Make PlaySound non-blocking

Question

I've been testing sounds and I noticed that PlaySound is blocking, i.e. it waits until the sound has finished playing to return.

#include <iostream>
#include <Windows.h>
#include <mmsystem.h>

int main()
{
    PlaySound("E:/Downloads/eb_sfx_archive/brainshock.wav", 0, SND_FILENAME);
    std::cout << "this sound is cool";
    Sleep (500);
    std::cout << "\nmeh... not really";
    return 0;
}

This code plays the sound, but it waits to output "this sound is cool" until after the sound has finished playing. How can I make it not do that?

Answer 1

Play the sound asynchronously:

PlaySound(L"E:\\Downloads\\eb_sfx_archive\\brainshock.wav", NULL, SND_ASYNC);

From the MSDN documentation:

The sound is played asynchronously and PlaySound returns immediately after beginning the sound. To terminate an asynchronously played waveform sound, call PlaySound with pszSound set to NULL.

Answer 2

Play the sound asynchronously using the flag SND_ASYNC.

I.e:

PlaySound("E:/Downloads/eb_sfx_archive/brainshock.wav", 0, SND_FILENAME | SND_ASYNC);

The SND_ASYNC flag causes PlaySound to return immediately without waiting for the sound to finish playing.

Also, if you need to stop playing a sound (looped or asynchronous) without playing another sound, use the following statement:

PlaySound(NULL, NULL, 0);

More info and examples here (Using PlaySound to Loop Sounds) and here (PlaySound function).