You're mid-song, someone drops into your Discord call, and now you're scrambling for a mixer, an OBS audio filter, or a second monitor just to turn the music down before they can hear you — and turn it back up two minutes later, if you remember. I got tired of doing this manually every single session, so I built SpeechDuck: a Stream Deck plugin that does real sidechain ducking, the same trick broadcast radio and podcast studios have used for decades, entirely from one key.

How it works: the moment your mic picks up your voice — or a conferencing app starts talking back — SpeechDuck automatically pulls your music/game/desktop audio down to whatever level you set, and brings it back up the instant you go quiet. One key arms/disarms the whole thing, and while it's running that same key doubles as a live level meter so you can see it's actually listening.

I use it every day just for my own listening, not only on stream — but this is genuinely one of those features that's way bigger for streaming than for solo use. Your viewers stop noticing your audio entirely, which is exactly the point: no more chat complaining that the music is drowning out you or your friends.

https://reddit.com/link/1vsnhka/video/i6fuoc436ckh1/player

What you can configure

• Triggers — any microphone, any output device, or a specific running app (Discord, a game, anything) — mix as many as you like. An app you add before it's even running gets picked up automatically the moment it launches.
• Targets — whatever gets turned down: music apps, games, or an entire output device, each with its own "volume while ducked" level.
• Attack / Sustain / Release — how fast it ducks, how long it stays down through pauses in speech, how gently it comes back up.
• Drag-to-set threshold directly on the live level meter — no guessing at numbers.
• Live meters everywhere — every trigger and target shows real signal level, in settings and right on the key.
• ~60Hz polling, so the reaction to your voice is effectively instant — no audible lag between the first syllable and the music dropping out of the way.
• 9 interface languages built into the settings panel (EN/DE/FR/ES/JA/KO/ZH-CN/ZH-TW/RU).

Get it

€9.99, one-time purchase, no subscription: https://marketplace.elgato.com/product/speechduck-ea695e8d-fe4e-4581-9319-ba1df369e49c

💻 GitHub (support, bug reports, feature requests): https://github.com/SquierStream/streamdeck-speechduck

Happy to answer questions about how the ducking/envelope math works, or take feature requests — this is actively maintained.

My other Stream Deck plugins, if you're into this kind of thing:

• 🎵 Now Playing for Dials — turns your Stream Deck+ touchscreen into a full-width media panel (album art, title, progress, shuffle/repeat) with volume on the dials: https://marketplace.elgato.com/product/now-playing-for-dials-cade76d9-d5ed-4f1d-a8d9-9a249cdf6a93
• 📊One Key System Monitor — five readings on a single key: CPU load and temperature, GPU load and temperature, and memory in use — as numbers, as bars, and as colour that shifts from green to amber to red while things heat up.: https://marketplace.elgato.com/product/one-key-system-monitor-be45d32e-38b8-4384-ad67-9d95e5f4ec59

One question for you all: would a free Demo version be worth putting together — 1 trigger, 1 target, English-only interface (so no multi-app setups or other languages, but honestly enough for the common "one mic ducks one thing" case)? Let me know if that's something people actually want before I put the work into shipping it.

>While I’m waiting for approval of my Stream Deck + media display plugin I wrote about here, I decided to share another one.

Saw a post from u/Mfn073 the other day — after trying a bunch of plugins I realized none did exactly what I wanted, so I built my own. Most performance plugins on the Marketplace eat up multiple keys. One Key System Monitor fits everything on one: CPU load and temperature, GPU load and temperature, and RAM usage — all five readings on a single key, with colour that shifts from green to amber to red as things heat up. Free, and currently awaiting Marketplace approval.

https://preview.redd.it/f1szwjqp9cih1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=5801961c0a2852e723f972f0232ad528102de124

Your Stream Deck can show what your PC is actually doing. One Key System Monitor puts five readings on a single key as numbers, as bars, and as colour that reacts in real time. No dashboard to open, no second monitor, no window in the way. A glance at one key tells you whether the render is finishing, whether the game is CPU‑bound, or whether memory is about to run out.

Four of the five readings work the moment you install it. CPU load and memory come from Windows itself, GPU load and temperature from your GPU driver (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel). CPU temperature is the exception because Windows doesn’t expose it without a driver: if you want it, install the free LibreHardwareMonitor and enable its web server; if you would rather not, switch that reading off in settings and the other four keep working.

https://preview.redd.it/ekvbpflr9cih1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=09defbbca756720bcf0c6e828ed590b5c2ae90b5

Setting it up:

1. Install the plugin and drag CPU / GPU / RAM onto any key. That’s it for CPU load, GPU load, GPU temperature and memory.
2. For CPU temperature: install LibreHardwareMonitor, run it as administrator, then enable Options → Remote Web Server → Run. Leave the port at 8085 unless you changed it, and set LibreHardwareMonitor to start with Windows.

Interface: English, German, Spanish, French, Russian. Requires Windows 10 or 11, Stream Deck software 6.9 or newer. GPU readings work with NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel graphics.