Computer sound technical question - can you play mp3s during a game with sound FX?

[KrazyHorse]

Re: Computer sound technical question - can you play mp3s during a game with sound FX

Originally posted by Az
Is there anyway to play mp3s and gamesounds at the same time?

One can, IIRC, play CD music and game music at the same time, but when you launch winamp, for example, during a game, it will show you a small error message about the the device being occupied. ( this is because CD music is played through a different... umm.. thingee.

So, can you somehow bypass that? ( without ripping your MP3s on CDs, of course)

Uh...depends on the game. I can often play mp3s and games with sound at the same time.

Might also depend on your sound card (how many something or others it has)

[Qilue]

Oh, to answer the original question, yes you can play mp3s at the same time as a game, or at least it should be possible depending on how many channels the game is using. Most modern sound cards support multiple sound channels with average being around 16 channels.

What this means is you could simultaineously play as many mp3s as there are sound channels on your sound card. It's would sound awful though.

[KrazyHorse]

channels. that's the word I was looking for

[Az]

Qilue, how the hell do I check this stuff?

[Qilue]

What kind of sound card do you have?

[Kassiopeia]

The soundcard on my machine bought back in 1998 could not do it - it's possible yours can't either. All I know is I remember being flabbergasted when one of the truths of my universe (only one source of sound at a time may be heard) was shattered when I bought a new computer.

[Az]

some sort of ancient bull****.

Creative Vibra 128

[Qilue]

That card should be able to do it. The problem might be either Winamp or the game demanding sole use of the sound card.

Have you tried using windows media player? While it doesn't have all of winamp's bells and whistles, it also tends to be more polite about how much of your computer's resources to use.

[Az]

t3h hilarity: it supposedly plays, but all I hear is the annoying drums of civ2.

[Qilue]

So winamp was the culprit. The volume issue I'm not sure on how to fix though. Is the Civ2 drums a midi file or a wav file?

[Az]

Maybe I should've made myself clearer. I don't hear anything. It just doesn't give an error message, and the progress thingee moves.

[Qilue]

That means it's working but the sound is muted somehow.

[Tattila the Hun]

Hold on, Vibra? Isn't that integrated on motherboard?
I have SB128PCI, the same chip, but on it's own card... I've had winamp give me similar errors for no apparent reason, they have usually disappeared after reboot.

Be sure to get latest drivers for it, if that isn't obvious.

[Az]

Hold on, Vibra? Isn't that integrated on motherboard?

No.

Have they been updating the drivers for this card, actually? That would come as quite the surprise.

[Az]

New drivers, same error.

Actually with DirectSound output it says " bad directsound driver" or somesuch.