Audio & Hydration Walkthrough
Use the Compact or Full Audio Deck, organize Game and User playlists, add personal music, and control table-wide music in Tektos for Foundry VTT v14.
1. Choose Compact or Full
Tektos provides one Audio Deck with two presentations. Compact keeps the proven small player; Full gives the GM more room for playlists and tracks and includes the table-wide music slider.
Choose Compact or Full from the Audio Player setting on Game Home. Both presentations use the same Foundry Playlists, transport, one-track music rule, Duck controls, Music Off policy, and Game/User library.
2. Game Music and User Music
The Game tab contains every music Playlist outside the dedicated User music folder, including untagged music supplied by third-party games and systems.
The User tab contains only personal Playlists hydrated from Data/Tektos_Custom_Music. You do not need to tag personal music or imitate a publisher's folder system.
3. The Built-in Audio Knob
For GMs equipped with physical rotary hardware surfaces, Tektos provides an official Audio Knob template out of the box:
Turn Left
Lowers table-wide Foundry music/playlist channel volume by 1% per notch.
Turn Right
Raises table-wide Foundry music/playlist channel volume by 1% per notch.
Press Knob
Opens or closes whichever Audio Deck presentation is selected on Game Home.
4. Music Off, Duck, Full, and Panic
Music Off is a hard stop policy, not a silent volume setting. Tektos stops playing music and stops later music starts while the setting remains Off.
Duck temporarily lowers playing music to twenty percent of its captured track volume. Full releases the manual Duck. Table Music volume is separate and does not turn Duck on or off.
Audio Panic immediately stops applicable Foundry Playlists. Tektos also prevents competing music tracks from continuing at the same time, even when music starts through native Foundry controls.
5. Add Your Personal Music
Inside your Foundry Data folder, create Tektos_Custom_Music. Create one folder inside it for each Playlist, and put supported audio files directly inside that Playlist folder.
Open Tektos Settings and choose Audio Hydration. Use its Tutorial for the complete walkthrough. On Hydrate Music, select Scan Music first; the scan is only a preview. If it looks correct, select Hydrate Music to create the missing Playlists.
Hydration is creation-only. It never edits, merges, retags, renames, or deletes an existing Playlist. A same-named User Playlist is left unchanged.
6. What Is Still Future Work
Automatic Scene or event music requests, Adventure-owned hydration registration, the voiceover selector and preload workflow, and optional replacement of included publisher music with a GM's personal library remain separate future projects.
User hydration itself is released. Publisher-music replacement is a different feature and is not implied by placing music in Tektos_Custom_Music.