Most Windows NT® multimedia drivers are Win32® user-mode drivers. Many of these user-mode drivers ultimately depend on support from an underlying kernel-mode CD-ROM driver that also supports other types of applications. However, user-mode multimedia audio drivers depend on a dedicated sound adapter with an underlying kernel-mode driver. This chapter summarizes the requests that kernel-mode sound drivers must handle.
For more information about user-mode multimedia drivers, see the Multimedia Drivers documentation.