Detecting and selecting from Multiple Sound cards programmically

[Barry Erick]

How does one detect the sound card(s) on a pc and select which one to use, if multiple ones exist? I've searched here and the API without luck.

[José Roca]

waveOutGetNumDevs returns the number of sound devices, waveOutGetDevCaps retrieves the capabilities and waveOutOpen opens a device for playback.

For recording, use waveInGetNumDevs, waveInGetDevCaps and waveInOpen.

This snippet enuemrates the names of sound output devices:

   LOCAL hr AS LONG
   LOCAL i AS LONG
   LOCAL woc AS WAVEOUTCAPS
   
   FOR i = 0 TO waveOutGetNumDevs - 1
      hr = waveOutGetDevCaps(i, woc, SIZEOF(woc))
      ? woc.szPname
   NEXT

[Barry Erick]

I notice that my laptop reports the Windows Mixer and the sound card when Audacity prefs is used, but this routine only shows the sound card.

I am also trying to find what playback device is in use and how to do that. As far as setting it, it sure looks like that is almost impossible as microsoft states this is a hidden api that moves around in OS's and users code can't follow without reverse engineering and using new code for each OS it is used on or version updates.