System sluggish with audio

[Junior <ejr@inbox.com>]

Hi all,
I'm looking for some advice or suggestions in getting better performance when playing an audio file.

My system is rather sluggish whenever an audio file is played. I've played it with utilities such as bplay and libraries such as sndfile but neither method made a difference.
Perhaps there is another way, direct maybe with ioctls? or midi files instead of wav files? Would these method make a difference? I don't see how but perhaps someone can enlighten me.
Basically I would like the audio to be played but still have a responsive system? How can I do that?

Thanks.
--Jr.