Sampleboard

Pads, sounds, zero friction.
A soundboard app: a grid of pads that trigger your sounds — reactions, jingles, ambiences — organized in pages. Import your audio, assign, play.
Built for live moments (streams, tabletop games, radio, workshops), fully offline.

▶ Try the live demo

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It is a sampleboard, not a sampler: deliberately simple — no effects, no complex editing, just what you need to fire the right sound at the right time. Runs entirely on your device — no account, no upload, no telemetry.

Try it now

fchaussin.github.io/sampleboard — runs in your browser with a 25-sound starter bank, no install. It is an installable PWA that keeps working fully offline once loaded.

On desktop Chrome/Edge, use the install icon in the address bar; on Android/iOS, use Add to Home screen.

Features

• Pads in pages: adjustable grid (up to 6×12), colors, multiple pages.
• MIDI-controller-style play modes: One-Shot (plays through), Gate (while pressed), Loop (until stopped); Mono/Poly polyphony per page.
• Library: import your audio files (multi-select, zip/rar archives), automatic OGG/Opus re-encoding, custom tags, search, preview.
• Assignment pool: a work tray to arm a sound and drop it onto pads.
• Trim & cue points: cut the start/end of a sound, or set a non-destructive playback window per pad (waveform, undo/redo) — the original stays untouched.
• Starter bank: 25 soundboard classics (buzzer, laugh track, tada, sad trombone, applause…), all CC0 from Freesound.
• Panic stop, real-time visualizer, separate Edit and Play modes (no accidental triggers on stage).
• Fully offline: no network permission, no account, no telemetry.

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User guide

A walkthrough of the whole app, screen by screen. Every screenshot below is generated from the current build.

1. The board

This is where you play. Each pad is a coloured tile bound to one sound; its play mode (One-Shot / Gate / Loop) is shown under the name. Tap a pad to fire it.

• Header — the page name (Main), a live visualizer, the page polyphony (Poly/Mono) and the grid size (4×4). The header also holds the Stop all (panic) button, which turns red while anything is playing.
• Page tabs (bottom) — switch pages; each page has its own grid and polyphony.
• Bottom bar — the Edit toggle (pencil), page tabs, Import, the Pads/Library view switch, and Settings.

2. Playing — the three play modes

Tap a pad to trigger it. Active pads animate a real-time waveform and the header visualizer reacts to the master output.

• One-Shot — plays through to the end on a single tap. Stingers, buzzers, jingles.
• Gate — plays only while you hold the pad, and stops the instant you release. (On the starter board, the Air horn pad is a Gate — hold to blast.)
• Loop — starts on tap and loops until you stop it (tap again, or Stop all). A looping pad shows a small stop control (see Suspense here).

Polyphony is per page: Poly lets several pads ring at once; Mono stops the previous sound when a new pad starts. Stop all (top-right) silences everything.

3. Assigning sounds — the pool

Enter Edit mode (the pencil) to build your board. The assignment pool is a small work tray of sounds:

• Add sounds to it from the library or from a pad’s drawer (Add to the assignment pool).
• Tap a sound to arm it (it highlights), then tap the pads that should receive it — great for filling several pads fast.
• Or drag a sound straight from the pool onto a pad.

4. Configuring a pad

In Edit mode, tap a pad to open its settings drawer:

• Name — the label shown on the pad.
• Play mode — One-Shot, Gate or Loop.
• Gain — per-pad volume trim, in dB.
• Color — pick a tile colour (or none) to organize your board.
• Sample — the bound library sound; tap to swap it.
• Cue points — a non-destructive playback window for this pad (see §7).
• Add to the assignment pool — drop this pad’s sound into the pool.
• Delete the pad — removes it (the sound stays in your library).

5. Pages

Tap the page name in the header to open its settings:

• Rename the page.
• Polyphony — Mono or Poly for the whole page.
• Grid — number of rows × columns (up to 6×12).
• Reorder or delete the page.

Add a page with the + tab in Edit mode; switch pages with the tabs at any time.

6. The library

Open the Library to manage every sound.

• Import a sound — add your own audio; multi-select and zip/rar archives are supported. Files are re-encoded to compact OGG/Opus automatically.
• Search and tag filters (Alert, Ambience, Jingle, Meme, Music, Quotes, Reaction, SFX, Voice…) narrow a big library fast; Manage tags edits the list.
• Each sound shows its size, duration and waveform, plus row actions: preview, trim, assign to a pad, add to the pool, tag, delete.

7. Trimming & cue points

The waveform editor keeps just the part you want. Drag the edges to set start and end; the read-out shows the selected window. Use undo/redo and play to check, then apply.

• Trim (from the library) — bakes the crop into the stored file: smaller, permanent.
• Cue points (from a pad) — a non-destructive window stored on the pad. The original sample is untouched, several pads can cue the same sample differently, and Loop respects the window. Clear it any time.

8. Settings

• Background — what happens when the app is sent to the background (e.g. Stop everything).
• Maximum number of voices — the global polyphony ceiling.
• Language — the app is multilingual (English default, French included).
• Application — the version, a non-destructive reload to update, and Erase all data (a factory reset, behind a confirmation).

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Install

Web / PWA (recommended)

Open the live demo and install it from your browser. It persists everything locally (IndexedDB) and works fully offline, including the first launch.

Self-hosting with Docker

git clone https://github.com/fchaussin/sampleboard.git && cd sampleboard
docker compose -f docker-compose.web.yml up -d --build
# then open http://localhost:8080 and install the PWA from your browser

Serving behind a reverse proxy? Use HTTPS — service workers require a secure context. A prebuilt Docker Hub image (fchaussin/sampleboard) is planned:

# COMING SOON — once the image is published:
docker run -d --name sampleboard -p 8080:8080 fchaussin/sampleboard

Android (F-Droid) — in preparation

The F-Droid submission is being finalized (reproducible build, WASM compiled from source, audited licenses). Until then, test APKs can be built from source (see doc/).

Your data

Everything is local: sounds and settings live on your device (browser storage on the web/PWA, SQLite on Android). No network, no account, nothing leaves your machine.

License

Code under GPL-3.0-or-later. Starter-bank sounds: CC0 1.0 (source and author of each sound in public/factory-samples/manifest.json).

Contributing & documentation

Developer documentation (Docker-based toolchain, architecture, tests, specs, roadmap) lives in doc/, specifications.md and roadmap.md.