Everything you need to get Ballpark Audio working on game day.
The play queue (new in v2.2) lets you line up Songs and Apple Music tracks to play automatically with a smooth 4-second crossfade between non-DRM tracks. Tap the + icon on the bottom-right of any Song or Music card to add it to the queue. A queue chip appears in the footer showing how many tracks are queued; tap it to open the queue sheet where you can reorder, remove individual tracks, or clear the whole thing.
Yes. Both the queue itself and a paused playback position survive being backgrounded or quit. Reopen the app and tap Resume in the queue sheet to pick up where you left off. The queue is per-device — it doesn't sync across iCloud (a queue is "what am I listening to right now," not part of your shared library).
The queue pauses immediately (no fade — Walk-Ups need to play right away), the Walk-Up or Sound FX plays through, and the queue stays paused. Tap Resume in the queue sheet (or the footer Resume button) when you're ready to continue.
From the gear menu on any Sound FX card, choose Adjust Trim. A waveform editor opens with two draggable amber handles for start and end. Drag to choose the window; tap Preview to hear it. The trim is non-destructive — the source audio file is never modified, so you can keep adjusting forever.
v2.2 gestures: pinch on the waveform to zoom in on a specific section, two-finger drag to pan around. Double-tap to reset to the full view. While preview is playing, tap Set Start or Set End to snap the corresponding trim point to wherever the audio is right now — handy for marking moments by ear.
Yes (v2.2). Open Generate Sound FX from the hamburger menu and switch to the Import tab. Three sources are available:
For Apple Music–sourced clips you can use the live-scrub Set Start / Set End buttons during preview to mark trim points by ear. Tap the resulting SFX card to play just the trimmed window.
From the hamburger menu (v2.2). Search Freesound for Creative-Commons-licensed sound effects without leaving the app, preview each result inline, and tap Add to import directly into your Sound FX tab. The attribution (creator name + CC license) is stored on the clip and travels through iCloud sync and .bpaudio package exports — so credits stay with the audio.
Tap the hamburger menu (top-right) and choose Light Mode. The whole app switches to a high-contrast cream palette designed to read well in bright sunlight. Per-device — your iPad in the press box can stay in Dark while your iPhone in the dugout runs Light. Not iCloud-synced (since the "I'm outdoors right now" decision is local).
Tap the AirPlay icon in the top header (left of the hamburger). The system picker opens with every AirPlay-capable device on your network — HomePods, Apple TVs, AirPlay-enabled receivers, Bluetooth devices. For AirPlay 2 receivers you can select multiple speakers at once with checkmarks; the app's audio plays through all of them in sync. Audio follows the selected route even if you switch mid-game via Control Center.
The first time you tap Search Apple Music or import from the catalog, you'll see a one-time message about licensing. Apple Music subscriptions are licensed for personal listening only — they don't include the public-performance rights you'd need to play recorded music in a venue like a ballpark, restaurant, or gym. For public-venue use, prefer Sound FX you generate, audio files you've imported (and have the right to play publicly), or CC-licensed clips from Browse Sound Library. The full disclosure lives in App Settings → About Apple Music.
Yes — that's the headline feature of v2.1. Walk-up clips, sound effects, songs, teams, lineups, sound-fx categories, and Apple Music selections all sync automatically across every device signed into the same iCloud account. Audio files travel along with their metadata, so a clip you generate on your iPhone will appear (and play) on your iPad without any export/import. iCloud Sync is on by default.
Open the App Settings sheet (hamburger menu, top right of the app) and scroll to the iCloud Sync section. Toggle the switch to enable or disable. Disabling sync stops all uploading and downloading on the current device — your local library is untouched, and the data already in your iCloud container is left in place for other devices.
It depends on the size of your library. The first sync uploads every existing clip's audio file to your iCloud container; on a typical 30-clip library that's usually under a minute on Wi-Fi. After that, subsequent changes (a new clip, a renamed team) propagate within seconds. The status line under the iCloud Sync toggle shows the last sync time so you can confirm it's running.
Walk through the list in order:
If the status line under the toggle shows an error, take a screenshot and email support — that line is the most useful diagnostic.
Apple Music songs sync as a reference (track ID + title + artist), not as audio. If a song is in your iPhone's local Apple Music library but not in your iPad's, the iPad has nothing to play. The card is flagged UNAVAILABLE and tapping it opens a picker so you can substitute a track that does exist on the iPad. You can also long-press any Music card and choose Pick a different library track… to relink it manually. Once relinked, that device plays the substitute and the original device keeps playing the original.
iCloud Sync follows your iCloud Drive cellular setting. If you've allowed iCloud over cellular in Settings → [your name] → iCloud → iCloud Drive, sync will run on cellular too. Otherwise it waits for Wi-Fi. The first sync of a large library can be hundreds of megabytes (audio files are big) — Wi-Fi is recommended for the initial pass.
A few things stay device-local on purpose: played/unplayed state for songs (so resetting played on game day doesn't propagate to your bench device), and the Apple Music audio itself (sync stores only the reference, since the audio belongs to your local Apple Music library). Credit balance is also synced separately via your Apple ID rather than the soundboard sync.
iCloud Sync uses your own private CloudKit container under your Apple ID. The developer of Ballpark Audio cannot list, read, or export anything in that container — Apple manages it the same way it manages Photos or iCloud Drive. See the Privacy Policy for full details.
Credits power the AI generation features — walk-up announcers, line-up announcers, custom music, and sound effects. Every generation costs a small fraction of a credit. You buy credits in packs through Apple's In-App Purchase (12 / 24 / 48 credit packs starting at $4.99). Credits never expire and follow your Apple ID across devices.
Generation costs vary by what you're producing:
A complete walk-up (announcer + music) is 2 credits; a complete line-up is 4–5 credits. The Buy Credits sheet shows you "enough for ~N walk-ups or ~N line-ups" for each pack.
No. Credits never expire. They sit in your account until you use them.
Yes. Credits are tied to your Apple ID and follow you to any device signed into the same Apple ID. If you don't see your balance on a new device, tap Restore Purchases at the bottom of the Buy Credits sheet.
Open the App Settings sheet (hamburger menu, top right of the app), scroll to the API Key section, and paste your ElevenLabs key. It's stored in your device's Keychain and never sent to our servers — generation requests go directly from your device to ElevenLabs and you're billed by ElevenLabs under your own account. You can switch between credit mode and BYOK mode any time using the Generation Source toggle.
Every generation flow has a Regenerate button. The cost depends on the action — TTS (announcer) reuses cached audio if the text is unchanged, so re-rendering the mix is free. Regenerating the music produces a new take and costs the music credit again. Use the take chips to flip between previous music takes without paying.
The balance is cached locally for speed and refreshes when you open the Buy Credits sheet. If you bought credits on a different device, tap Restore Purchases at the bottom of the sheet to reconcile your balance from the server.
Apple processes all refunds for In-App Purchases. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple ID, and request a refund for the Ballpark Audio credit pack. If Apple grants the refund, our server is notified automatically and the corresponding credits are subtracted from your balance.
In the Walk Ups tab, tap +. Make sure the mode picker is set to Walk-Up. Type the announcer line manually or use Auto-Generate to combine a player's name and jersey with a stadium-announcer phrase. Pick a voice, choose your music (upload a file or generate one), then tap Generate.
Yes. In the Music section of the Create Walk-Up sheet, tap Choose File to pick any MP3, M4A, AAC, or WAV file from your Files app. Drag the marker on the waveform to align the announcer's last word with a downbeat. You can also pick from the audio of any video file (mp4/mov/m4v).
The 80-character cap keeps generation costs predictable and walk-up reads punchy ("Now batting, number 12, Smith!" is well under). Longer reads are billed at higher rates by ElevenLabs and the cap protects your credits. If you need a longer read, switch the mode picker to Line Up — line-up announcer reads can be up to 400 characters.
Open the Create sheet from any tab (or the + on Songs) and switch the mode picker to Line Up. Enter your team name, fill in your roster (jersey number + name per row), and the announcer prompt builds automatically as you type. Edit it freely if you want to add a custom intro line, drop a player, or rephrase the cheer. Tap Generate when you're ready.
Yes. In Line Up mode, tap Pull from Walk-Up at the top of the roster section and pick a team. Players' jersey numbers and names are imported and you can edit them before generating. Useful when one of your teams already has walk-ups but you want a single roster-intro Line Up clip.
Yes. In Line Up mode, tap Import from CSV. The CSV should have two columns: jersey number and player name (header row optional). Lines with a "#" in the jersey column are skipped, and so are positions like P / C / 1B / 2B that sometimes appear next to names.
That's by design — once you've typed custom text, the auto-build won't silently overwrite your edits. Tap Build Prompt and the app will ask if you want to replace your custom prompt with a fresh build from the roster. You can also tap the Clear button next to the prompt label and the auto-build will resume.
60 to 90 seconds. The cost goes up slightly at 71s and again at 81s (2.5 / 3.0 / 3.5 credits), so for the same vibe a shorter bed saves credits. The Line-Up recipe ducks the music under the announcer and lifts it back into a stadium cheer at the end, so the music length doesn't have to match the announcer length exactly — the app handles the alignment.
In the Sound FX tab, tap + and describe what you want in the prompt field — the more specific the better ("wooden bat cracking against a fastball, then a brief crowd reaction"). Pick a duration up to 6 seconds, tap Generate, and listen to the take. You can regenerate as many times as you like to find the right one before saving.
Tap Create Category at the top of the Sound FX tab and give it a name (e.g., "Bat Cracks", "Crowd Reactions", "Walk-On Stings"). Drag any clip onto the category to assign it, or use the gear menu on the clip and choose "Move to Category". A reserved Generated category catches every clip you generate so they're easy to find.
They moved to the reserved Uncategorized bucket. You can drag them into a new category or leave them there.
Three baseball-style announcer voices ship with the app: Baseball Announcer — Male v1, Male v2, and Female v1. The voice picker (in App Settings and in every Create sheet's advanced section) shows a Play button next to each voice so you can hear a sample before you commit.
Yes. In the voice picker, choose Custom Voice ID… and paste your voice ID. The app uses it for every generation until you switch back to one of the curated voices. This works in both credit mode and BYOK mode.
The TTS model controls the voice quality and speed tradeoff. The default (Eleven v3) produces the most natural stadium-announcer reads. You can swap to any model your account exposes via /v1/models — useful if you want lower latency or a specific feature only available in a different model.
In the Walk Ups tab, tap the team picker at the top of the screen. From the dropdown you can switch teams, add a new team, rename the current team, or delete the current team. Each team has its own players, lineup order, and next-up indicator. Sound FX, Songs, and Music are shared across all teams.
Open the team picker in the Walk Ups tab and choose Scan Lineup Card. Take a photo with the in-app document scanner or pick an existing photo from your library. The app reads the card on your device — no internet required — and matches detected names to your existing walk-up clips for that team. You'll see a review screen where you can adjust matches before tapping Apply.
Players the app matched on the card are reordered to match today's batting order at the top of your Walk Ups grid. Players on the team who are NOT on the card are automatically marked OUT for the game. To bring a disabled player back, tap the + on their card.
On the review screen, every detected row has a small dropdown showing which clip the app picked. Tap it to override: pick a different clip from the suggestions or the full list, or choose Skip this row to ignore it. The colored dot tells you the match confidence — green is high, yellow is medium, orange is low, red is "no match".
No. All scanning happens on your device using Apple Vision (and Apple Foundation Models on supported devices with Apple Intelligence). The photo and the extracted text never leave your phone.
The dot at the bottom of the screen reflects what's playing: grey when nothing is happening, red while a walk-up is playing, green while a song, sound effect, or Apple Music track is playing, orange while audio is fading out. A separate blue dot appears next to the "Next up" line whenever a walk-up is queued for the current team.
Apple Music subscription tracks are protected by Apple's FairPlay DRM. These tracks play through Apple's system music player, which doesn't allow apps to fade audio directly. As of v2.2 the Fade Out button still works on DRM tracks — the app briefly ramps the device's system output volume down to 0 over 3 seconds, stops the music, and restores the original volume. The badge is kept as a heads-up that the track plays through Apple's system player rather than the app's own audio engine.
That's the v2.2 fade implementation. Because Apple doesn't let apps touch the volume of DRM-protected playback directly, the only knob we can turn is the device's output volume — which is what the Fade Out button does for those tracks. The 80-millisecond restore at the end snaps the volume back to where you had it. If you have any other audio playing during the fade (a notification, another app), it'll fade alongside the music briefly.
Make sure your device volume is turned up and your Bluetooth speaker is connected. If you recently installed the app, allow a moment for clips to finish loading after upload.
Yes. Ballpark Audio uses the iOS playback audio session, which bypasses the ringer/silent switch automatically — just like the Music app or Spotify.
Yes. Audio continues when you switch to another app, check your lineup card, or lock your screen.
The Volume Boost slider amplifies audio above the normal maximum. Gain above 100% can cause clipping on clips that are already loud. Try reducing the boost slider if you hear distortion.
Tap the menu button and choose Share / Export. The app packages all your clips and teams into a single .bpaudio file. Send it via AirDrop, Messages, or Save to Files. The recipient opens the file and everything imports into their Ballpark Audio app — including the team structure for walk-ups and your sound-fx categories.
If someone sends you a .bpaudio file, tap it to open it directly in Ballpark Audio. You can also tap the menu button, choose Import Package, and select the file from your Files app.
MP3, M4A, AAC, and WAV are fully supported. Upload files from your Files app or iCloud Drive.
Tap the x button in the top-right corner of any card. Walk Ups show a multi-action options sheet (Make Next Up, Disable, Re-assign, Export, Remove); choosing Remove asks for a final confirmation since walk-up audio represents real work. Sound FX, Songs, and Music show a single confirmation prompt before the clip is removed.
In the Sound FX, Songs, and Music tabs, tap the Sort button below the grid. Choose alphabetical (A-Z or Z-A) or by duration (shortest/longest first). In the Music tab you can also sort by artist.
In Advanced Settings of the Create sheet, the Music Under Announcer slider controls how loud the music sits underneath the announcer's voice. Lower values give the announcer more clarity; higher values give the music more presence. Applies to both walk-ups and line-ups.
Having an issue not covered here? Reach out and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.