Ever wanted to hang out in the Slytherin common room, or Gryffindor’s, or any of the other houses? Or, maybe, on a balcony in Rivendell? Madam Vastra’s arboretum, perhaps? Or maybe a snowy day in Skyrim?

Well, y’can’t. But I did just stumble across an ambient sounds site that will let you make the room you’re in feel a bit like those places might, by creating the right audio environment. It’s called Ambient Mixer, and it lets you set up your own environmental soundtrack, as well as both play and modify those set up by others.

It’s pretty neat – it works by playing public domain sound samples that you can set up to loop, with things like placement and randomisation so it’s not just the same 120 seconds or whatever over and over again. So occasionally you’ll hear someone through the room, or pages in a book might turn, or the fire might make occasional other noises, the wind will pick up outside, or you’ll hear a hawk – and so on.

In some cases, it works really well to turn off any of the specific instruments if present (like the ‘spirit cello’ in Skyrim) and play it along to the soundtrack album, if one is available. I’m doing that right now, combining the Skyrim snowy day ambient audio with the OST, and it’s astonishingly effective.

It’s fun to play with, and certainly soothing. Also, it’s reminding me real hard right now about how much I miss Skyrim and am looking forward to the PS4 remastered version coming out soon. Because damn, that was a great game.