Technical Features New To Windows Vista - Audio

Audio

Windows Vista features a completely re-written audio stack designed to provide low-latency 32-bit floating point audio, higher-quality digital signal processing, bit-for-bit sample level accuracy, up to 144dB of dynamic range and new audio APIs created by a team including Steve Ball and Larry Osterman. The new audio stack runs at user level, thus increasing stability. The Windows Vista audio engine is designed to run faster than the Windows XP audio engine, and has tighter requirements on audio buffer position accuracy. Also, the new Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) model has been introduced, replacing WDM audio, which allows compliant audio hardware to automatically work under Windows without needing device drivers from the audio hardware vendor.

There are three major APIs in the Windows Vista audio architecture:

  • Windows Audio Session API – Very low-level API for rendering audio, render/capture audio streams, adjust volume etc. This API also provides low latency for audio professionals through WaveRT (wave real-time) port driver.
  • Multimedia Device API – For enumerating and managing audio endpoints.
  • Device Topology API – For discovering the internals of an audio card's topology.

Read more about this topic:  Technical Features New To Windows Vista