Reference for DirectSound

[The feature associated with this page, DirectSound, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by XAudio2 and Audio Graphs. These newer frameworks have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use XAudio2 and Audio Graphs 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 contains reference information for the DirectSound application programming interface (API).

In This Section

• DirectSound Interfaces
  Reference material for the DirectSound API.
• DirectSound Functions
  This section contains reference information for DirectSound and DirectSoundCapture global functions.
• Callback Function (DirectSound)
  This section contains reference information for DirectSound callback functions.
• DirectSound Structures
  This section contains reference information about structures provided by the Microsoft DirectSound API.
• DirectSound GUIDs
  This section lists globally unique identifiers used in DirectSound.
• DirectSound Return Values
  This section provides a brief explanation of the various error codes that can be returned by DirectSound methods.