How to Make Music Louder Than Game on PS5 (Quick Fix)

Here’s how to make music louder than game on PS5: change two volumes separately, the Music card’s slider in the Control Center and the music slider inside the game you’re playing. Most people only change one of them, which is why their playlist still gets buried under gunfire. The console fix comes first below. After that, for anyone building their own games, the second half covers how games split music from sound effects, with code, and how to make game music that sits well in a mix.

How to make music louder than game on PS5 (the quick answer)

Figuring out how to make music louder than game on PS5 doesn’t mean quitting the game or digging through system settings. The PS5 treats a music app such as Spotify as its own audio source with its own volume, separate from the game.

1. Start your music. Open Spotify (or another music app), start a playlist, then go back to your game.
2. Press the PS button on the DualSense controller. This opens the Control Center, the row of cards along the bottom of the screen.
3. Pick the Music card. It only shows up while a music app is playing. It has playback controls and its own volume slider.
4. Raise the music slider. Push it right. Your music gets louder and the game’s volume stays the same.
5. Lower the overall volume if you need to. The Sound card in the same Control Center sets the main output volume. Turn it down a little and the game gets quieter overall, then raise the music slider to make up for it.
6. Press the PS button again to close the Control Center and keep playing.

That’s the core of how to make music louder than game on PS5. Sony moves menu items around in system updates, so the card names can change slightly over time, but the idea stays the same: music has its own slider, separate from the main one.

Turn the game’s own music down

This is the half of how to make music louder than game on PS5 that most players skip, and it makes a bigger difference than any console slider. Almost every modern game has an audio menu with separate sliders for music, sound effects and dialogue. Open the pause menu, find Audio or Sound, and turn the in-game music down or all the way off. Leave sound effects and dialogue where you like them. Now your Spotify playlist isn’t fighting a second soundtrack, and you can still hear footsteps, reload cues and dialogue.

PS5 sound settings that affect the balance

The Control Center handles day-to-day changes. If you’re working out how to make music louder than game on PS5 with a headset, the full Settings menu matters too, because it covers the hardware side.

Settings > Sound > Audio Output

Go to Settings > Sound > Audio Output to choose where sound goes (TV, headset, controller) and adjust headset options. One of those options is sidetone: how much of your own voice you hear back through the headset while you talk. Sidetone has nothing to do with music, but if it’s turned up high it can make everything else feel quieter.

Game audio vs. voice chat balance

In a party or in-game voice chat, the Sound card also offers a balance between game audio and chat audio. People often confuse it with the music slider. It doesn’t touch Spotify. It only decides whether your friends or the game come through louder. If it looks greyed out, you’re probably not in a voice chat, so there’s nothing to balance.

Headset and controller volume

Many wireless headsets have their own volume wheel, and some have a separate game/chat dial. If music still sounds quiet after you’ve raised the PS5 slider, check the headset hardware. A headset plugged into the DualSense also follows the console’s volume controls, so adjust the Control Center first and then fine-tune on the headset.

Why is PS5 audio so low (and other common problems)?

Sometimes how to make music louder than game on PS5 isn’t the real problem: the whole console just sounds quiet. When that happens, the console is rarely the cause. Work through this list in order:

• TV or soundbar volume. The PS5’s main volume is a ceiling. If the TV is at 10%, raising the console slider won’t do much.
• Music app volume set low. The Music card’s slider remembers its last position. If you turned it down last session, it starts there today.
• In-game master volume. Some games have a master slider above the music and SFX sliders. If master is low, everything in that game is low.
• Dynamic range or “night mode” options. Some games squash loud and quiet sounds closer together, which can make the whole mix feel flat and quiet.
• Wrong output device. If sound is going to the controller speaker or a headset you aren’t wearing, it will seem like the TV went silent.

The opposite problem, the PS5 being too loud on the TV, is usually the main Sound slider sitting at maximum while the TV is also high. Lower the console slider, then set the TV to a comfortable level.

Mistakes people make when balancing music and game audio

A few habits stop the steps for how to make music louder than game on PS5 from working:

• Only raising the music slider. If the game’s soundtrack is still playing, you’re stacking two pieces of music on top of each other. Turn the game’s music off first.
• Muting the whole game. Turning the main volume to zero kills sound effects too, and in competitive games those cues are gameplay information. Lower the game’s music, not all of its sound.
• Confusing chat balance with music balance. The game/chat slider has no effect on Spotify.
• Forgetting the headset dial. A headset game/chat mix dial set to one extreme can make console changes look like they did nothing.

Once you’ve got the steps down, how to make music louder than game on PS5 becomes a ten-second habit: PS button, Music card, slider, done.

Why games ship separate music and sound volume sliders

If you make games, the reason this fix works at all is worth a closer look. The answer to how to make music louder than game on PS5 depends on something developers built: audio split into separate channels. Developers call these buses, meaning groups of sounds that share one volume control. A typical game has a music bus, a sound effects bus (gunshots, jumps, UI clicks) and a voice bus for dialogue, all feeding one master bus. A sound effect is any created or enhanced sound used to emphasise what happens on screen, and players want to control those separately from the soundtrack.

So the PS5 question is really a game design lesson. Players will play with their own music, mute your soundtrack, or turn down explosions late at night. If your game has a single volume slider, you’re forcing them to pick between your music and your sound cues. The trick only works because the games behind it ship separate sliders.

A music and SFX volume mixer in the browser

Here’s a small, complete example using the Web Audio API that runs in any modern browser. It creates a music bus and an SFX bus, loops a music track, and connects two HTML range sliders to the buses.

<label>Music <input id="music" type="range" min="0" max="1" step="0.01" value="0.6"></label>
<label>SFX <input id="sfx" type="range" min="0" max="1" step="0.01" value="0.8"></label>
<button id="jump">Play jump sound</button>

<script>
const ctx = new AudioContext();
const master = ctx.createGain();
const musicBus = ctx.createGain();
const sfxBus = ctx.createGain();

musicBus.connect(master);
sfxBus.connect(master);
master.connect(ctx.destination);

musicBus.gain.value = 0.6;
sfxBus.gain.value = 0.8;

const cache = {};
async function load(url) {
  if (!cache[url]) {
    const res = await fetch(url);
    cache[url] = await ctx.decodeAudioData(await res.arrayBuffer());
  }
  return cache[url];
}

async function play(url, bus, loop = false) {
  const src = ctx.createBufferSource();
  src.buffer = await load(url);
  src.loop = loop;
  src.connect(bus);
  src.start();
  return src;
}

function setVolume(bus, value) {
  // Smooth the change to avoid clicks
  bus.gain.setTargetAtTime(value, ctx.currentTime, 0.05);
}

document.getElementById('music').addEventListener('input', e =>
  setVolume(musicBus, Number(e.target.value)));
document.getElementById('sfx').addEventListener('input', e =>
  setVolume(sfxBus, Number(e.target.value)));

// Browsers only allow audio after a user gesture
document.addEventListener('click', async () => {
  await ctx.resume();
  play('music.mp3', musicBus, true);
}, { once: true });

document.getElementById('jump').addEventListener('click', () =>
  play('jump.wav', sfxBus));
</script>

Two details are worth copying into a real project. setTargetAtTime ramps the volume smoothly instead of jumping, which avoids audible clicks. Save the slider values to localStorage so players don’t have to set them again every session. If you build with WizardGenie, the AI game engine in Sorceress, describe the settings menu you want (“add separate music and SFX volume sliders to the pause menu”) and it writes, runs and iterates on the code for you.

Mix tips that make players reach for the slider less

• Duck the music under dialogue. Lower the music bus briefly while a character speaks, then bring it back.
• Keep music under the important cues. If the music is as loud as a warning sound, players miss the warning.
• Default music a little lower than SFX. Many players run their own playlists, and a slightly quieter soundtrack is easy to turn up.

How to make music for a game with Music Gen

Once your game has a music bus, it needs something to play on it. Video game music started out limited to the beeps of early sound chips. Today a soundtrack can be anything from chiptune to full orchestra or vocal tracks, which makes it hard for a beginner to know where to start. If you want to make video game music with no experience, the shortest route is to describe the track you need and generate it.

Music Gen is the Sorceress tool for this. It creates full vocal or instrumental tracks from a text prompt, right in the browser. Each generation uses AI credits. For game work, a practical way to use it:

1. Write one prompt per game state. Menu, exploration, combat and boss fights each need a different energy. Describe the mood, tempo and instruments, for example “tense instrumental synth track, steady pulse, no vocals, for a stealth level.”
2. Prefer instrumental for gameplay. Vocals compete with dialogue and sound cues. Keep vocal tracks for title screens, credits or trailers.
3. Generate a few takes and pick the one that still sounds right after a few minutes of play. Background music has to hold up on repeat.
4. Drop the track onto your music bus and test it against your loudest sound effects at the default slider values.

For more on making tracks loop cleanly under gameplay, see the guide on how to make music for a game as a loop bed.

Filling the other buses

Music is one bus out of three. Sound Studio puts AI music, sound effects and text-to-speech with voice cloning in one place, plus a built-in audio editor for trimming. That covers the SFX bus, so you don’t have to rely only on stock sound effects (prerecorded sounds made to be reused across many productions) that players have heard in a hundred other games. It also covers the voice bus, since modern speech synthesis can produce narration and NPC lines without a recording booth. For a map of every tool, see the Sorceress tools guide.

The workflow at a glance

For players, how to make music louder than game on PS5 comes down to three moves, plus two checks if it’s still not right:

Goal	Where	What to do
Louder music	Control Center > Music card	Raise the music slider
Quieter game	Control Center > Sound card	Lower the main volume slightly
No soundtrack clash	Game’s pause menu > Audio	Turn the in-game music down or off
Friends vs. game	Sound card in a party	Use the chat audio balance
Still too quiet	TV, headset	Check TV volume and headset dials

For developers, the lesson works the other way round: the answer to how to make music louder than game on PS5 only exists because games give players a choice. Split your audio into music, SFX and voice buses, put a slider on each, save the settings, and default the music slightly under the gameplay cues. Then fill the music bus with tracks from Music Gen and the rest with Sound Studio. Your players get a mix they can adjust, whether they keep your soundtrack or play their own playlist over it.