SAMPLE: PLAYWAVE.EXE Demonstrates How To Play a Sound File

PLAYWAVE.EXE is a self-extracting compressed file that demonstrates how to play uncompressed sound files in your Visual Basic program. The sample also displays the wave data graphically. The project also demonstrates how to use some of the multimedia API functions.

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:
For additional information about how to download Microsoft Support files, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Microsoft scanned this file for viruses. Microsoft used the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help to prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.
When you run the self-extracting executable file, the following files are expanded into the Wave Audio Sample directory:

• Form1.frm (5Kb)
• Form2.frm (4Kb)
• Module1.bas (9Kb)
• PlayWave.vbp (1Kb)
• PlayWave.vbw (1Kb)
• Readme.txt - Contains some of the same information as this article.

To Run the Sample Project

1. Open the project in Visual Basic.
2. On the Run menu, click Start or press the F5 key to start the program.
3. From the Main Form, click File to open a common dialog control. Select an uncompressed sound file. The sound file data appears in the WaveForm Picture Form.
4. To play the file, click Play on the Main form. To play the file from a different starting or ending point, use the scroll bars to set the start or end points and then click play.
   
   NOTE: The sound file is loaded into memory rather than being read from disk. Large sound files can use a significant amount of memory.

For more information about using the multimedia API functions, please see the following topics in the Platform SDK documentation:

• Multimedia Reference
• WaveForm Audio
• WaveForm Functions

The following functions are used in this sample project. For specific information about these functions, see the Platform SDK documentation:

• Memory Management Functions
  GlobalAlloc
  GlobalLock
  GlobalFree Lib
• Multimedia Functions
  mmioAscend
  mmioClose
  mmioDescend
  mmioDescendParent
  mmioOpen
  mmioRead
  mmioReadFormat
  mmioStringToFOURCC
  
  waveOutAddBuffer
  waveOutClose
  waveOutGetDevCaps
  waveOutGetNumDevs
  waveOutOpen
  waveOutPrepareHeader
  waveOutReset
  waveOutStart
  waveOutStop
  waveOutUnprepareHeader
  waveOutWrite