BEST way to install custom music

How to quickly import music to your iDroid and save valuable hard drive space.

Notice

YES, YOU CAN JUST COPY AND PASTE. SO IF YOU PREFER THAT METHOD, PLEASE STOP COMMENTING THAT IT'S BETTER. 10 OTHER PEOPLE ALREADY DID. IF YOU WANT AN ALTERNATE METHOD, PLEASE READ ON! THANK YOU!

If you are experiencing a second of lag when your heli music plays, try to disable hard drive power management options in "Control Panel > Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced power settings."


For external USB drives, disable power management for your USB driver in "Control Panel > Device Manager > Universal Serial bus Controllers" and go through all USB controllers and turn off any power managment options.



Shoutout to Mario for this tip!

Introduction

In this guide, I will explain how to quickly import your music into MGS5 and save valuable hard drive space using SYMBOLIC LINKS. Basically, symbolic linking acts like a file shortcut, tricking windows into thinking the file is actually there, but it's actually in another folder or hard drive altogether. A PHANTOM file, if you will. :P

This guide can also be used for any game or application that allows users to import custom music. Why not just copy and paste, you may ask? Sure, that works if you plan to import only a couple of songs. But what if you wanted to import 30 songs or 100 songs? Copying and pasting takes time and can take up space on your hard drive.

In this guide I will go over using Hard Link Shell Extension. I use this myself and I fully recommend it, especially dealing with music. With this, you can simply select any files you want and creating symbolic links via context menu. It's fast and convienent.

If you want to do it yourself via Command Line, read this article @ howtogeek:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

Where it all goes

To find the folder we need to dump out files into:

• Open up your Steam Library and right click your Metal Gear Solid 5 game. Then, click "Properties".
  
  
• Click the "Local Files" tab and click "Browse local files..." at the bottom.
  
• You should now see the folder we need, "CustomSoundtrack".
  

Downloading "Hard Link Shell Extension"

Now we need to download the software. Click here[schinagl.priv.at]. Scroll down to Downloads and download the appropriate redistributable before downloading the program. To find out if you have 32 bit or 64 bit, click here[windows.microsoft.com].
Download and install.

Using the software

Now we are going to actually use the software.

• Go to the directory where your desired music is. Select all the MP3 files, then right click. Then, click "Pink Link Source". This tells Hard Shell Link Extension what files to create symbolic links for.
  
  
• Now, go back to your "CustomSoundtrack" folder and open it, then right click in an empty space. Then click "Drop Symbolic Link". If you want to cancel the operation, click "Cancel Link Creation."
  
  
  
• You should now see your selected MP3s in the folder.
  
  
  
• And to make sure they're actually symbolic links, we'll check via CMD prompt:
  
  
  
• As you can see, the files are actually stored in another drive, "I:", but the links trick the OS into thinking it's actually in this directory.

Conclusion

You're done! Now go in-game and in your iDroid, open up your Casette menu and listen to your songs!



Setting a track as Heli music works too!



And that's all there is to it! I hope you find this guide useful, not just for this game but for any game you encounter that has a custom music feature. :)

[bijumbas]

tried it, doesnt work, not sure what im missing here it might be bc of youtube to mp3 idk
thanks for replying!

[SkullEmoji]

Hey, does copying and pasting a song work? Otherwise, the game may have changed how it reads songs.

[bijumbas]

hi! does this still work? i added some MGS songs i liked to the CustomSoundtrack folder ages ago, just by dragging mp3s in, no hassle whatsoever, but today i tried adding some 70s/80s songs i liked to the CustomSoundtrack folder and deleted the MGS songs from before, and it just wont work.

anytime i open the game and try to play the music i added it skips through all of them down to where Sands would be (i removed it so it doesnt play), does the game know if a song is copyrighted or something? anyways i tried using this with (presumably) the most recent 64 version of Hard Link Shell or whatever, but it still does the skipping thing and no songs will play.

is there something i missed?

[SkullEmoji]

Steam skin:
https://metroforsteam.com/

[easyg]

How does your steam look so clean?!?!?!?!

[SeBauT]

works too in gta v, thanks pal

[FLACCID SNAKE]

How does your steam look so good? 0_o

[pitsa]

I just add mp3 files to customtrack folder :D and restart game and it work :D

[Patacon-pisao]

It works for me and its not really that dificult to learn, thank you.

[Balthor]

@Chinpo Omanko ッ This is weird.... It seems restarting my PC removes the lag, but only for some time: after 4-5 hours it goes back to having some random lag spikes. The weirdest thing is, it still lags in the exact same songs. Dammit Kojima, even the way your game reads custom music is a mistery! XD