![background image](http://html1.mh-extra.com/html/echo/gina3g/gina3g_owners-manual_3944117049.webp)
Appendix C: Windows Driver Model (WDM) FAQ
49
Appendix C: Windows Driver Model (WDM) FAQ
Appendix C: Windows Driver Model (WDM) FAQ
Q: What is a WDM driver and why should I care?
WDM stands for “Windows Driver Model.” A few years ago Microsoft realized
they were asking hardware manufacturers to write a lot of different drivers: support
for Windows NT, Windows 95, support for the wave API, support for
DirectSound, etc. To encourage good driver development, they came up with the
idea of WDM: you can just write one driver that can run on all the different
Windows platforms that support all the different audio APIs.
You should care about WDM and our hardware if you meet any of the following
criteria:
-You are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
-You are running SONAR or some other audio application that talks directly
to WDM drivers.
Q: How does the WDM driver talk to the Echo hardware?
The WDM driver was natively developed for Windows 2000 and XP (that is, it’s
not a legacy driver running on a newer OS). Here’s how it works:
Audio application
⇓
Microsoft’s WDMAUD wave driver
⇓
Microsoft’s kernel-mode audio mixer (a.k.a. the kmixer)
⇓
Echo WDM driver
⇓
PCI card