It seems like they already must have done all of the hard work getting DirectSound to work under Vista, and it's puzzling to me why they didn't just take the next step. DirectSound already had basic software mixing with XP (and 2K?) in case you didn't have a proper sound card, so there likely …

Actually, I haven't been able to give it a good spin because it refuses to work on Windows 8+, just crashes. Did anyone fix it and one could just download updated DLL? I haven't touched the code in forever, and my own testing/use was under Wine (I use Linux and can't deal with the hassle of dual- …

I kinda ignored the fact that a lot can be done before the final result is send to the sound card. But it does depend on the particular implementation (eg. OpenAL Soft), correct? Yes. Different implementations have different capabilities, so the exact capabilities it has depends on what the user …

Is there a reason why the end user should care which API is used under the hood? Because it could influence the available featureset and quality. With OpenAL Soft, for instance, it can detect a device being configured as headphones and automatically enable HRTF for full 3D sound positioning without …