Can I use my own music instead of the in game radio stations?

Question

I'm tired of listening to the same old songs over and over again on the radio in Saints Row 3. (Much like real life!)

Is it possible to create custom radio stations and/or custom playlists using my own MP3 collection on my computer?

(This ignores the obvious solution of using a music player external to the game. Such a solution is not ideal as the music would continue to play over the in-game cinematics.)

Answer 1

Yes you can, you'll need to mod your game. Here's a good walk-through for doing that including the tools you'll need.

Basically, you'll need to:

1. Modify files in steamapps/common/saints row the third/packfiles/pc/cache
2. Extract the audio files from the radio_*_media.bnk_pc files (or a specific station you want)
3. Transcode your audio files to vorbis (the link gives you details of the encoding options you need), they'll have the .ogg extension.
4. Change the metadata for the bnk_pc file so that they point to your new songs (there's 2 files you need to change)
5. Repack the radio station files using PackVPP and copy it into steamapps/common/saints row the third/packfiles/pc/cache

Answer 2

My solution isn't perfect, but you won't need to modify your game... use your choice of media player (ie: Windows Media Player or RealPlayer) in the background.

I'd recommend foobar2000 as its' comparably light-weight setup allows it to run in the background with no stutters or skips in music playback.

No mods, no complex file rewrites, no (major) problems.

That said, if someone actually makes a mod so we can add our own music into the game, I'd go for it.

Answer 3

Get dual monitor system and probably use a music player on one monitor and the game on the other monitor. This way when there is dialogue you can easily just switch to the second monitor and turn off the music. Admittedly not many people can be bothered getting a dual monitor display (I don't even have one) but for this type of thing it is just perfect. Since SR3 uses .ogg you need to get the file converted from the newer .mp3 format anyway and most of the converters are dodgy at best.

Short Answer: Pay up or Pack up ;)

EDIT: Another solution to this problem is to let the game play from your monitor speakers, but use an external device (phone, tablet, laptop, etc) and plug that into some external speakers. Again this requires money but it would allow you to turn down the volume when dialogue is happening on screen but you can still have music without having to TAB out of the game and restart the music.

Short Edit Answer: Pay up or Pack up... again ;D