XAudio2 is a lower-level audio

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

and

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was su ...

, the successor to

DirectSound DirectSound is a deprecated software component of the Microsoft DirectX library for the Windows operating system, superseded by XAudio2. It provides a low-latency interface to sound card drivers written for Windows 95 through Windows XP and can h ...

on Windows and a supplement to the original XAudio on the Xbox 360. XAudio2 operates through the XAudio API on the Xbox 360, through DirectSound on

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

, and through the low-level audio mixer

WASAPI Windows Vista (formerly codenamed Windows "Longhorn") has many significant new features compared with previous Microsoft Windows versions, covering most aspects of the operating system. In addition to the new user interface, security capabilities ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and higher. The RTM release of the XAudio2

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

is included in the March 2008 DirectX SDK, enabling a programmer with

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platfor ...

to use XAudio2 in a Windows, Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 8 project. The latest version of XAudio2 is 2.9, released for

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

. XAudio2 versions have shipped for use on Xbox 360 and versions of Windows, and for as old as Windows XP using redistributable DLLs, with newer versions adding features only compatible with newer operating systems. E.g. XAudio 2.8 shipped with Windows 8, and supports Windows Store apps, and isn't available for older Windows versions nor is it included in Windows Server 2012. There are known issues with XAudio2 2.7 library that is "in the legacy DirectX SDK". "XAudio2: High Performance Considerations" (talk) supports Windows 7.

Features

XAudio2 provides mixing and

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniq ...

for high-level audio APIs such as XACT and as well provides the programmer with high-level functions related to spatial processing. XAudio2

abstracts An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, academic conference, conference proceedings, proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpo ...

audio generation by separating sound data from "voice", allowing each voice to be filtered by programmable

digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are ...

and effects processing functions. Voices can be "submixed" together into a single stream. XAudio2 can natively decompress XMA on the Xbox 360, xWMA on Windows 10, and various

ADPCM Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio ...

codecs on both platforms. XAudio2 2.8 supports Windows Store App development and can be used in C++/DirectX apps.

References

{{Microsoft APIs Application programming interfaces Audio libraries Music software plugin architectures Windows audio

Features

See also

References