How to play audio from multiple apps on a smart phone (Samsung)

Mobiles are great multimedia devices, but – while they often allow visual multitasking (two or more apps open on the screen at the same time) – unlike a standard PC they don’t often allow different apps to play multiple audio streams at the same time – beyond sounding alerts while you have music or a video/podcast playing. Why might you want to have multiple audio streams playing at the same time?

• Playing your own choice of music for games that allow you to disable the game’s own music without turning off other in-game sounds.
• Listening to music while working through training apps, such as language training apps or other quizzing apps, that read text to you, or play a sounds when a correct/wrong answer is given. If you do this currently, you may have got used to in-app audio stopping playback of a music app, or the music volume dips, then returns to normal level after a celebration sound is heard.
• Adding background music to podcasts and talking-heads-type videos/media.
• Some people like to add ambience to their spoken-word media – emulating a cafe, pub or other real-world spaces – to make podcasts/audiobooks more comforting.

Without exploiting system and application bugs, if you own a Samsung smart phone there’s a solution. Up steps Sound Assistant, among its many features, it allows you to enable multiple apps (or just one specific app) to play audio at the same time.

Enable “All apps” or just your preferred music/background audio app. If you enable just one app, if you play audio from two apps you haven’t enabled for multi-audio, they will operate in mutually exclusive mode – so the most recent app played will stop all other playback.

In addition to enabling multitasking of audio, it provides an optional custom floating volume widget that when opened fully, lets you change the volume of each app. Each app volume is saved for the next time you use the same audio app, and each app’s custom volume setting can be updated/deleted inside Sound Assistant via the “Individual app” settings page, without playing audio through any apps.