Question

Is there a way to get the full audio device name in Windows XP and later?

I can use MIXERCAPS but the szPname member will limit to 32 characters (including NULL). For an audio device name of “Microphone (High Definition Audio Device)”, I only get back “Microphone (High Definition Aud”. This is due to MAXPNAMELEN being defined to 32. I have tried redefining it to a larger number to no effect.

Here is the code I am using:

MIXERCAPS mc;
ZeroMemory( &mc, sizeof(MIXERCAPS) );
mm = mixerGetDevCaps( reinterpret_cast<UINT_PTR>(m_hMixer), &mc, sizeof(MIXERCAPS) );

I saw this question, but it references Vista and later.

Answer 1

If you use the classic Windows Multimedia interface you probably can’t get around the MAXPNAMELEN limitation, since that’s compiled into Windows itself.

However you might be able to get the full device name if you use DirectSound instead. The following code is untested but I think it should work.

BOOL CALLBACK EnumCallback(LPGUID guid, LPCSTR descr, LPCSTR modname, LPVOID ctx)
{
    std::vector<std::string> *names = (std::vector<std::string>*)ctx;
    names->push_back(std::string(descr));
    return TRUE;
}

int main()
{
    std::vector<std::string> names;
    if (!FAILED(DirectSoundEnumerate(&EnumCallback, &names)))
    {
        // do stuff
    }
}