Pocket Bard Reviews

Below you’ll find my original review, showing how much I loved PocketBard. Maybe it’s just that I’m broke and in between jobs right now, but the new subscription service is not ideal. Really disappointed in the newer updates. I’m not paying $7 a month for this. PocketBard will be deeply missed by me and my group.

I’ve been looking for something exactly like this ever since I started running TTRPG games with my friends. It’s always been a hassle. What I’m about to say is genuinely shocking, and not for the faint of heart: PocketBard is exactly as advertised. I’m floored by how good it is. Keeps playing as you pull up reference or character sheets on your phone, and perfect for board game night too! I’m telling all my friends, whether they play TTRPGs or not, download it now!

As the title states, this is a a fair app. It does what it advertises and does so quite well. I have two main reasons for the lower rating which is why I docked two stars:

1) Currently the selection is very limited. There are many scenes to chose from, but the weather and one shot items are quite sparse.

2) Customization. As others have mentioned they have many of their own playlists they’ve made over the years. It would be great to import those playlists and make custom scenes incorporating the sounds from PocketBard with our own content. This would also solve the issue of limited selection as you’d be able to find and add your own resources all housed in one app instead of across multiple.

Others have noted the subscription model to be an issue. I can’t really speak to that as I’m not using it. At the time of writing this mostly just gets you sci-fi content, which I have no use for. That said, paying a monthly fee for access to that content does seem steep.

First the good - PocketBard is well built, fun and intuitive to use, and the sounds are great! I look forward to more soundscapes being made, and more sound packs being released. I even cannot wait to see how the devs increase functionality within individual packs, like scene specific sound categories and what not. Having the same basic categories, like ambiance and weather, across all scenes make a ton of sense and works fantastic.

$7 a month is a steep price, however. I would certainly pay money for a pro version were it a one time charge. I would even enthusiastically buy sound packs piecemeal to gain permanently full access to them. $7 for one sound pack would be an easy impulse buy that I would only slightly regret, but a monthly subscription model just does not feel like the fit for a service like this. I will continue to use PocketBard , but implore the devs to look at other monetization methods, as I feel like a subscription basis will be a consistent turn off for many potential customers.

Also, devs just HAVE to get working on a tavern soundscape, how else am I supposed to start my adventures?!

I love PocketBard. I’m currently using it for a D&D campaign and I love the ability to change the ambience dynamically and with relative ease. I would love to see more one-shots and variants of music/ambience for specific settings. For example, an A, B, and C option for the forest, or perhaps variants based on the season or time of day.

My only criticism and reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is using the subscription model for premium. It’s pretty steep and I personally don’t care for them. There are so many platforms using subscriptions it gets overwhelming tracking them all. If premium were a flat, one-time price I would gladly pay it and bump this rating up to 5 stars.

I have played around with PocketBard and options a bit, and so far pretty enjoyable. Just need to remember what certain environments do (village has a lot of background chatter, while city does not seem to have as much) and the strength of some of the options (whispers is a bit more like ritual chanting than just background talking).

Marking as 4 for two reasons.

One is established of course and understandable at present based on the Dev team comments elsewhere, being the subscription only at present. I avoid subscription only apps like they are the plague, and while I’m sure it works for some, there are others that get barely anything from this and thus won’t pay. Such as myself who may run a session once, twice at most a month at best.

The other reason, I have a long curated list of music I run already built off a collection over a decade old. I like the extra sounds and such I can add through this, but I greatly dislike that this cuts audio by half power. As soon as I turn PocketBard off, standard music comes roaring back. I would edit this to 5 star if just this got fixed, but I realize this is likely a small percentage of users that actually notice this.

Love PocketBard so far! The UI is intuitive, each scene is uniformly laid out, and it’s quick and easy to pick up and go. As a DM, there is a lot of moving parts behind the screen, so I greatly appreciate that I can quickly change the tone of the scene at a glance rather than digging through PocketBard to find what I’m looking for.

This would be 5 stars; however, the subscription price is a bit steep. As a consumer, I am definitely suffering from subscription fatigue. I’d much rather buy access outright or buy scenes that make sense for my campaign.

From a business standpoint, I totally get it. A subscription based model makes sense as it’s continual income from multiple sources on a regular basis. Unfortunately, from a consumer standpoint, I hesitate to take on yet another subscription in a world where every business has made subscriptions their default business model.

To the developers, keep up the awesome work! I’m excited to see this platform grow!

I want to start off by saying that there are many apps/soundboards out there that attempt to help create scenes in TTRPG’s. I’ve used this app for about a month now, and all I can say is I haven’t used another app since. This is PocketBard for me and my group moving forward!

The accessibility, the music, the different scenes, the customization! It is all perfectly put together! I am absolutely in love with PocketBard because it helps transition your scenes perfectly as the scenes transition in our game!

I do have some feedback for the Developers. I would really like to see more specific sound buttons within the scenes. The generic same ones across all the soundboards are good, however I can only do so much with what I’ve been given. I feel like in order for PocketBard to truly take off, I would love to see constant updates with more sounds, and hopefully more scenes soon! To me, I feel like this is crucial for your growth as an app.

I hope you all see this review and know that you all are doing a fantastic job! I just don’t want you all to forget that having updated content is how you keep your app alive!

Thanks!

I love PocketBard so let me get that out of the way. I think the idea behind it is amazing. However it has some bugs. For one the explosion one shot doesn’t work on any of the scenes for me except the original scene it comes with. I purchased the subscription so I have all the other ones. The other problem is I noticed a lot of scenes like the city and town have whisper for ambiance. Bit whisper sounds like demonic whispering. It doesn’t fit. However the tavern has the crowd sound. Which fits way better. I think the devs need to go through and replace the whispers with the crowd effect cause it makes way more sense. Unfortunately you can use the crowd effect in other scenes cause then it changes everything when you switch. Also maybe devs should come up with a way for us to create our own scenes with the sounds already available. That would be amazing and add a whole new option for customization. Cause I notice there’s lots of scenes with one shot assets I like but the explore or location sounds don’t fit.

Update: Thank you dev team for responding to so many people in the reviews. I love the hands on approach and listening to your customers. Maybe people don’t usually ask for this but I would LOVE to see more paid packs. I currently (and I’m sure others as well) don’t have use for a sci-fi pack but plan to get it anyways to support PocketBard . Currently am running a pirate campaign with many beach themes. Would love to see some more tropical themes. Even if not more packs where we can support you would be awesome

I use PocketBard every single session now. I swapped to this from recording my own custom music and my life is so much easier. There is a lot of content in PocketBard but please don’t abandon this thing. I’ve seen that before and I want PocketBard to keep growing.

I saw the add cross my FYP on TikTok and decided to give it a try and instantly fell in love. PocketBard is simple and easy to use, and the customization options are AMAZING! It’s a bit limited at the moment for free users, but I recognize PocketBard is still new and in the future hope to see more in the future as PocketBard grows bigger. I definitely recommend it for more than just role playing, I personally use it for studying ambience, and for inspiration for writing. Love PocketBard and cannot wait to see where it goes!

I rarely bother to leave reviews but I used this for the first time today on the recommendation of a friend and former player at my table, and I cancelled my subscription for Syrinscape seven minutes after my session. By far the best and most intuitive ambiance app I’ve ever used and these folks are barely just getting started. In their discord you get essentially a summary of their Kanban board and goodness do they have some great things in store. As soon as the desktop version is released, all of my virtual tables will make the switch too.

The composition of the music is amazing. PocketBard also gives you for free 10x what other apps charge for. That alone is worth a download. The one shot sfx bring a lot of depth as well, but the absence of any creature growls or roars seem to be a glaring omission. I haven't used it enough to say that there aren't any at all, but I looked at everything that was free. It's it possible to add our own sfx to the one shots? If so, I would only ever use this one app and never look back. Oh one other thing: the victory button is great! But... what if they don't win? Lol

I really wish I could leave PocketBard a good review but I can’t. When I first downloaded it worked fine the music is outstanding and the sound effects were amazing. But with the most recent update the music is fine but none of the sound effects work, every time I tap them there is no noise. I deleted and redownloaded but had the same problem. Later when got a new phone I downloaded hoping for the problem to be gone but it isn’t. I still get no sound. If they ever fix this I will change this review in an instant

Updated
So they released an update and it cleared up all the problems! So happy! (Except the explosion sound effect still doesn’t work don’t know why) But other than that everything is working great!!

Wow! Downloaded PocketBard after seeing a tiktok and it’s super cool!! I’m definitely going to use this for my next campaign!! One thing though, just listening to the songs for an extended period of time, I noticed that they would have a tendency to sound dark. For example, if I just let the town music play for a while it will start to get really slow, pensive, build suspense, and just overall sound like things are about to go awry. The slow transition is incredible, but am I the only one experiencing this?

PocketBard is all-around incredible. The sounds, the flow, the one-shots—everything just works together well. Even more, the developers seem to really love what they’re doing and want to give back to the people using their app. The only improvement I would ask for is a way to turn affect individual volumes of elements (i.e. change the volume of the crowd and campfire within the ambiance section). I don’t think it would be too difficult of an add, and it would make a huge difference in PocketBard . That said, keep doing what you guys are doing. Great work!

I usually never leave reviews. Like, never. But my goodness have they knocked it out of the park with this one. One of my biggest struggles with campaigns is finding and easy way to have ambience or music for a specific setting, and often have to create multiple playlists to do so. In fact, I was creating a couple for a new campaign when I came across an ad from them at a convention of some kind. I decided to try it out as it seemed fairly easy to use. My expectations weren’t too high, but boy was I proved wrong. The simple interface and quality of the ambience and music is stellar and I really couldn’t ask for more from PocketBard. I highly recommend this app to anyone who is looking for a perfect ambience/music app for DnD, or any other occasion

I have a policy to never download any app that advertises to me via Facebook. For me if it doesn’t come word of mouth, or through my own search, I ignore it. The ad for PocketBard was a demo video of how it works and how seamlessly it integrates to what you’re trying to do. It looked so easy and intuitive that I broke my own policy and grabbed it. In practice it’s just as easy as was promised and I will now be using it to run all my games with the kids. I also pointed it out to my Open Table 5e campaign, who are mostly more experienced DMs. No idea if they’ll listen, but I’m spreading word of mouth.

I absolutely love PocketBard!
Now, I say this as someone who is only using the free assets (which the developers have been generous with), as I loath subscription services. If ot were a set amoutn for the whole shebang, then i would probably pay it. I just won't pay monthly. Minor rant out of the way, there are so many features that make the already generous free assets even better. The sliders don't affect volume, but the intensity and complexity of the sounds. Genius! I love the way each environment has a collection of background music, so each time you select it, it isn't exactly the same. This is simple to use, quick to use in game, and the quality and variety is spectacular.

Recently downloaded Pocket Bard and played around with the free version for an hour or two and it is FANTASTIC. It’s so versatile and even with “just” the free content (there’s a ton), it’s a super varied range of settings and background/environmental sounds. Transitioning between the intensity of the music and exploration/combat flavors is really easy. It also comes with a mode to allow for easier conversation over the music without lowering the volume. Also looked over their website and the music is royalty-free and they plan on continuing to expand the content and evolve PocketBard continuously, including both free and paid subscription content. A lot of love and consideration went into this and I’ve honestly never been so excited over a TTRPG tool.

I am absolutely in love with PocketBard. The seamless transitions and customization offered right out of the gate are unbelievably robust. Not only does this drastically upgrade the tone and feel of our games, but I find myself throwing on a low intensity setting just for some background music at the house. I cannot recommend PocketBard enough 👍🏻👍🏻

BTW, having an app so beautifully crafted that works so well WITHOUT ADS is a thing of beauty and joy in this day and age. Really hoping to be able to buy more content piecemeal as I need it because I really want to support PocketBard under its fantastic model right now.