Enumeration of Capture Devices

If you are looking for a particular kind of device, want to offer the user a choice of devices, or need to work with two or more devices, you must enumerate the devices available on the system. For an application that is just going to capture sounds through the user's preferred capture device, you don't need to enumerate the available devices. For more information, see Creating the Capture Object.

Enumeration serves three purposes.

  • Reports what hardware is available.
  • Supplies a globally unique identifier (GUID) for each device.
  • Enables you to create a temporary Capture object for each device as it is enumerated, so that you can check the capabilities of the device.

To enumerate devices, first create a capture device using CaptureDevicesCollection.