DirectX and Audio Adapters

Microsoft's DirectX is a series of application program interfaces (APIs) that sit between multimedia applications and hardware. Unlike MS-DOS applications that required developers to develop direct hardware support for numerous models and brands of audio cards, video cards, and game controllers, Windows uses DirectX to "talk" to hardware in a more direct manner than normal Windows drivers do. This improves program performance and frees the software developer from the need to change the program to work with different devices. Instead, a game developer must work with only the DirectX sound engine, DirectX 3D renderer, and DirectX modem or network interface routines.

For more information about DirectX and sound hardware, see "3D Audio," p. 966.

Thanks to DirectX, sound card and chipset developers are assured that their products will work with recent and current versions of Windows. However, if you still enjoy playing MS-DOS–based games, current audio adapters, chipsets, and integrated audio solutions still might present a compatibility challenge to you because of fundamental hardware differences between the ISA expansion slots used by classic Creative Labs and other sound cards and PCI slots, chipsets, and integrated audio.

For more information about using PCI sound hardware with MS-DOS games, see "Legacy (MS-DOS and Gameport) Game Support Issues," p.955.