Improv Sound Player

Introducing Sound Show: the ultimate soundboard software for live performances. With Sound Show, you can easily find and play the right sounds at the right time, and control each sound with precision. Sound Show is perfect for a wide range of activities, including theatre, podcasting, radio, sports, tabletop role playing games, and dancing.

But Sound Show isn’t just a sound player; it also allows you to display elements like images, videos, and webcam feeds on a second screen. You can even program sequences of elements to play automatically.

New Sound Show official website

Features

The ability to play multiple sounds simultaneously

Individual and global sound control

Color-coded buttons for easy identification

The ability to preset the start and stop of a sound, as well as its volume

Crossfade, fade-in, and fade-out options (with customizable durations)

An “automix” feature that automatically transitions between sounds

A “favorite” bar for quick access to your most-used sounds

Keyboard shortcuts for fast and easy control

The ability to send sounds to different output devices (e.g. headphones or speakers) for previewing

Search functionality based on sound titles and tags

No fixed limit of number of sounds or categories

Support for a wide range of audio formats, including mp3, wav, flac, mp2, wma, ogg, and aiff

An instructions system for playing sequences of elements

Display video, image or text on a second screen

External program launching capabilities

Notes

Free (but if you like the software and use it regularly, donations are very welcome ) Economic model

Windows, Mac (min. 10.13 (High Sierra)) and Linux

Available only with a few sounds under free licence to serve as example.

Download

Screenshot

Video

Find free/royalty free sounds

Here are some places to find free sounds. Be careful to always check the license as some still ask for attribution or restrict use to non-commercial uses:

Document on improvisation

A great pdf by Craig Rintoul on sounding improv shows with lots of great advice: