Debugging DirectSound Projects

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[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 It has been superseded by WASAPI and Audio Graphs.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.]

The DirectSound dynamic-link library (DLL) installed with the debug version of the DirectX software development kit generates information in the debug output window as the application is running.

To access DirectSound debugging support, download the DirectX SDK Extras folder and copy the following debug files to your applications working directory:

  • ...\Extras\DirectSound\debug\x86\Dsound.dll

    or

    ...\Extras\DirectSound\debug\x64\Dsound.dll

  • ...\Extras\Symbols\Debug\x86\dll\Dsound.pdb

    or

    ...\Extras\Symbols\Debug\x64\dll\Dsound.pdb

Using the DirectX Properties Control Panel, select the Audio tab and set the desired debugging level using the Debug Output Level slider control.

You can set the debug level within the range of 0 to 5. A setting of 0 produces no debugging information, and 5 produces the most detail. For most purposes it is unnecessary to set the level higher than 2; output at higher levels does not pertain to errors or warnings but is purely informational.