DirectSound

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[The feature associated with this page, DirectSound, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by WASAPI and Audio Graphs. Media Casting have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use Media Casting instead of DirectSound, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

This section provides information about using DirectSound to play and capture sounds in applications written in C and C++.

Information is presented in the following sections:

  • What's New in DirectSound. A guide to new features of DirectSound.

  • The Power of DirectSound. Information on the capabilities of the DirectSound system.

  • Programming Guide. A guide to using the DirectSound API. You'll probably want to familiarize yourself with the table of contents for this section, and then refer to parts of it as you need specific information. It should be used in conjunction with the reference section.

  • DirectSound Reference. Detailed information about all the API elements declared in Dsound.h.