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DirectSound Summary

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The DirectSound API provides fast access to audio rendering hardware and allows you to mix, play back, and capture audio data in a variety of formats, at various rates, and in either mono or stereo. It stores individual sounds in separate buffers and can mix an arbitrary number of them together simultaneously to produce the desired output. The storage and mixing are done using pulse code modulation (PCM) to optimize processing throughput. DirectSound provides low-level yet device-independent access to the sound device, enhanced automatically with hardware acceleration when it is available.

DirectSound interfaces are generally fully consistent with the desktop Windows DirectX 6.1 version of the APIs. Some minor differences can occur because the Windows and Windows CE driver models are not identical. For example, DirectSound buffers are never lost under normal condition and do not need to be restored.

See Also

Audio Technologies | DirectSound Overview

Last updated on Wednesday, April 13, 2005

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