The Power of 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 It has been superseded by WASAPI and Audio Graphs.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.]

DirectSound enables the playing of sounds with very low latency and gives applications a high level of control over hardware resources.

By using the DirectSound interfaces in your application, you can do the following:

  • Play sounds from files or resources in WAV format.

  • Play multiple sounds simultaneously.

  • Assign high-priority sounds to hardware-controlled buffers.

  • Locate sounds in a customizable 3D environment.

  • Add effects such as echo and chorus, and change effect parameters dynamically.

  • Capture WAV sounds from a microphone or other input.

DirectSound works on Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 2000, and later operating systems. Some functionality, chiefly capture effects, is available only on Microsoft Windows XP and later.