Hey you, fellow soldier! Any shmoe can throw a couple vinyls up on the ol' 78 and put their feet up for the rest of the day, but it takes a real musical connoisseur to make their own dynamic, constantly-updating, canon-fitting radio stream, using any of their own MP3 files (without any type of converting!)

Here's how:

1) Get Winamp, it's a music player like Windows Media Player or VLC Media but it has plugins available that we'll need to use:

Winamp:
http://www.winamp.com/

2) Use this skin for Winamp as well since it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome and fits the retro sound we're going for, plus the equalizer switches and such are right there for you to tweak without any dumb menus or whatever. Just get it alright?

ZDL Retro Gold skin:
http://winampheritage.com/skin/zdl-gold-stack-mk-ii-reel-to-reel/153866

3) Once those are installed, you're also gonna need this reverb/speaker simulator plugin:

http://winampheritage.com/plugin/reverb-and-speaker-simulator/144852

4) Alright, all of the downloads are finished! There's only two things left to setup. At the bottom of your ZDL Retro Winamp should be a series of equalizer switches you can move up and down, set them up to look like mine here:

Note: You can also click the button my mouse cursor is near when you're done setting up the equalization and save it as a preset for later if you'd like.

5) If you play a song now it'll sound very gritty and old-school already, but it's still missing that shot of crackling distortion to make it sound properly authentic. This is where the plugin you installed earlier comes in. Use Ctrl + P to open up your plugins window, and all you have to do is double-click the "reverb/speaker simulator" listing and it will apply the effect automatically. I use its default settings as I feel they're just fine, but you could probably achieve a more exaggerated effect if you mess around with it. Not recommended.

6) Find some good music to play through your new vinyl-filter and enjoy. Even Rick Ross can sound appropriate through the effects. I've been using this preset for just about every game that could have proper-fitting radio channels but didn't come with them for some reason (Battlefield and Fallout mainly), and it makes playing the game 10x more enjoyable since your own music sounds like it's actually emitting somewhere within the game world.

For a sound example, check these videos:

Keep calm, drop bombs, and sing along to your favorite song.