not too long and b) long enough so the GM could click play and have some time before having to deal with the audio.

Each ambience is 10 minutes of non-repeating sound. The player will loop the playlist by default, i.e. when it gets to the last track it will start again with the first track. If there is 1 track in the playlist, it will loop. There is a new loop toggle for individual tracks in the playlist. When this is selected, the track with loop turned on will loop until the switch is turned off. This way you can fill the playlist with tracks and select one track to loop until you choose not to. (This new feature negates the old hack of adding the same track to the playlist multiple times)

Yes! Saving of playlists has now been implemented. Load up some ambiences and click Save to store your playlist. Note: this is machine/device dependent, so if you save a playlist on your laptop, it won't be available on your phone. The easiest way to sync them is to use the new Link button see below at the bottom of the player which will generate an HTML link of your playlist which you can email to yourself, load up on another machine and save it again.

Yes! You can now click the Link button on the bottom of the player to generate a link to whatever is currently loaded in your playlist. Copy and Paste the link into an email, text message, browser etc. and the page will load with a pre-populated playlist.

Sure, I'm happy to take requests. Working on a super-cool campaign and have a perfect scene for situational audio and I don't have it? Let me know! You can email me at : [email protected] or find me as "Tabletop Audio" on: or  

Thanks for asking! Tabletop Audio needs your support. The costs for hosting and bandwidth are increasing each month. The best way to support is via Patreon which is a monthly donation. You can also donate via PayPal.

This site has been designed to work on all modern browsers and devices. If there is something that doesn't work on your device/browser and you feel like it should, please let me know! (The few issues people have can often be caused by a misbehaving browser extension. Try disabling these as your first troubleshooting step.)

All of the 10 minute ambiences on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

SoundPad sounds are not meant to be downloaded and are not for use outside tabletopaudio.com.

Any art that is not my own or public domain is under Creative Commons license. I've tried to link back (attribution) to the artists (see below), however, if I've screwed something up, or I'm using your artwork and you're not happy about it, PLEASE let me know and I will take it down or fix what is needed as soon as possible.

"Solemn Vow: PreachersWay. "The Desert Awaits" is from Khorghil. "Busy Space Port" and "Alien Night Club", "Starship SoundPad", "Orbital Platform" and "Starship Medical" are from siamon89 "The Inner Core", "In the Shadows", "Shelter from the Storm", "Deep Space EVA", "Abyssal Gaze", "Disembodied Spirits", "Cave of Time", "Protean Fields" and "Alien Machine Shop" are all from KoAltaiTeMaunga. "Derelict Freighter" is by RadoJavor, "Kaltoran Craft FE" is by Fyodor Ananiev, "Nephilim Labs FE" is by Johnathan Chong, "Los Vangeles 3030" is by Frenic, "Clash of Kings" is by Paolo Uccelo (1438), "The Long Rain" is by Moofonzo , "Starship Bridge" is by Luis Tomas, "Rise of the Ancients" is by Osmatar, "Samurai HQ" is from Zvezda historic miniatures. , "There be Dragons!" is from free4fireYouTube, "Goblin's Cave" and "Mountain Pass" are from Ninjatic, "Super Hero" (man photo) Bizior, "Ice Cavern" is by GeorgeLovesyArt, "Terror" is by moppaa, "Dinotopia" is by Raph04art, "Industrial Shipyard" by chutiporn, "Dungeon I" is by Summerson, "Sleeping Dragon" is by Capricorn Android, "Medieval Library" is by Tom 7, "Zombies!" is by zombie-ninja, "Abandoned Fair" original photo is by Corey Balazowich, "Steampunk Airship" is by syntaxerroronlinenul, "Lucha Libre" is by Carlos Adampol Galindo, "Combat-SoundPad" background image is by Anton Magdalina, "Sewers" is by Tonywash, "Tavern-SoundPad" background image is by Lilithiel, "Elven Glade" is by JKRoots, Skirmish is by Bad-Dragon, Testing Chamber is by d3wd, Combat:Future SoundPad contains art by DivideBy2 and background by MariaSemelevich,"Lunar Outpost" is by Min-Nguen, "Orbital Promenade" is by Yutaabe, "Dwarven City" is by Stirzocular, "All Spire RPG artwork" is by Adrian Stone, "Existential Dread" is by Dave Dyet, Beholder image in the Monster Pack SoundPad is by Patrick Jones, Barovian Castle is by Sofi Sorokina, Loop Tales, Metropolis Fanfare, Star Freighter, Nostromo background images by Joakim Olofsson, Secret Garden background by MistaBobby, Artist's Garret is by Ben Husmann, Waterkeep is by Christian Jank, Forest:Day is by Eva Kedves, Cistern is by Axel Rouvin, Neon Drive is by Vladimir Petkovic, Castle Jail and Wolf Pens are by Pavel Filimonov, Robotics Lab is by Leo Lee, Cyberpunk City original photo by Daniel Ramirez, Abandoned Windmill by Matt Boggs, Underground Lake by Angel Estevez. Haunted by Tim Kaminski., Dying World by Ninaneco, all Heart: The City Beneath images by Felix Miall, Thieves' Guild by Christian Bravery, Space Battle by eRe4s3r, Wuxia Village by Nisarga Ravindra, Hallows Eve is by Rondell Melling, Submerged is by Toni Frissel, 1947, Base Assualt is by Hokunin, all Starforged images by Joshua Meehan, Forge of Fury (original image) by Isural, Farmyard is by Joana Kruse, Pattern Recognition is by Mikhail Nilov, Apothecaria artwork is by Adam "Forange" Törn , Closing Time is by Damnagy, Floating Market is by Tigor Boraspati.

Thank you all for your amazing and evocative art!