Sound, and concluding remarks
Sitting below both DirectShow and Media Foundation is a new sound architecture. There's a new driver architecture called Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) and a new low-level API imaginatively named "Core Audio APIs," and the whole way Windows handles audio has been changed with a set of new user-mode components for mixing and processing audio.
The motivation behind both of these changes is to provide a higher-performing, better-quality sound system in Windows. Performance is a key issue in the sound system, especially the issue of latency. Latencies in the sound system must be kept low to prevent sounds from different sources becoming unsynchronized. This is a particularly true for audio professionals playing or recording multiple audio tracks and using multiple audio devices. A system that can't provide low latencies isn't useful in such scenarios.
UAA also makes higher demands of the audio hardware; the audio must now be "high definition," supporting 96 kHz 24-bit sound, and, where possible, should support 5.1 surround sound. One benefit that UAA will provide even those who aren't audio professionals is simpler installation. Devices compliant with the UAA architecture will be able to work without the use of additional drivers, and chipsets meeting Intel's HDA specification will be automatically supported. Third-party drivers might be needed to use any special functionality that a sound card will provide, but basic features should work even without them.
