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Speaker Configuration

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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 It has been superseded by WASAPI and Audio Graphs.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.]

DirectSound uses the speaker configuration - that is, the position of the speakers relative to the listener - to optimize 3D effects for the user's sound system.

In Windows 98, Windows 2000, and later operating systems, the speaker configuration can be set by the user in Control Panel. An application can retrieve this value by using IDirectSound8::GetSpeakerConfig. Applications should not override the setting by calling IDirectSound8::SetSpeakerConfig, as this is a global setting that affects other users and applications.