Windows XP k mixer vs. whatever is in Vista Options

[audiophilosophy]

I'm a noob with this technical sort of stuff, but I was wondering if the audio processing stuff included in Vista is better or worse than what we had with XP.

Ok, since I am a noob, this is what I have gathered about XP's audio processing--- the k mixer is bad, and it has a degrading effect on the sound unless you decided to take steps to entirely bypass the k mixer. Correct me if I'm wrong about this.

So I'm wondering, are there any improvements over XP's k mixer with what comes standard with Vista?

[CSMR]

Thats a nice thought but 99% of consumers aren't aware of DRM. So is it fair to sell things to an unaware public? And to those that are aware, how can you be sure if DRM is not part of what you are purchasing? i.e. Sony rootkit scandal. No offense but it almost sounds like you work for MS.

People who are slightly technically minded will understand what the internet store tells them. They will understand when they are told "you have the right to play this ten times" or whatever. Not difficult. If the store doesn't tell them then I would think it is doing something which would be illegal in most countries.

People who can't even understand this will know from their friends or the media if they notice problems arising from DRM. So these people will get some relevant information from some channels... not the best channels but the channels they would use to make any decision about what to buy.

Contrary to popular belief, the kmixer of XP and 2k doesn't change a thing when you move the wave volume slider to the max. DTS encoded wave files can be played through WaveOut/DSound and through the kernel mixer without any loss.

And I should know, I've developed a driver for the C-Media 8738/8768 which just can do that stunt.

No. Windows has a mixer. The mixer has to take what can potentially be several sources and mix them. So no one can be at full volume, even if it is the only thing playing, because then if the system beeps for example you either have the possibiliy of clipping or you have to reduce the volume of what is playing at the same time. Not unreasonably, windows doesn't do this.

The mixing engine of Vista works with 32bit float samples, so there's actually some information lost in the conversion. But there is a so called "exclusive mode" which is available through the WASAPI. It should give you bitperfect output, albeit I haven't seen software which actually support it (yet).

That's right.