Sideline DJ is on the App Store today. Before it was an app anyone could download, it was a phone in my hand at my son's hockey games, and a team that put up with me testing it every weekend.
This post is mostly a thank-you.
Read what happens in the video
A real goal at a U13 A2 hockey game, with the sound from the rink. The T-Birds are down 2-1 in the second period. The parent running music taps Goal and the horn goes off. They pick who scored, and the announcer calls the scorer's name and number over the arena sound system. The goal song kicks in, and the announcer calls the assist over the music. The score is tied 2-2. Sideline DJ: horn, announcer and goal song, all from one phone.
Thank you, T-Birds.
For the last two months, every one of my son's games has also been a test. Some nights the app worked perfectly. Some nights it didn't, and the players, parents and coaches of the Thunderbirds U13 A2 were patient with me while I worked out why.
They let me try things at real games, with real crowds. The feedback from parents and kids has been amazing, and it's what kept me going.
The team also helped me launch team fundraising. Thank you for trusting me with that too.
The fix that took the longest.
The hardest problem wasn't the music or the buttons. It was getting the announcer's voice to sit right with the music.
Every rink sounds different. The sound systems are different, the speakers point different ways, and the buildings echo differently. A goal call that was perfect at one arena was buried under the music at the next, and far too loud at the one after that. Recorded voices and pop songs are mixed very differently, so what sounds balanced through your phone can sound nothing like it through an arena's speakers.
So it was trial and error, rink by rink, game after game. Each time something was off, I changed how the voice and music play together and tried again the next weekend. The version on the App Store today is the result of a lot of those weekends, and of a team willing to listen to the in-between versions.
How the app solves it now.
One thing I learned early: no app can change Apple Music's volume on an iPhone. So the balance has to happen on the voice side, and it has to be quick to adjust at the rink, with the game about to start. Here's what came out of all that testing, in Game settings, under Sound at this rink:
- Voice compared with the music. Sixteen steps, from well under the music to well over it. Change it while a name is being called and you hear the difference on that call, so you can set it by ear through the arena's speakers.
- Dip the music under names. On, the song drops while a name or call plays. Off, the song stays up and the voice sits on top. Some rinks need one, some the other.
- Save it as a rink. Once it sounds right, give the rink a name. Next time you play there, pick it and the voice level and dip come back the way you left them.
- Sound Check before puck drop. One tap plays music with announcer lines over it (never a fake goal call), and the music and voice controls open right under it, so you can hear the balance in the building and fix it during warm-up instead of on the first goal.
It sounds simple written down. It took two months of games in different rinks to get there.
Why this matters to me.
Youth sports run on volunteers. Running music at a game shouldn't need a sound engineer, and every kid deserves their moment when they score. That's what Sideline DJ is for: tap Goal, and the horn, the scorer's name and the goal song take care of themselves, so the parent in the booth gets to watch the game too.
Try it at your next game.
Sideline DJ is on the App Store for iPhone, for youth hockey and ringette.
And to the T-Birds: thank you. This launch is yours as much as mine.