Jingles
Jingles are short audio clips that play over regular audio with automatic volume ducking.
How It Works
Section titled “How It Works”When a jingle plays:
- The target player or zone volume is reduced (ducked)
- The jingle audio plays through the target
- When the jingle ends, the original volume fades back up
Fade-in and fade-out transitions are configurable.
Ducking lowers each source relative to its current volume, so a source that is already muted stays silent for the duration of the jingle — playing a jingle never makes a muted player audible. Sources at full volume duck to the configured duck level as usual.
Targets
Section titled “Targets”Jingles can target:
- Specific players — Duck and overlay on selected players
- Specific zones — Duck and overlay on selected zones
Text-to-speech (TTS) jingles
Section titled “Text-to-speech (TTS) jingles”Instead of supplying a pre-recorded audio file, you can create a jingle by typing text. MZAP synthesizes the speech to an audio file, and from that point on the TTS jingle behaves exactly like a file-based jingle — it plays through the same ducking pipeline, can be scheduled by a JinglePlay action, and appears in the jingle list (with a speech-bubble icon and the spoken text in its subtitle).
Creating a TTS jingle
Section titled “Creating a TTS jingle”- On the Jingles tab, click TTS.
- In the modal, set a name, pick a provider and voice, type the text, and adjust the speaking-rate slider.
- Click Preview to hear the voice before saving — the preview audio is never stored on the jingle.
- Save. The synthesized audio is generated and the jingle is created.
Editing a TTS jingle’s text, voice, or rate re-synthesizes the audio automatically. Cosmetic edits (volume, duck level, fade) skip re-synthesis.
Text is capped at a 5000-character soft limit (about six minutes of speech) on every synthesis entry point.
Providers
Section titled “Providers”| Provider | Type | Setup | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | Offline | None — uses the voices installed on the host machine | Included |
| Azure Speech | Cloud | Your own Azure key + region | Cloud TTS feature |
| ElevenLabs | Cloud | Your own ElevenLabs key (no region) | Cloud TTS feature |
The Windows provider works offline and free, using the voices installed via Windows Settings → Time & language → Speech. The two cloud providers — Azure Speech (~140 neural voices across 90+ languages) and ElevenLabs (premium multilingual voices) — require the Cloud TTS license feature and an API key you supply yourself. See Settings — Text-to-speech for the step-by-step key setup.
Cloud-provider voices are multilingual or grouped by language, and failed synthesis (invalid key, region typo, quota error) is reported inline in the modal — no jingle is created if synthesis fails.
Use Cases
Section titled “Use Cases”- Store announcements over background music
- Time signals or alerts
- Scheduled welcome messages
- DJ drops and station IDs
- Spoken closing-time or safety announcements via TTS