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Using PlaySound to Play Waveform-Audio Files

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[The feature associated with this page, Waveform Audio, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by WASAPI and Audio Graphs. WASAPI and Audio Graphs have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use WASAPI and Audio Graphs instead of Waveform Audio, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

Most waveform-audio files use the .WAV filename extension.

The following statement plays the C:\SOUNDS\BELLS.WAV file:

PlaySound("C:\\SOUNDS\\BELLS.WAV", NULL, SND_SYNC);

If the specified file does not exist, or if the file does not fit into the available memory, PlaySound plays the default system sound. If no default system sound has been defined, PlaySound fails without producing any sound. If you do not want the default system sound to play, specify the SND_NODEFAULT flag, as shown in the following example:

PlaySound("C:\\SOUNDS\\BELLS.WAV", NULL, SND_SYNC | SND_NODEFAULT);