Edit It's called Jingle Palette!
I utilise a freeware sound palette at work, on a win10 tablet. I'll grab the software name tomorrow if I remember. There are 0 pay walls, no trials, no ads, it requires no internet connection. You can build and customise any number of sound palettes, the touchscreen interface is really intuitive with large (but not massive) buttons so it's pretty much impossible to hit the wrong sound.
Pm me and it'll prompt me to look it up at work tomorrow. A cheap windows tablet is surely cheaper than whatever this streamdeck bizzo you young whippersnappers are using.
Might not be as fandangled as a streamdeck, but for someone with a limited budget it might be a step towards a fun stream.
Have you tried Jingle Palette? It's a virtual sound board, you'll just have the loop sound back from your PC so that your recording program of choice will pick it up. I use this sucker for all my audio clips while I record so I don't spend my time editing back in the sounds I want to play. Also, if you're using an external mixing board, there are plenty of apps for tablets and smartphones that can mimic a sound board. You'll just plug the portable device into your mixer and then play off that. I have to do that when I'm recording through Skype with a guest.
I use Jingle Pallete and it's AMAZING.
You can assign any audio file to a button and assign different volume levels to each one. They can loop or not loop as well, so I can have my ambient tracks right next to the music, next to my explosion sound effects.
You can also swap between palettes instantly so there's technically no limit to the number of sounds you can play
I've been having this issue myself when I want to have a guest on the show. It's mildly infuriating to say the least as I use Jingle Palette to play sounds while I record my show. For the episodes that did have a guest on them, I used an iPad and had the sound go directly through the my mixer and then the person on Skype could hear that audio. I tried some of the soundboards available, but nothing worked the way that I wanted to. I ended up creating a playlist and then transferring the sounds over as that playlist and went in order. It worked, but it's not the best. If you can somehow get Jingle Palette to play over Skype, that might be the best as it's free and works really well (especially with a touch screen). If you can figure that out, please let me know as it would make my life easier as well.
I almost have simulerar sorting system, the only difference is I focus on mood, I skipped on SFX(I think I would go crazy overboard on that :P) AND i edit(using Audacity) the music tracks so they loop.
My setup is focused so that I don't need to switch music all the time, just sometimes. If they just talking or planning, I just start my Idle Playlist or Planning Playlist. That way I only focus on being a DM and not a DJ.
My setup looks like this using Foobar2000. (Still needs to be sorted)
For ambiance I use something called Jingle Palette, It's old & terrible but it works damn well when you use loop tracks for Ambiance. I use Jingle for background noise and Foobar2000 for tracks to set the music mood for my players.
I'm trying to sort my Mood list a bit better and your setup gave me some ideas how to make it better!
My ADHD brain also go crazy for these type of things, so I'm happy you posted yours :D
You should be able to do a similar solution for Windows. Whenever someone recommends some software that is for a different OS or too cost prohibitive, I look up alternatives on alternativeto.net. Try this for instance it's a free Windows soundboard http://www.jinglepalette.com. Never used it myself, so I can't vouch for it. Please follow up if you find something that you like.