Greetings, I use VB6 to create my games and am straggling with API functions to manage the sound effects and background music in my games. However, I thought it would be a good idea to use a third party engine that saves the overhead of massing with the audio aspects of the game. Any suggestions? (preferably free...) Thanks. [Edited by - jsbach on May 6, 2006 5:22:53 AM]

First of all, I'd strongly suggest that you abandon VB6. Microsoft have a free top-notch modern Visual Basic IDE:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/

Once you have that intalled, you might be interested in FMOD. They have VB wrappers, you can find those at http://www.fmod.org/. You need the FMOD Ex version.

FMOD is free as long as your games are free.

Another option is ofcourse Managed DirectSound, but you will encounter problems if you want compressed music in the game.

I've recently written an article on how to use FMOD with C#, which you might find helpful even though you use VB. The link is in my signature.

Good luck!

I'm aware of the need to move to vb.net, but the transition ought to be painfull if you have thousands of line code that mast be upgraded. But I know it will be done some day...
Thanks for the article, I'll try to cope with Fmod under vb6, and will be back in case of any problem...
Thanks!