Overview: Operating-system audio APIs

Operating-system audio APIs define how applications exchange audio with devices and system processing.

WASAPI, Core Audio and the Linux audio interfaces below expose different routes from an application to playback hardware. A system can include several layers, so the API used by the player may feed another service before reaching a device. These pages explain those roles in the context of format handling, mixing and output access.

• Windows Audio Session API (WASAPI)
  WASAPI lets Windows applications negotiate and feed endpoint audio streams using shared or exclusive access and explicit buffer accounting.

• Apple Core Audio
  Core Audio is Apple's collection of audio services for formats, conversion, processing, device access, and timed playback.

• ALSA
  ALSA supplies Linux audio driver interfaces and a PCM library with configurable device routes, sample formats, and ring-buffer timing.

• PulseAudio
  PulseAudio provides a sound-server interface that routes, mixes, buffers, and converts application streams for selected output sinks.

• PipeWire
  PipeWire routes media through a scheduled graph of nodes, ports, and links, with session policy and compatibility interfaces around that graph.