Music and Audio
Vū Studio can play music and other audio on a connected player — either on its own as background sound, or alongside whatever is on the display. This page covers audio that lives in your Vū Studio library: files you upload, folders of music you play through, and soundtracks attached to a scene.
Two Different Capabilities
Read this first: there are two separate ways to get music onto a Vū display, and they work nothing alike. Picking the wrong one is the most common source of confusion.
| Library audio (this page) | Music Media Playback (Windows) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the audio comes from | Audio files you uploaded into your Vū Studio library | Whatever is already playing on the Windows machine — Spotify, YouTube, another media player |
| Who owns the files | You do; they are stored in your library | The other application does; Vū Studio never sees the files |
| What Vū Studio does | Plays your files through the connected player | Synchronizes with, and gives you transport control over, the audio session already running on Windows |
| Needs another app running? | No | Yes — the source app must be playing on the Windows machine |
| Documented in | This page | Cloud Integrations → Music Media Playback (Windows) |
If you want a specific set of tracks you control and can hand to a colleague, upload them to the library and use the features on this page. If you want the wall to follow along with a Spotify playlist someone is already playing on the Windows machine, that is the Windows integration — see Music Media Playback (Windows) →.
Uploading Audio Files to the Library
Audio files go into the library the same way images and videos do.
- Open the Asset Library at
one.vu.studio/library/uploads— click the Vū Studio icon to go Home → click Asset Library → open Uploads. - Navigate into the folder you want the music to live in. A dedicated folder per playlist or per room is the easiest thing to manage later.
- Click the Add Media (➕) button in the toolbar above the library grid and choose File.
- Drop your files onto the dialog, or click browse files and pick them.
- Wait for processing to finish. The files then appear as tiles in the folder.
Uploads need the browser to stay open until the transfer completes; processing on Vū's servers continues without it. Audio counts against the same storage allowance as everything else in your library — check it on the Account page (profile menu → Account).
See Uploading Media → for the full upload flow, processing details, and storage management.
Supported Audio File Types
MP3 is the most widely used format and the safest default. Vū Studio also recognizes the common web-playable audio types:
| Extension | Format |
|---|---|
.mp3 | MPEG audio — recommended |
.m4a | MPEG-4 audio |
.aac | AAC |
.wav | WAV |
.flac | FLAC |
.oga | Ogg audio |
.caf | Core Audio Format |
Anything outside this set is treated as an unsupported format — see When a Song Cannot Be Played below.
The Music Player
Background music is controlled from the Device Settings panel — the sliders icon in the top-right header of Vū Studio. Click it and the panel opens with the music player at the top, above the display brightness and master Volume (%) sliders.
Device Settings is only available while you are connected to a Vū Media Server. When nothing is connected the button is disabled and reads Unavailable without connected Vū Media Server. See Connecting a Player →.
The music player has:
- a source dropdown listing what it can play,
- the now-playing title and artwork for the current track,
- previous track, play / pause, and next track buttons,
- a Volume slider for the music, independent of the player's master volume.
The first entry in the source dropdown is always the system entry. It reads System - No Media when nothing is playing on the Windows machine, or System - app name when it can see a live session — selecting it hands control back to that Windows audio session rather than playing anything of Vū's own. That entry is the Windows integration, not library audio.
Below the system entry sit the built-in music channels — Classical, Uplifting Acoustic, Luxury Chill, Focus Music, Summer Vibes, Jazz Hits, Pop Hits, and Rock Hits — for when you want background music without curating anything yourself. Pick a channel and it starts streaming; the transport buttons skip within it.
Playing Music from a Folder
To play your own uploaded tracks instead of a built-in channel, point the music player at a folder of music in your library.
- Upload your audio files into a folder — see Uploading Audio Files to the Library above. Keep one folder per set of music; the folder is the unit the player works with.
- Connect to the player you want the music on (
one.vu.studio/library/uploads— Home → Asset Library, then use the connection indicator in the top bar). See Connecting a Player →. - Open Device Settings (sliders icon, top-right header) and choose your music folder as the source in the music player.
- Playback begins at the first track and moves through the folder. Use next track / previous track to move around, play / pause to hold, and the Volume slider to set the level.
Things worth knowing:
- The player uses the files that sit directly in the folder. Subfolders are not pulled in — put everything you want in the rotation at the top level of that folder.
- Music from a folder is background audio for the player. It is independent of what is on the display, so it keeps going while you cast images, switch scenes, or run a playlist.
- Because the folder is read from the library, adding a track to the folder makes it available to the music player — you do not have to rebuild anything.
Adding Audio to a Scene
A scene saves a composition — the assets on the wall, their layer order, lighting, and playback settings — so you can recall the whole state later. Adding an audio file to a scene means the scene carries its own soundtrack: recall the scene and the music comes back with the visuals.
- Set the scene up as you normally would: cast your background, add your layers, set the lighting.
- Add the audio file from your library to the scene alongside the visual layers.
- Set the level you want the track to play at.
- Save the scene — open the Save Scene dialog from the player controls, name it, choose a folder, and click Save.
When you later load that scene, the soundtrack starts with it. Loading a different scene replaces the composition, soundtrack included.
Use this when a look and its sound belong together — an ambient bed behind a lobby scene, a stinger under an opening slate, room tone for a briefing set. For music that should run continuously across scene changes, use the music player instead (see above); a scene's audio is part of the scene and changes when the scene does.
When a Song Cannot Be Played
Vū Studio does not stop a music session because of one bad file. When a track cannot be played — the file was deleted, you no longer have access to it, it is in a format Vū Studio does not support, or it fails to load — that track is skipped and playback continues with the next one. Where a track is skipped, you are told rather than left guessing: the item is reported instead of failing silently in the background.
If tracks are being skipped:
- Check the format. Convert anything outside the supported list to MP3 and re-upload it.
- Check the file is still there. A track that was deleted, or moved into a folder you no longer have access to, cannot be resolved.
- Check the upload finished. A file that never completed processing will not play.
- Check the folder. Only files directly in the selected folder are used.
If nothing plays at all, confirm you are still connected to the player — Device Settings and the music player are unavailable without a connected Vū Media Server — and that the music Volume slider and the player's master Volume (%) are both up.
Volume and Mixing
Three volume controls can be in play at once, and they stack:
| Control | Where | What it affects |
|---|---|---|
| Volume (music player) | Device Settings → music player | The background music only |
| Volume (%) (master) | Device Settings | Everything the player outputs |
| Per-item volume | Side remote, on the playing asset or playlist | The video or playlist currently on the display |
Set the master level once for the room, then balance music against video with the music player's own Volume slider. A playlist has its own Volume control in the side remote — see Playlists →.
Audio is muted while the screen saver is running, and returns when the screen saver ends.
Related Pages
- Uploading Media → — the full upload flow, processing, and storage limits
- The Library → — folders, search, and asset actions
- Playlists → — ordered sequences of visual content, with their own volume control
- Scenes → — saved compositions that can carry a soundtrack
- Cloud Integrations → Music Media Playback (Windows) — synchronizing with audio already playing on the Windows machine