How to chang audio-output-device(s) in Windwos 8

Question

Hi,
currently I’m working on an application that starts by changing the audio-output-device and ends with re-setting the old one.
On Windows XP I do this by changing the Registry-entry “Sound-Mapper” and it works quite well.
I hopefully assume it works on all Windows Systems from XP to Windows 7.
The background is that our program is supposed to play certain multi-channel sounds over an external USB-multichannel-soundcard and it should switch to that device on start. To actually play the sounds we use the AxWindowsMediaPlayer-Class
to integrate the Windows-Media-Player in our application.
However, on Windows 8, it is possible to set multiple Audio-Outputs and the Windows-Media-player has a setting to choose from them (under Options). I was unable to use the Registry-trick to switch the output-device and I could not find
a way to programmatically tell the AxWindowsMediaPlayer to choose the USB-soundcard as an output.
Is there a Way to programmatically(c#) ether change the audio-output-device(s) in Windos8 or to tell
AxWindowsMediaPlayer to use a certain device?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi Kristin,
I think your reply pushed me in the right direction.
The waveOutOpen-function is part of the
winmm.dll-API and I think, that API is the solution to my Problem.
Unfortunately I am stuck at this point. I tried mciSendString and mciSendComand. Both are cappable of playing sound, but I am unable to change the output Device.
This is my c# code to open a WAV-File via mciSendCommand:
MCI_OPEN_PARMS open = new MCI_OPEN_PARMS();
open.wDeviceID = 0;//this is somehow ignored
open.lpstrDeviceType = Marshal.StringToHGlobalAnsi("waveaudio");
open.lpstrElementName = Marshal.StringToHGlobalAnsi(@"test.wav");
IntPtr ptr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(MCI_OPEN_PARMS)));
Marshal.StructureToPtr(open, ptr, false);
mciSendCommand(Convert.ToUInt32(textBox2.Text),               
MCI_OPEN,              
MCI_WAIT | MCI_OPEN_TYPE | MCI_OPEN_ELEMENT,              
ptr);
Afterwards I use mciSendCommand to start the playing of the sound, which works fine, but no matter what I enter in the “open.wDeviceID”-Line, I always get sound over
the default output.
I use waveOutGetDevCaps to get the number and kind of the output-Devices and this works fine.
Regards, Marc