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DirectSound vs. mmsystem

category: music [glöplog]
 
I see a lot of players are using the standard multimedia functions instead of DirectX. What are the advantages of using mmsystem instead of DirectSound8?
Parties? I'm pretty sure I chose Music. That's what you get for not previewing first.
If you're only playing back a media file (which means latency doesn't matter, you know what will happen when in advance anyway) MMSystem is the easier to use API. And for all low latency scenarios there are now better APIs around (first and foremost WASAPI but also WDM if you're masochistic).

FWIW, DirectSound should be relegated to the landfill of history where it rightfully belongs. The slightly shorter latency doesn't make up for the fact that it was one of the most ill-advised API designs ever.
added on the 2012-05-31 17:18:44 by kb_ kb_
(forgot to mention XAudio2 which could have been usable but has at least one fatal design flaw and furthermore was abandoned before they could fix totally unimportant bugs like "crashes if you plug out the headphones" :|)
added on the 2012-05-31 17:21:24 by kb_ kb_
DirectSound is still a pretty good "all-round" solution though. It works better than MMSystem as far as "fire and forget" goes in my experience.
added on the 2012-05-31 17:27:47 by Gargaj Gargaj
I had a look before at XAudio2, and it was horrible. Perhaps should take a look at WASAPI.

But for the moment, DirectSound8 for low-latency and MMSYS for large pre-rendered buffers and/or small codesize?

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