DirectSound 3D Buffers

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 It has been superseded by WASAPI and Audio Graphs.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

Each sound source in a 3D environment is represented by an IDirectSound3DBuffer8 interface. This interface is supported only by sound buffers created with the DSBCAPS_CTRL3D flag. Methods of the interface are used to set and retrieve parameters of a single sound source.

Applications must supply monaural sound sources when using the 3D capabilities of DirectSound. If you attempt to create a buffer with the DSBCAPS_CTRL3D flag set and a WAV format with more than one channel, an error results.

This section describes how your applications can obtain and manage 3D buffer objects.The following topics are discussed:

• Obtaining the 3D Buffer Object

• Minimum and Maximum Distances

• Processing Mode

• Buffer Position and Velocity

• Batch Parameters for 3D Buffers