Low-Delay Audio
[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Format 11 SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by Source Reader and Sink Writer. Source Reader and Sink Writer have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use Source Reader and Sink Writer instead of Windows Media Format 11 SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]
Low-delay audio is an encoding mode that produces compressed audio with a smaller buffer-window setting than other modes. This is useful for streams that need to be switched quickly during playback. The typical scenario for this feature is a streamed presentation that includes the ability to arbitrarily switch content, like changing the channel of a television.
When you use a low-delay audio format, the latency for switching content is drastically reduced compared to other audio formats. Latency is also reduced for live broadcasts when you use low-delay formats.
This feature is supported by the Windows Media Audio 9.1 and Windows Media Audio 9.1 Professional codecs. Low-delay formats are available only for constant bit rate encoding (both one-pass and two-pass).
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