Windows Vista Audio

The audio architecture of Windows XP today still contains strong echoes of the system that was fist established in Windows 3.1. There have been improvements. The most significant was probably allowing for multiple processes to render sound simultaneously. Many of the other changes were actually neccessary workaround that allowed developers to bypass different pieces of the old systems.

Well, that's all supposed to get better in Windows Vista, which should be released within the next year or so. The old audio system is being tossed out, and a new one will be implemented. All the old stuff should still run, but behind the scenes it is being reworked to run through the new system. Meanwhile the new system sounds a great deal more sensible.

For anyone who is interested, one place to start at at this page at Microsoft.com that describes Microsoft's Universal Audio Architecture and their future direction for audio. Another, probably more readable, site I recommend is Larry Osterman's Weblog. In particular, the posts filed under audio.