First a few words about my setup...
My Xbox is in my office, not connected to a TV but hooked up via the VGA cable accessory to my 19" LCD monitor. I then have a KVM that lets me switch from my PC to my Xbox with a double-tap of the Scroll Lock key. Very convenient. Since my office is upstairs two walls from our bedroom, I never game with external speakers on. Instead I use a set of Turtle Beach Ear Force X1 headphones.
Now back to the trick -
I am also Zune owner. When the new generation of Zune's came out, I did my research and took the plunge, opting against the against the Ipod classic. I have to say that overall I am a total Zune convert. I have an older Ipod and have no problems with it or the Apple software. The Zune just did so much more than what the ipod offered. Admittedly the software isn't as smooth as Apple's, but as you work with it you get to know its quirks and it's actually quite capable.
So this past Halo Friday, I connected my Zune to the 360 with the USB sync cable, and on the 360 dashboard flipped over to the media blade. I selected music, and there was Devil's Zune, listed and ready to go with no tweaking or installing needed. There in the interface were all of my playlists and music arranged by artist. I decided to create a playlist on the fly and within a few minutes I had about 70 songs ready to accompany a night of Halo 3 multiplayer mayhem! Some good songs for shooting your friends too - a good mixture of Rock, Techno, Metal, Industrial, all different kinds of blood pumping sounds. Then just hit shuffle, play, and start the game. As soon as the game boots up, there is your music playing in your ears.
Now this brings me back to the main point of my post. I NOW LOVE THIS WAY OF PLAYING MULTIPLAYER. The whole night, while engaged in pitched battles, I was jamming to some of my favorite tunes. I have to say that it really kept me in the game! And, I could still adjust the volume so that I could hear the game sound as well as the chat of my teammates. Finding that balance was really easy with the X1 headphones. And to bring this around full circle and why I explained my setup in the beginning, I think that using the headphones really made the experience what it was. The audio quality of the music right in my ears along with the game's sound effects and the voice chat, was not too much to handle and gave an overall entertainment experience that I wasn't prepared for. In a good way! I loved it! I can't wait 'till the next session so I can fire up the new multiplayer specific playlists that I've created. Mind you, I'm pretty sure this would totally ruin any single player game that you would play, as those are so scripted with content driven music and cutscenes, but in multiplayer where there is no soundtrack or in-game NPC exposition, it is a perfect fit!
I do suggest that you try it sometime, and if you don't have a Zune, I believe it also works with flash drives and can also pull media from other pc's on the network. If you don't play with headphones, but pipe the sound through your TV, I'm not sure that you would benefit from this neat trick, but if you use the hi-def sound from the Xbox or some good 5.1's, I'm willing to bet that it will sound pretty freaking cool.
Let me know if you try this. leave a comment and tell me what you think of the feature. I know that from now on, I'm only playing multiplayer to my own personal soundtrack!
Devil
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