Have a non-DirectX game. For music, we have MP3's and for sound, WAV files. We use the Microsoft Media Player to play them during the game, and on most systems, everything's fine. But one some systems with combo sound cards (laptops) or old (not ancient) sound cards such as Ensonique Audio PCI, there are problems. This only occurs when the sound effects and music are playing simultaneously. Problem 1 is that the game slows down dramatically The sound effects don't play and the music "skips." Problem 2 is that the whole shebang crashes with an Automation Error. The code for the error translates to "unknown error." Again, this is on a minority of systems, and I think we can at least patch to trap and prevent the crash. The problem seems unrelated to the speed of the PC or the fidelity of the MP3 files. Unfortunately, we don't have a rotten sound card to test it on yet, and the problem is intermittent. If anyone has any info on this, I'd really appreciate it. Edited by - dan_s on October 4, 2001 10:27:16 AM

Hmm, I dont know much about sound/mp3 implimentation, but Im guessing that older soundcards cant process all the wave information at once.
I suggest that you try raising the sound buffer, that usually solves these kinds of problems

You could perhaps use the FMOD API (http://www.fmod.org). It can play MP3 and WAVs, it''s very easy to use and does not require DirectX (I''m not 100% sure, check the doc).