Bilano

One dial to balance game audio against voice chat on Windows. Drag toward Game and your chat apps fade down; drag toward Chat and the game does. No virtual audio driver, no installer, no runtime — a single 3 MB .exe.

The name is from Latin bilanx, "two scale-pans" — the root of the word balance. One beam, a pan on each side.

• 🪶 Tiny — a single self-contained .exe (~3 MB). No installer, no drivers, no .NET.
• 🎚️ One dial — slide from Game to Chat; the other side fades down, center = both full.
• 🎧 Per-app — tag which apps are voice chat (Discord, etc.); everything else is "game".
• 🔊 Per-app volume + mute — trim any app under its group level.
• ⌨️ Global hotkeys — adjust the mix without leaving your game.
• 🧹 Clean — no background driver; restores every app to full volume on quit.

Same idea as the game/chat balance dial built into some gaming headsets — but done in software, so it works with any headset and there's nothing to install.

If you came here looking for chatmix for a headset that doesn't have it, or without installing a vendor audio driver to get it: that's what this is.

bilano website → — try the dial in your browser before you download anything.

Install

1. Download the latest Bilano-vX.Y.Z-win64.zip from the Releases page.
2. Unzip and run bilano.exe.
3. The app isn't code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen will warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway. Your antivirus may also flag/quarantine an unknown unsigned exe; whitelist the folder if needed.

Requires 64-bit Windows 10/11. Nothing else to install.

Each release also publishes SHA256SUMS.txt so you can check what you downloaded. See the changelog for what changed between versions.

Usage

• Drag the slider toward Game to fade voice chat down, toward Chat to fade the game down. Center = both at full volume.
• In the Apps list, tick the apps that are voice chat. You can also add one by name.
• Tray icon: left-click opens the window; right-click gives a quick tag list + Quit.
• Global hotkeys (work in-game):
  • Ctrl+Alt+← — toward Chat
  • Ctrl+Alt+→ — toward Game
  • Ctrl+Alt+↓ — re-center
• Closing the window hides it to the tray; quit from the tray menu.
• Start with Windows and your settings are remembered between runs.

Settings are stored at %APPDATA%\bilano\config.json.

Upgrading from ChatMix 1.x? Bilano is the same app, renamed. On first launch it moves your old %APPDATA%\chatmix config across, so your tags, trims and mutes carry over, and it repoints "Start with Windows" at the new exe. Delete the old chatmix.exe afterwards.

How it works

Windows gives every app that plays sound its own volume via the Core Audio API. Bilano simply ducks those per-app volumes: it classifies each app as Chat or Game and, as you move the dial, attenuates the opposite group using a smooth decibel taper. No virtual audio device is created — which is why it's a single small exe with nothing to install. Everything is restored to full volume when you quit.

Build from source

Requires the Rust MSVC toolchain (rustup) and the MSVC build tools + Windows SDK.

cargo build --release
# output: target\release\bilano.exe

The release profile links the CRT statically (.cargo/config.toml), so the exe has no external runtime dependency. See CLAUDE.md for the full architecture notes and build gotchas.

Roadmap

• Per-app volume + mute (v1.6)
• Chat/Game sections with live re-grouping; resizable window; compact footer; start-in-tray autostart (v1.7)
• Renamed to Bilano; first public release (v2.0)
• MIDI / hardware-knob binding for a physical dial

License

MIT — use it, fork it, ship it. Just keep the copyright notice.