Listen to music while gaming

Any good ideas to listen to music while gaming?

what is best to not losing gaming performance?

I want to listen to my own tracks but also listen to the game's sound effects.

I'll try Winamp now, but any help regarding whick program/plug ins/settings I should use will be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

 

i don't think u can do that. unless u have windows 7 as u can control the mixer for each app.. so u can adjust the volume...

 

I use windows media player and I pretty much play music all time when I play games. Racing to my music in Grid makes that game even better, but when I play like Battlefield BC2 I just listen to music in between loading screens. I don't know about your laptop but mine has music play controls on the outside where I can pause/play/next/back my music however I want and it is linked to windows media player.

I would suggest getting a keyboard with play controls so you can control your music without having to alt tab out. As for performance wise it does not use much resources and my games play fine.

 

Another option is to plug a Mp3 player into the Line In on your laptop or pc. I set the Line In volume on my laptop quite high and then use the Mp3 players volume control. You just need a male to male stereo cable from your headphone out on the Mp3 player and plug it into Line In on your laptop.

 

Foobar2000 is every (minimalist) gamer's friend. Most games have a separate "music volume" and "sound effects volume". Just lower the music volume but keep the sound effects up. Then play your music.

 

I'm a regular with Media Player playing during game play, though almost exclusively on multiplayer games only. I set the music at a non-overpowering level of course so the game's music doesn't get masked. Some laptops have seperate media player controls, for play/pause, forward/previous, and almost all outboard keyboards now have media keys too.

 

I don't know why I didn't think of that... Anyways how do you configure it to play Line In on your laptop? Because I am going through all my speaker config and can't seem to make it work.

 

i wish steam had a music player integrated into their overlay feature.
but then, every players would be listening to music and ruining gameplay.. haha

 

XFire has a music player integrated into their overlay, if anyone's interested.

 

I would suggest that you to use Winamp. You can even attach shortcuts for next, previous, stop, pause etc.

 

I simply use Windows Media Player to listen to music while playing games.

 

I use spotify its the best

 

I agree with the dude who said foobar. Uses minimal resources. Just adjust the in-game background music to zero and play your own music. I do it all the time for RTS. Doesn't make sense for shooters though, since hearing everything (gunshots, movement, steps) is pretty important.

 

My iPod speaker dock doubles as my computer speakers, so I just use the remote to control my iPod and let it handle music. I can use the headphone jack of my dock and still get computer sounds+iPod.

 

I tried Winamp and works great. I didn't notice any performance loss (but I'm not compusively counting fps, though).

My XPS has media buttons, which I can use to control winamp while in game.

Playing Left 4 Dead to the sound of Napalm Death and Suffocation is a very fulfilling experience...

 

Even though I have dedicated media buttons, I still love this new feature of Xfire. If you want volume, playlists, media buttons etc. Use Xfire with winamp or windows media player. It works great and you won't have to alt tab out of the game.

Also it depends on the game, and/or map. For instance, in racing games it's max music+game, for mw/mw2, I keep the music at about 15-30% volume with the game's volume at max to hear footsteps. Sniper maps and/or playing in hardcore game modes(no HUD or mini map), I keep music paused or muted to hear the direction of bullets being fired and the precise direction of footsteps of people behind me or around corners.