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Diving into DirectX...the shallow end of the pool

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I have been spending a little time trying to figure out how to mess around with some audio settings on my computer programmatically. It's not as easy as it seems. I have renewed respect for game programmers. But then, my game experience starts and ends with Minesweeper, and my game programming experience is even more stunted.

At first, I was thinking registry, then I was thinking WMI, then...I took the plunge into DirectX. I have never looked at any DirectX API in my life, so I have a lot to learn. However, the managed classes are pretty slick even if the documentation could be better. I wrote some VB.NET code to loop through my playback devices and list them in a combobox. Not too sophisticated, but it's a nice little exercice to get started.

 

Dim devicesCollection As New DevicesCollection

Dim DeviceInfo As DeviceInformation

For Each DeviceInfo In devicesCollection

  ComboBox1.Items.Add(DeviceInfo.Description)

  Dim pbDevice As Device

  pbDevice = New Device(DeviceInfo.DriverGuid)

Next DeviceInfo

 

I can do a similar thing with capture devices. Additionally, there are some convenient constants you can pass to the constructor to get the default playback (or capture) device.

Now, I need to figure out if I can change settings, change the default device etc. through these APIs.

Rock on.

 

BTW: Was listening to led zep while working on this...man those songs hold up.

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