🎵 Background Tracks v0.7 — Ambient Sound Mixer

🔍 Overview

Background Tracks is a customizable ambient sound mixer built with Python and Tkinter. It lets you mix and loop natural soundscapes — rain, birds, stream, campfire, beach, night — with per-track volume sliders and a dark-mode UI with image previews.

Perfect for focus, relaxation, or sleep.

📦 Windows release: Download the prebuilt app

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✨ Features

• 🎚 Mix up to 6 ambient categories simultaneously
• 🎵 Loop any MP3 track from each category
• 🖼 Dark mode UI with high-resolution image previews
• 🔊 Per-track volume control
• ▶️ Individual play / stop buttons for each sound
• ⏹ Stop All button to silence everything in one click
• 📂 Auto-discovers all .mp3 files in Sounds/<category>/
• 💾 Packaged into a single .exe for easy use on Windows
• NEW: Configurable folders via CLI (--sounds-dir, --images-dir)
• NEW: Master volume flag (--master-volume)
• NEW: Window-close cleanup wired up properly (no orphaned audio threads)

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📁 Folder Structure

Nature-sounds/
├── Main.py
├── requirements.txt
├── Sounds/
│   ├── 01_bird/      *.mp3
│   ├── 02_beach/     *.mp3
│   ├── 03_night/     *.mp3
│   ├── 04_rain/      *.mp3
│   ├── 05_stream/    *.mp3
│   └── 06_campfire/  *.mp3
└── Images/
    ├── birds.jpg
    ├── beach.jpg
    ├── night.jpg
    ├── rain.jpg
    ├── stream.jpg
    └── campfire.jpg

The category folders use the prefix 01_, 02_, … to keep them in display order.

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🛠 Built With

• Python 3.10+
• pygame — audio playback
• Pillow (PIL) — image handling
• Tkinter — GUI

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🧰 Requirements

pip install -r requirements.txt

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⚙️ How to Run

Default:

python Main.py

Custom directories and master volume:

python Main.py --sounds-dir Sounds --images-dir Images --master-volume 0.6

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🛠️ Command-Line Options

Flag	Default	Description
--sounds-dir	Sounds	Folder containing per-category MP3 subfolders
--images-dir	Images	Folder containing per-category preview images
--master-volume	0.5	Initial volume for every track (0.0 – 1.0)

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🎮 Controls

Action	How
Pick a track	Use the dropdown in each category card
Play	Click ▶ Play Track
Stop	Click ⏹ Stop Track
Adjust volume	Drag the Volume slider
Silence everything	Click ⏹ Stop All at the bottom
Quit	Close the window — audio cleans up automatically

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🧰 Build a Windows .exe (optional)

pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller --noconfirm --windowed --add-data "Sounds;Sounds" --add-data "Images;Images" Main.py

The bundled app appears in dist/Main/.

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🛑 Troubleshooting

Issue	Fix
No sounds available in a category	Drop one or more .mp3 files into Sounds/<category>/
Image previews missing	Confirm Images/<name>.jpg exists for each category — file names must match the IMAGE_MAP dictionary
Crackling / stutter	Lower the master volume or close other audio apps
App won't close cleanly	The WM_DELETE_WINDOW protocol now stops audio and quits pygame on close

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. You are free to use, modify, and distribute this software provided that attribution is given to CS42.org as the original source.