Okay in my game, I have background music, currently it is in: 'al_play_sample(bg_music, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, ALLEGRO_PLAYMODE_LOOP, NULL);'

but when I pause the game I want the sample to pause.

How could I do that? Or do I have to make a stream! and If so how do I make a stream?

Okay here's how its working

if (bg_music_on == false) {
al_stop_samples();
al_play_sample(bg_music, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, ALLEGRO_PLAYMODE_LOOP, NULL);
bg_music_on = true;
} else {
al_stop_samples();
bg_music_on = false;
}

When I press enter it runs through that if..else, bg_music_on is false at first.

When I press enter again and it starts the sample, it restarts it. How do I make it pause? or turn the gain down

In this case you're better of not using the simple audio API, but using the more advanced API.

You'd do something like this:

/* Level initialization */
ALLEGRO_SAMPLE_INSTANCE* bg_music_instance = al_create_sample_instance(bg_music);
al_attach_sample_instance_to_mixer(bg_music_instance, al_get_default_mixer());
al_set_sample_instance_playmode(bg_music_instance, ALLEGRO_PLAYMODE_LOOP);
al_play_sample_instance(bg_music_instance);

/* Game paused */
al_set_sample_instance_playing(bg_music_instance, false);

/* Game un-paused */
al_set_sample_instance_playing(bg_music_instance, true);

Instead of using 'al_set_sample_instance_playing' I used 'al_set_sample_instance_gain', It works good enough!