Enumeration of Capture Devices

For an application that is simply going to capture sounds through the user's preferred capture device, you don't need to enumerate the available devices. By passing vbNullString or a predefined GUID to DirectX8.DirectSoundCaptureCreate, you can create a default device. For more information, see Creating the DirectSoundCapture Object.

If you are looking for a particular kind of device or wish to offer the user a choice of devices, you must enumerate the devices available on the system.

Enumeration serves three purposes:

• Reports what hardware is available.
• Supplies a GUID for each device.
• Enables you to initialize each device as it is enumerated, so that you can check the capabilities of the device.

To enumerate devices, first call the DirectX8.GetDSCaptureEnum method to create a DirectSoundEnum8 object representing a collection of devices. You can then query each device by using the DirectSoundEnum8.GetDescription, DirectSoundEnum8.GetGuid, and DirectSoundEnum8.GetName methods.

For an example of the use of DirectSoundEnum8, see Enumeration of Sound Devices.